She doesn't win much, but she doesn't mind losing if it's to Stristyko, and will sincerely try her best in the hope of making it more fun for him. She thinks she has found a useful idea that she hasn't played and lost with before. She will make the move.

You think the bishop isn't hanging there but it is.

When my knight captures it you can capture it back and the center pawn but I can take your pawns on the other side and still end up a point ahead for it.

He moves his knight and takes it, and as he does so holds the captured white piece briefly in the air, as if to emphasize his point.

Though she is surely not in any mortal danger, she nevertheless leaps back in instinctual terror, from the object which she has physically held a thousand times before and somehow never had any instinctual terrors about until this moment right now.

Footnote: There is nothing in the rulebook that says this isn't how it works. Cayden did the same trick too, by picking the ordinary tankard as His Holy Symbol and therefore screwing over every vampire in Golarion who tries to act normal walking into a tavern only to get outed the moment they're offered a drink.

A person with ambitions of never dying, or at least of outlasting Hell, is not just going to ignore that response.

It's what he might expect to happen, if some god of Good decided today was the day to tell a paladin hit-squad his location, divinely shatter his wards, and teleport some holy assassin directly behind him.

There are exactly zero Holy Symbols in this entire sub-section of his dungeon.
There aren't any other explanations here for what he has already observed.

He's not going to bother turning around. Even if he saw nothing standing there, despite his Permenancied See Invisibility and Arcane Sight, it still wouldn't be enough evidence to convince him not to give his full maximum contingency response anyway.

sorry Master it's a misunderstanding Master it's the chess piece somethings wrong with the chess piece Master please calm down Master please i'm so sorry Master

It's too late to unscare him now. He's speaking command words, triggering expensive single-use contingencies, activating magic items, and casting spells all at once.

Estrella is a powerful undead, and a senior member of his court, but it's not like she's impossible to mind control. Even items of continuous Mind Blank don't get you that. Stristyko looked into it, it's just way too expensive to justify. They're at home playing chess, for Urgathoa's sake.

Stristyko trusts Estrella enough that her duties include guarding his phylactery, where that's necessary.
He just doesn't trust that she'd never ever fail a Will save against a 7th circle Control Undead or to spell-resist an 8th circle Threnodic Geas.
Therefore, he shouldn't refrain from taking obvious precautions based on anything Estrella says or does.

My Lord and Master is far greater and wiser than me. I am the one who is wrong. I just clearly haven't understood the danger yet, somehow. I must aid him to the best of my ability in spending all our accumulated resources against this mysterious phantom threat.

...

By the time he has calmed down, he's wasted about 20,000 gp and a few months of his accumulated spellwork.

Stristyko swears his undying revenge on whoever's fault this was.
He even writes it down, in his revenge diary. Page 15, item 6.

He still needs his break, and then to repair all his damaged defences.

Look, he'll get around to it eventually, okay. It's undying revenge.

He's Lawful, it'll happen someday. After all his other higher priority revenges, maybe.

Estrella greatly regrets her outburst. She is inconsolable.

She begs to be appropriately punished for it.

None of what happened is in any particular way her fault, and even if it was he still wouldn't be upset about it. And since getting abused would make her feel better, it wouldn't be a proper incentive even if he wanted it to be. 

He'll make her clean the whole dungeon, and filter out the acid traps, to help her feel appropriately punished and therefore forgivable. Her spawn and thralls can help her a little bit, group punishments are a good team-building exercise.

And until then he'll ... read a book, he supposes.

Why is his life like this.

Stristyko hates the gods of Good. What did he ever do to Them.

Present Day:

Gorthoklek has been bound to service under an infernal compact, and put in charge of beating the Chelish Army into an obedient and disciplined fighting force.

This is the least pleasant thing that the army has ever been told, and in any other country would result in an immediate coup attempt by whichever general had the most troops, mass defection by anyone close enough to reach a border faster than they'd expect a pit fiend to reach them, and mass rebellion by anyone who thought being conscripted might happen to them too and wanted the first move advantage.

In Cheliax, it mostly works though. Almost everyone in Cheliax incorrectly believes that everyone else is much more loyal than them, would never go along with that kind of thing, would report you if you even hinted at it, and you'd just be getting yourself hurt worse. Even those who have seen through it know that most people haven't, and would report you for fear that you'd report them not reporting you, and so common knowledge is not easily created. Traitors and heretics in Cheliax die under Malediction, and if there's pit fiends waiting for you in Hell why run just because now their's one on the Material, too.

There'll be common knowledge after Gorthoklek has visited each unit, that instead of trying to think of clever ways out they should just do their jobs and pray he doesn't come back.

Ravounel has been successfully convinced by Pit-Fiend-Diplomacy not to petition for independence. At no point in this process did the Pit Fiend threaten to invade or otherwise "move against" Ravounel, in full obedience to the Kintargo Contract. He said solely ordinary and true things and they just sort of assumed.

Probably they would have negotiated harder if they knew Cheliax was forbidden from doing anything if they did take independence, but not telling people things like that is the way of Hell, and Mardehzuk has risen high in it.

He doesn't need to lie to them to convince them to obey.

Pit Fiends can do things like that, when they're trying to.

Cheliax is still in a much weaker position. It relied on trade across the Inner Sea to make up for its terrible land borders: isolationist and imperialist rivals across a mountain range to the north, enemies to the east, and ocean on the rest. Previously valuable, Cheliax-controlled ocean, now a pirate sanctuary.

Abrogail really wants to burn Andoran, for what it's done to her Empire. She'll build an army to fight off any competitors and cast half the spells for it herself if she has to. She'll destroy her problems at its source.

The only problem is that they've got a 9th circle archmage too, and while she's been 9th for days, felandriel Morgethai has been 9th for decades.

She will have to exercise restraint and patience, in bringing about their downfall. That's fine, she can be patient.

She'll steal their secret immediately though, the navy say they can't catch them at sea but that's no reason they can't raid Augastana by spy and teleport and take whatever this is from its home.

Hey Tet
Hey Tet
Hey Tet

What up?

Pseudohypothetically, if I knew something only because a paladin prayed to Me, and the paladin was thinking about something they were Oathbound not to share in ways that risked it being leaked, and I therefore felt obligated to keep to that same Oath lest all my paladins be handicapped into being permenantly unable to ever swear secrecy about anything, but I was reasonably sure You knew already and could by the same process You know infer I knew, and also infer from My knowing it that I'd be reasonably sure You knew because We both know We're both gods and are reliably correct about these kinds of reasoning puzzles, then -

Yes yes I know My Cleric Robaldo gave Your Paladin Cormoth some naval innovations in exchange partly for his secrecy about where he got it from, and I know You know only because of that, and We both know We both know, and so on, so it's not a violation of either of their trusts in either of Us that we talk about it to each other.

I already gave him a circle for it.

Yes that matter.

I've noticed those same "naval innovations" have been quickly adopted by a number of pirate organisations. In fact, if I try and focus on the precise timing of the attacks and with reasonable estimates of how long it'd take those groups to implement the technology, it seems like the pirates might have had access to the technology as of slightly before when My paladin learnt it from Your cleric and then immediately prayed about it.

Wow. Pretty quick of them. One wonders how they pulled that off.

I wonder if perhaps You wonder it much less than I do.

Fine, strictly conditional on Your Oath not to use any of this information against My interest, here's everything I know.

...

You could have paid Me to do that! How does this benefit Good more than not this?

Norgorber had a really convincing argument about how Your budget is worth more to Good than His involvement here is a harm to it. The pirates are mostly attacking Cheliax, and Asmodeus seems to be doubling down so they'll potentially steal far more of Evil's resources than We could've predicted, mostly stealing from a greater Evil to support a lesser one. We're legitimately better off in My estimation than I'd have expected to happen otherwise.

Also, come on, wizard pirates on speedboats.

This is still the kind of decision-process that ends up in You getting exploited by Norgorber, next time it seems like a good deal to bargain with Him and it turns out He knew something You didn't and can take You for a ride.

Well then I'll just have to stay on top of things and keep knowing stuff He doesn't too, mustn't I? And then We'll see who gets to exploit the insufficiently low-trust behaviour of the other.

Just because you might lose is no reason not to Play.

Vinstis is shackled inside a wooden box, barely larger than himself, somewhere below the deck.

He has been in it for 30 hours. He wishes he could throw up, but he has not eaten or drunk and you cannot throw up on an empty belly. He is waiting for it to be over, even though he has been promised it will get worse when it does.

Cheliax, in it's benevolence, provides a free community service to all other slaver's in the Inner Sea. No matter how cruel you are already, you can still threaten worse, by claiming that they'll send you to Cheliax. For it to work best though, you do have to sometimes follow through, and now Vinstis is in a box with only a promise that it'll be worse soon.

There's shouting now, on the deck above, although he can't make out the words.

They don't look armed enough to be a problem, and they're raising a white flag.
He doesn't want to waste his bombs or kill any innocents.
He'll have the engine wizard give him Fly, and board first.
They'll hang back until he gives a signal, to keep out of danger.
If a fight happens he can't win he'll jump into the sea, and they'll take that as cue to have the elementals sink them.

Once on board, he'll continue encouraging the crew to surrender peacefully, and explain that they just want to search the vessel for any slaves because slavery is illegal in the Inner Sea, Andoran has unilaterally decided.

If there aren't any they'll be free to go and if there are they'll have to take them to freedom in Andoran as well as any other cargo, half of which will be turned over to the liberated slave fund.

What is the bullshit.

If you're a pirate you're a pirate, we don't think we can take you on given how fast your boat approached us and the fact you flew aboard, and that's fine we surrender.

But if you're here to talk about laws, I have licenses from Cheliax, Absalom, Osirion, and Rahadoum. Piracy is illegal and when the navy catches you you'll hang if you're lucky, and then your soul will go to the Abyss where it belongs.

Actually this isn't illegal according to Andoran law, which is the only law I've explicitly agreed to follow, and if some other warship wants to claim otherwise they're welcome to fight us about it and lose. My boss is a Paladin of Iomedae so if what he's been telling me to do is illegal you can take up your complaints with Her.

No sorry this is bullshit you can't just unilaterally decide something isn't allowed in the middle of the ocean.

Why should Andoran law matter we aren't anywhere near there.

I actually have a piece of paper right here called a "letter of mark" that says I can stop and search you.

It is physically possible for you to decide to fight us about it but it really wouldn't go well.

If you don't and there's noone aboard you'll be free to go in a few minutes, you don't even need to slow down we can do the search while you're still sailing. If there are such persons aboard you'll likely be let off with a warning once the galley reaches Augastana if it's your first time, although we will still conviscate the goods and vessel.

Footnote: This. Is. All. Paizocanon.

We're not bound for Augastana, we're bound for Ostenso.

This is my ship. I don't have to put up with some nonsense like this from a foreigner who thinks he's out here being a hero, if you care about the law at all how about I tell you to get off my property and take your friends and go bother someone else.

I politely decline. Just to confirm, there are in fact slaves on this ship?

The yelling above deck gets louder and then abruptly stops.

It takes about 12 seconds.

Most of the galley's crew didn't even move, just watched.

He'll signal to the rest of his boat that a few more should board, and that it won't be opposed.

This will be a fun one.

Axis: He obeyed what he understood to be the rules, even when it wouldn't work out well for him personally, and even when he knew it would cost him his life. He tried neither to bend the law in his own favour, nor towards any greater Good or Evil. Lawful Neutral.

Hell: He died trying to traffic humans into Cheliax, which is morally Evil, and which he thought was okay only because a higher authority told him he was allowed to. Lawful Evil.

Maelstrom: He totally wasn't going to resist if they were pirates though. He only fought back because they were calling themselves the Law. That's pretty Chaotic.

Nirvana: Actually he's Neutral Good see he was only doing this because he was trying to help people and was just extremely misguided as to how best to do that.

Abyss: You're all being dumb. He tried to do a crime, got stopped by the cops, tried pointlessly to fight them and then died for it. Chaotic Evil.

Abaddon: Whatever Hell and Abyss said about Moral alignment add together, and whatever they said about Systemic alignment cancel out, therefore Neutral Evil.

Final Ruling: Neutral Evil. He gets a choice, which terrible afterlife would he like?

Galley Captain: If you'd asked me any other day I'd have picked Hell, but if that bullshit that killed me is supposed to count as "Lawful" somehow than fuck you and the abstract metaphysical bullshit you rode in on and send me to the Abyss so I can come back as a demon and take my sweet revenge.

They'll take him to where the slaves are being held.
He'll untie them and ... they don't all speak Taldane.
Can anyone translate, please?
There's no need for anyone to be down here, there's enough room on deck.
He just needs everyone to understand what's going on, it's much harder when they don't.

The official next part of the standard operating procedure is to teach the former slaves how to sail a boat straight, give them enough swords that the crew can't take it back by force and tie up any who seem likely to try, leave two of their own men to make sure they stay on track to Andoran, make sure they've got enough supplies to get there, and then leave in the speedboat so they can capture someone else too.

Is that going to work?

Vinstis is no longer in a box and they took off his bindings but he's still at sea and still feels sick and there's someone trying to say something to him but he doesn't understand more than a few words of it.

Another person is saying in a more comprehensible dialect of Osiriani that they need him to help pull some ropes. They're all holding swords, he'll pull the ropes where he's told to.

when does he get to have food they're still at sea obviously he can't eat he'd just throw up.

They bring out fresh bread and water. He tries some and then quickly throws it up. What was the point of that?

He can maybe keep down just water.

It was supposed to be a 2 day trip, he was told. Everyone always lies to Vinstis.

It's almost 6 days from when they left when they pull into dry land again.

The guy Vinstis can't understand points them to which bay they need to stop at, and Vinstis manages to be helpful enough that they probably won't be mad at him specifically.

We obviously don't want people reaching freedom completely empty handed. We'll set up a fund that should be enough for, say, a dozen silvers each? That's around two weeks wages, should be enough that they can start getting their lives together. 

If they're underage, there's an orphanage in the Copperdown District that won't turn anybody away, can we ask the kid if he wants to go there?

If it was a more organised Good country, like Lastwall maybe, they'd probably have a better plan here.

They've put a dozen silver coins in his hands and he has no idea why.

They're telling him he's "free". What does that mean?

They're asking if he wants to go to a home, but that of course he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to.

They'll point him in a direction and he'll wander off in it.

Another job well done. Hop on the next speedboat and we'll catch another batch in no time.

Yeah alright if they can do it that quickly our prices are off.

Trafficking over the waters just isn't cost effective, you lose your boats too fast and nobody wants to move supplies with you for fear it'll all get looted.

Merchants are selfish and profit-motivated, and they all know math.

They'll all do the same calculation and independently reach the same answer:
No more slave trading in the Inner Sea.

Robaldo is a 4th circle wizard and 3rd circle cleric. There are many new and interesting spell-casting opportunities this opens up.

Like any sensible wizard, he's already got strong opinions about which of his new spell slots are best spent on which of his new spells.

Unfortunately, the winning bid for his first day is a single, simple, 3rd circle cleric spell: Planar Inquiry.

Robaldo is tired of believing a guessed religion that he made up himself.
Robaldo is tired of having approximately zero actual knowledge of his god, of Tet's nature and values and afterlife opportunities.

He has prepared a number of offerings, that he hopes will be suitable.

He casts it on the first day he is ready, and asks for a talkative-but-cheap native of Tet's divine domain if He has one, or servant if He has one, or ally or at least someone with actual insider knowledge of who Tet is as a god.

Years Ago, when Tet first thought through the logical and strategic consequences of the divine intervention rules agreed to as price of existing in Pharasma's Creation:

Hmm. I don't really want to have servants in any capacity, not even allies. Players on the same team as Me would be best, but these rules really incentivise Me towards having an organisation of natives from my Divine Domain, who are minimally expensive under the rules and maximally usefuly at setting up situations for Me to exploit, and who can get My followers more informed in a way that doesn't waste my budget.

I guess Disboard will have to be different to the way I'd most prefer it to be.
That's fine, the tradeoff is worth it for a shot at winning more souls.

She's had a little over a year of training for this, since Tet announced that He'd be intervening in ordinary affairs in Disboard more and also setting up an "outsider deployment mechanism".

She manifests in the room in front of Robaldo. She's not scared or anything, Planar Inquiry guarantees that if she's attacked or damaged she'll just immediately respawn back in Disboard.

Robaldo is hoping to treat this as a 3rd circle higher-bandwidth Commune and get as much as he can about his god out of it.

"I offer you this payment for any information you possess and can convey about my god, Tet, who I believe to be your god as well, particularly His divine domain if He has one, His servants if He has any, His values, and His nature."

It's not a higher-bandwidth Commune, there's plenty of things she either doesn't know or is forbidden from answering in ways a Commune wouldn't be, and if it isn't a question she would anticipate and prepare for she's much less able than Tet to just figure out the correct answer on the spot.

Still, that's approximately what she was expecting. She's got the official prepared answer ready to go. She'll embellish it anyway, with her own concerns, because they explained to her that that's allowed and somewhat cheaper anyway.

She tells him what Tet wants: That people should have Fun and Play Together. 

She tells him how Tet wants it: That people should pursue goals carefully, consider their choices, and try to find the path to the goals they have set, out of all the possible paths they could travel. That Tet is not god of Games, though He sees the world as a Game, but rather god of Play, for He sees himself as a Player, trying always to make the right move to reach the goal He desires, which is to have Fun and that all others have Fun as well as they try to make their best choices in reply.

She continues with the story of The Great War, where powerful deities fought over Disboard for the title of One True God, and how Tet outwitted them all and stole victory at the last moment without ever participating in the conflict.

She explains the Covenant He put in place, by which all violence and robbery is forbidden, that any conflicts are to be resolved by games, that bets placed upon games agreed by the players to be of comparable value will be upheld by divine force, and that cheating is an instant loss but it's only cheating if you get caught.

She says that Tet wove this Covenant into the fabric of space itself such that it was fundamentally impossible to disobey, in a way that is impossible to understand if you aren't yourself as intelligent as a god.

She explains the Great Game of Disboard, the most important thing about it, that if one is able to gather up enough of its denizens, their wealth and their wills, they may claim a fair stake to wager against Tet for His divinity itself, and if they win against Him can ascend into the new One True God of Disboard.

That hasn't actually happened yet, people have gathered up a stake to wager and then lost it, nobody has actually won, but she's in one of many such factions that is trying and if he's planning on going there when he dies he can join and if he wins the internal-leadership tournament he can make the challenge and if he wins that too he'd be a god.

She explains that Disboard had existed in this manner for millennia, with no suffering or death, no hunger or disease, that the 16 races created by the other now-dead gods for their failed war have remained and played games with each other, and tried to gather the strength to challenge Tet and the cleverness to win when they do.

She explains how, after thousands of years of Disboard being ruled like this, Tet suddenly announced that He had found in the distant cosmos others of comparable skill, with stakes they could offer of comparable value, and that He had decided to play a game with Them.

Tet had announced that He could use their help, those races who had lived so long under His rule, that while He would not force anyone to change their preferences at all from what they already desired, those who shared any of His values and nature could volunteer and He would induct them as His team-members in this incomprehensible grand game He had decided to play, against gods of elsewhere across the distant cosmos.

She tells him of a few years ago, when the new Game had started. That the stars in the sky over Disboard had blinked out, and a new colourful cosmos been put above it. That great sections of Disboard had been sealed off from the rest to be "visitor areas". That portals to the domains of Tet's new play-mates in Elysium and the Maelstrom had been raised in the centres of cities.

She tells him how Tet's followers had begun appearing in Disboard as petitioners, and that they are generally happy about this, but they can always cross back and forth to Elysium or the Maelstrom if they prefer.

She remembers to tell him her name, at the last second.

She runs out of the 10 minute time limit and disappears.

He will spend the entire time diligently copying it all down, in shorthand, that he can later edit a bit and submit to the writing contest.

How exactly does Robaldo feel about this? How does he imagine other people will feel about this?

That Tet is from outside Pharasma's Creation?
Sounds Desnan, almost, like the kind of thing that is probably true of Desna, if it can be true of gods.

That Tet will let people challenge Him for Divinity?
Even though He could easily just take their stuff by force and not take any risk about it?
Sounds Arodenite, almost. The desire and hope that His followers will surpass Him, will beat Him at His Own game, it rhymes with leaving the Starstone in place with a test that valiant mortals can pass, in the hope that others will ascend, because He wants more and not less, because He doesn't want to be afraid of His own followers, or treat them as true enemies that must be crushed before they can grow.
Either that or Irorian, the hope that He'll learn He isn't perfect, that He'll find one day something greater than Himself, that he can hope to surpass. That even His divinity He does not know to be great enough, and hopes to be proven wrong about so that He might learn to improve Himself even further than He already had.

That Tet came to Creation by choice?
Because He's trying to defeat the other gods about something?
Because He wanted a challenge?
Because He just wants other gods to Play with?
Sounds, ... Irorian? Iomedaen? Asmodean? Gorumite?
Is He ... Proud about it? Optimistic? Is He doing it to stop all the Evil in the universe, or just because He wants to take over for the sake of it?
Did He just notice that conquering Creation is the kind of thing nearly impossibly difficult to do even if you are a god, and took on the challenge for that sake alone?
Or has Robaldo completely failed to understand what the Game here even is, and it's just about winning souls or something?

Some Clerics say the only thing that really matters in the Material is getting souls to go to the right afterlive, usually their afterlife, maybe Tet's like that too.

If he is, should Robaldo be trying to optimise all his choices to make as many souls as he can be judged Tettian by Pharasma? That's more or less what a lot of other churches seem to do.

He can figure it out tomorrow, with more information.

Obvious Step 2:
Now that he knows a divine domain exists, and he knows its name, convince Morgethai to cast a gate for him, buy a bunch of untuned tuning forks, tune them, he'll also need a Plane Shift and Teleport to get back again, and then sell them to anyone who wants one at a profit.

That's not a request she'll refuse. She gets to see a whole new Chaotic Good plane, and obviously keep a fork or two for herself. Things like that come in handy.

There'll be a few others who want to come with, we can form a party. There'll be a Desnan Cleric who thinks making a new plane more accessible is a great use of spell slots, he's happy to cast the Plane Shift to return.

They'll want to keep the party small though, say 9 people, to avoid spilling the information. She really hopes Cheliax doesn't invade today, she'd prefer to still have her 9th circle slot free for that, but you can't go through life never doing anything just because you want to keep the spell slots.

When they're ready, she'll try to open it at the center of Tet's power in Disboard, to avoid getting some random unimportant local region that doesn't represent the rest of it, that they can't quickly find their way out of. That kind of stuff happens when you travel the planes.

Denied.

The center of My power is atop the King Chess Piece, and you're only allowed to visit it for a challenge, which you can't afford to make. I'll pop you out somewhere more suitable.

Important testing time! Robaldo was told that violence and theft are banned, not like in a legal sense of not allowed but in an incomprehensibly powerful divine magic sense of being physically impossible.

Robaldo tries to punch a party member in the face. Nothing happens.
Robaldo tries to pat a party member on the back. It works!
Robaldo tries to slap himself on the cheek. It hurts.

Robaldo attempts to take a party members coin purse out of their pocket. Nothing happens.
Robaldo tries asking nicely, gets a "sure if you give it back immediately", successfully takes it and then without actually deciding to do anything experiences himself giving it back immediately.

Wow. That's pretty scary stuff right there. It didn't even feel like there was a magical force stopping him, or like there was a compulsion in his mind restricting his will. It just didn't happen, like if he'd tried to do magic like a sorceror by just willing it to happen and he's not a sorceror so nothing happened. As if the set of possible actions just fundamentally doesn't include theft or violence.

Footnote: This effect isn't unique. Paizocanonically, Everlight, the domain of Sarenrae, has a similar effect: "No violent thoughts are possible within Everlight; those who seek violence cannot enter this realm, as it simply does not exist for them. Lies and deceit are also impossible within Everlight's borders." Tet's version is tuned a bit differently, forbidding deception would ruin most of the fun, He feels.

They're not going to believe this until they've confirmed it themselves.
Yeah alright this place seems pretty safe then, meet back here in 6 hours?

Does anything nearby look like a powerful local outsider, artifact, or important planar feature?

"The Crown of Elkia is pretty important? Would that work? If you just need to borrow it you could ask the tournament overseer."

He's had Outsider Training now, he knows it would work, but he's gotten so into roleplaying like he doesn't know any mortal magical secrets because he's not allowed to share any that he feels like just hinting at stuff that he already knows they'd know with what he's allowed to cheaply tell them is funnier.

They'll just let us walk up and do magical stuff to their crown? Oh right of course theft is impossible you don't need any security. Where's that?

It's in the palace, at the top of the hill. It's on display in preparation for the tournament next week to pick the new king.

"What happened to the old king?" Always an important thing for an adventurer to find out early on.

He lost a Game and legally died. Good for us too, he wasn't a great king, and still isn't that smart.

...Legally died?

Yeah, like, 'but if you lose, you legally die, and all your property including the crown of Elkia shall be divided according to the rules', and then he lost and now according to his will there's a tournament for the new king.

He's still living at the palace I think until the end of the tournament when he gets kicked out. You can just ignore him though, in fact you should, what with how he's dead and all.

That's no more ridiculous than any other outer plane.

They'll head up the hill and ask if they can strike a hundred tuning forks from their Bag of Holding against the crown and no that won't damage it at all.

He'll leave them to that and wonder how hard it'd be to find "Stephanie Dola" who he met before in a Planar Inquiry.

Does the first person he asks know who she is? Statistically they shouldn't.

Oh the princess? She's probably at the palace, top of the hill, I think she's still trying that she'll win the tournament and succeed her father.

Ah, of course, statistics doesn't matter because this is His gods domain and Tet will just rig it to have whatever outcome He finds funniest. He'll follow the party then.

Stephanie will happen to be near the entrance when they reach the palace.

She'll recognize Robaldo and pretend that this was her plan all along and not obviously a divinely-orchestrated pseudo-coincidence. Maybe it'll at least look like she was in on it, without Tet having to spend some tiny fragment of His attention causing her to actually be in on it.

The trick is to use locally famous but low hit-dice people who are often near locally famous artifacts on first callings, and then if they try to visit put them somewhere nearby such that the line they'd predictibly travel along to get there intersects the ordinary movement of the person they met before.

It's like snooker except instead of predicting the physics of spherical balls you predict tiny conscious minds. Easy if you're a god.

Can she guess why they're here?

They're not eligible to rule Elkia, sight-seeing maybe? If it's a shopping trip, what's something she can sell that people from Golarion would want to buy?

And what's something she could sell it for that the rules say count as a strict enough trade that they won't penalise her as they would for a straightforward donation?

Oh, no, she's being an idiot again. They used her to target a gate, and they'll want to tune some forks so it'll be cheaper next time.

"Welcome Robaldo and friends, to the Kingdom of Elkia. Is there anything I can help you with?"

They'll get directions to the crown, and ask how long it'll take to tune.

"This is, by your magic's standards, an Uncommon plane. It'll be around 3 days. There's no problem if you want to stay, the palace is intended for visitors, or you can leave them behind and come back, or you could request me in a future Planar Ally to deliver them although I'd want to know the time and there's a required offering, if that suits you best.

Or, I suppose, while you're here you might play some games and win the favour for free."

They've seen fae before, just because someone detects Chaotic Good doesn't mean it's a good idea to go anywhere near them, or agree to any kind of deal.

Describe your proposal in specific enough terms it'd bore a contract devil.

If all the gods tried their individual best to optimise Golarion, the seas would boil and the sky would tear open and no one would survive. Since most of them don't want that, they agree to some rules.

One obvious schelling point is to agree to an intervention limit that keeps the same ratios of individual strength, but sets an upper bound such that they could only destroy the world if they all worked together to do it.

Another is to estimate how far along the intervention-curve gods can go before They're on-average hurting the interests of a majority-coalition with each new intervention more than they are benefiting Their own. If gods optimise too hard into too narrow a direction, their values-differences become more and more important until every god would see every other god as a near-perfect enemy, and since several of them find legibly coordinating with enemies difficult this would produce bad outcomes in everyones opinion.

Some gods, like Gozreh, would prefer the outcome of no gods intervening quite a bit more than they prefer any realistic alternative compromise, and will tend to bid towards less divine action than others would. Others share more values with gods generally, up to comparably higher intervention rates, than they do with mortals acting at mortal competency or with the expected zero-intervention outcome, and would prefer weaker intervention rules.

One might prefer instead to permit only interventions that most gods like, that optimise the sum of divine values, but doing this would be a first step towards just merging all gods into a perfectly harmonious meta-god that maximises their weighted common interests, and many of the gods prefer less harmony than that, less cooperation than that, that divine actions be made less openly and legibly and fairly and collectively.

The exact language of the Contract of Creation is meant to balance both ordinary values and meta-values, that the result on the material planes is in proportion to what gods want from it, obtained in proportionate accordance with how gods wants to obtain it. This follows from the nature of gods as beings of both means and ends. And if gods want their own weird thing that nobody else would tolerate They can do that on Their own planes.

This implies that, on account of the existence of gods like Asmodeus and Mephistopheles, that the contract will have at least a small amount of loopholes.

Nothing so big it immediately breaks the game, or make loophole-finding the only relevant skillset of a deity, but at least a little wiggle room for those who want it, and if that same wiggle room implies to gods of chaos that power-reversals will always be possible, that the merely lucky might prosper over the strong and that the young might one day defeat the ancient, well such overlaps between the object-interests of one party and the meta-interests of another can still be called gains from trade, and can make seem comparatively worthier such contract-clauses over possible alternative outcomes.

These facts play out in a few different ways, in defining the rules by which gods can intervene.

Both direct action and direct communication by gods is heavily restriced by a variety of mechanisms, because a god that can either touch the material directly or strongly communicate with someone else who can could boil the seas in a matter of hours and that is more than other gods are willing to risk.

Secondly, action and communication by natives of an outer plane is differently restricted, the natives are not allowed to act directly upon information from a god without the same expenditure, and a strong imposition is made that those in the material must materially compensate for an intervention, to ensure that outsiders can more cheaply interfere where they are most strongly wanted, and not at all in places where none would by paying a high price for it that implies they share the gods goals or value its influence.

The natures and abilities of outsiders can still be optimised by a god within particular limits about the costs of outsider interventions of different capabilities, and their spell-like abilities are almost entirely limitted to cleric abilities. Obviously Tet's not allowed to just make CR 1 outsiders who can cast Prestidigitation, that'd be completely unfair.

Tet has spent, since coming here, a godly amount of effort optimising how to get stuff He wants out of mortals as cheaply as possible, with the ideal price being free and the even better price being less than free, as interventions are judged by the contract.

But Pharasma's Creation in general, and Golarion more than most, has a problem where mortals assume that every interaction with anything smarter than them, gods especially, is by default a trick in which they're being played for a fool. This rather undermines Tet's preference that people play together, even if sometimes it is in fact a trick. If it's a trick too often, if it's pushed right up against the boundary of never worth it to participate, then all the gains of trade, all the fun of playing together, is forever forfeited to nobodies benefit.

The best strategy that Tet can explain to His outsiders for therapising new petitioners starts with never letting anything have any stakes at all. Games where noone remembers the score, playing that only ends because the sun sets, competition where they never expected to beat anyone to begin with and thus had no emotional stake on the outcome. It works enough of the time that the powers of Elysium often agree that directed souls Disboard's way is a good idea, especially for the souls of Chaotic Good children.

For the still living though, even acting indirectly through outsiders, Tet has too little time for that. The reputation he'd like is that interacting with His outsiders is a good idea, profitable in expectation strongly enough to overcome the reputation other powers have made for outsiders in general. He would also like to get this reputation for as little actual cost as possible, giving as few boons or material goods or acts of service as is necessary for as much positive emotional valence, as well as demanding as much as He can of the mortals while He does it.

What Tet wants to implement, what would work best given His constraints, is essentially a gacha game, with prizes that only a god can grant and therefore no market price by which to assess its fairness.

Unfortunately, the restrictions on how little trade is possible, and the high levels required to Plane Shift, make visits to Disboard predictibly rare, and so He's better off treating it like a limited holiday-promotion where high-level spellcasters can hope to win prizes that make Calling Disboardian natives seem more valuable the rest of the time, while still gaining them the necessary payments.

On other, richer, higher-magic worlds where more wizards can Call and Bind more outsiders more often, Tet will make the gacha game He wants to make. The part of Disboard exposed to Golarion should be optimised for less contact, more like a vacation resort where you can also win prizes and make friends you can conjure later. He'll have to warm them up to the idea more slowly, not all in one go.

Tet will shape His outsiders like so:

They will be good enough at understanding complicated agreements that wizards used to devils wont feel unprepared.
They will reliably keep those complicated agreements if you beat them in a game.
They will charge a fee for the opportunity to even attempt to compel a service from them by winning a game.
The game will look a mix of luck and skill, and the price will match the required "fair" price in expectation.
Conjurers who think themselves unusually skilled will imagine they have an advantage over the less clever, and choose Disboardians to save money. The ones who lose will feel embarrassed, and keep quiet. The ones who win will brag about how much cheaper it is.

If the conjurer is intending something the outsider is morally opposed to, they'll just play the game better in a way that makes it look like luck when they win. Such conjurers won't tend to contribute to Disboard's reputation much anyway. The obvious way to do this, in what is otherwise a verifiably sensible game of both chance and skill, is for the Disboardians to cheat.
They'll use the savings from that to go easy on first-timers, to try to build a relationship.

Some of the smarter mortals will realise that for a mortal to beat a native of the domain of the god of Play at any game ever is as ridiculous a notion as for a mortal to outwit a Mephistophelean devil on a technical detail of contract law: Obviously they're just pretending you've outwitted them so that you'll keep coming back.
But it'll still seem like a good deal, like the trick is being played on somebody else, not them, not if they're the kind of person who'll add to their reputation more than trickery here would be worth in savings.

"Wow, that's a pretty scared face all of you are wearing. I assume you're all assuming I'm up to something?

I just mean that I'd agree to, for example, you pay me only 80 gp and I'll play a game against you and if you Win I'll agree to deliver your forks by Planar Ally in 3 days time, should any of you cast such a spell and request me by name.
Worst case scenario you just lose some gold, not your souls or anything.
And if Pharasma takes your having made such a wager into account at your judgement, I swear I expect it to net count towards Chaotic Good and I'd expect Tet to send someone to argue that point if no one else will.

Since it's all your first time here, I'll even let you pick the game, so long as it's fair in the sense of either being symmetrical or assymetrical but I get to pick which side I'm playing, like if you say Chess I'm going to pick white unless you also say we'll flip a coin to choose."

Compared to the 200 gp she's supposed to ask for, or the 3 days they'll all have to spend here otherwise, they'd have to expect less than a 40% win rate for it to make sense to refuse. They're adventurers, if they had win rates that low they'd be dead by now.

They're still concerned but it's a small enough amount of money that they can just eat the risk, call it the cost of learning what a new kind of outsider is all about.

They're not going to pick chess. That's obviously the fools move.
There's nine of them. They pick volleyball.

Then she'll clarify the rules of volleyball, enough to avoid disputes, and how the scoring will work, and she'll ask if anyone wants to join her team, and eight of the nearest thirty locals will sign up.
And they'll play.
And they'll barely eek out a draw.

What happens on a draw?

I said "if you win" I'll do a favour. You didn't win.

They're totally fae, they're getting conned.
But it was close, maybe with better teamwork.

If this is some weird magic that makes them keep agreeing to challenges until they're all broke, can anyone be trusted to pass their will save?

Maybe one more try, they'll suggest a rematch, and Stephanie will accept, and this time they'll win.

It's still a bit cheaper than they would have paid otherwise, these Disboardians are suckers.

And now they'll tell everyone it was fun and still possible to get an advantage.
These mortals are suckers.

She does need to go back to practicing poker though, with a tournament coming up and everything. Would anyone like to join her for that? If they're willing to bet 200 gp on it, she'll offer them a 5 gp discount on any future Calling fees compared to what she'd charge otherwise.

They're welcome to sight-see all the pretty things, or play any other games that they might be interested in.

They can stay a few hours, but not 3 days. They've got a country that might get invaded by half the inner sea and Morgethai's got a university to run and people would notice her not being on the plane that long.

Once they've gawked at all the giant chess pieces bigger than whole mountain ranges they'll buy a few local souvenirs and head home to write to everyone they know about it, who they think might want to buy a fork off them so that the whole venture can turn a massive profit.

Her agents will get back to her.

The speedboats weren't going back to port ever, they're small enough to lift onto a galley so the privateers have been keeping them at sea going in circles hunting nonstop. They've been using Track Ship to keep tabs on themselves and eachother to maintain a fleet at sea that only ever meets up in anonymous bits of the middle of the ocean.

A spy managed to sneak along with a galley captain helping service them, who thought he was being secretive enough, and they've stolen the whole device and killed its engine-wizard.

It's not a complicated device to understand if you look at it.
There's two springs with permanent Shrink Item, and the engine-wizard turns them on and off, and it spins a rod like the axle of a cart which turns a wheel shaped like the tailfin of a fish to drive it forward.

They can copy it as many times as they've got diamond dust and 5th circle wizards to spare.

You can't put a huge amount of weight on a speedboat, without needing a larger engine to power it or losing out on the whole speed advantage, so they'll always be small elite naval units.

The admirality are already trying to invent bigger ones, it'll cost more in diamonds but if a whole warship can pull this trick it'll let them conquer the whole world.

Andoran can only pull this trick once.
The Navy of Cheliax won't stay behind for long.

Can we offer it as a benefit of empire to our vassals?
Can we sell it to Abadarans?
Can I concince every merchant group in the Inner Sea that paying Cheliax to make speedboats to save them all is the only path forward?

Nope to all of those. We figured about how long it'd take for you to steal one and sold the technology to abadarans yesterday.

On our math, engines will let far more trade go over the seas in total, which is good for us because it's more to steal from.

Cargo ships will be too heavy to move as fast as smaller pirate vessels, and there'll be more pirates than navy to stop them if they can only use small vessels with elite crews, and heavy navy ships will be too slow to be relevant.

If you make bigger engines for bigger boats we'll use surgical strikes to steal them, and then put them on smaller boats and move even faster than that.

We're gonna get rich and there's nothing you can do to stop us.

Jostlin Ferqyr is making her morning prayers and thinking over the trades she has made in the past few days.
She has purchased, at great personal discomfort, a design for an improvement in maritime engineering from pirates who openly admit that they stole it from other, different pirates, all of whom are already using it to prey on cargo vessels.

It makes boats move substantially faster, and the lighter the boat is the faster it can make it move for the same price. It's very expensive, but if you do the arithmetic it pays for itself within a year at most, assuming it's not stolen or shipwrecked.

She is trying to reason out how much she expects markets to move, on account of it, once it's common knowledge which the Church of Abadar will do everything it can to ensure is soon.

She expects it to move a lot.

She is trying to imagine "propulsion force" as a commodity that you can buy seperately of vessels, and attach to them at will, and figure out the value of that new commodity to the markets compared to the price at which the new design offers to sell it.

She is thinking about this when she realises "propulsion force" is not only valuable to boats.

It's valuable quite a lot of places, actually.

Hey Torag
Hey Torag
Hey Torag

I've got this cleric who has had some weird thoughts about prices that I don't think are actually about prices. I'm offering to pay You to look over at them and then tell Me what it looks like from Your perspective. Here's what I can see for comparison.

You can use that information in any ways that benefit You so long as you repay me fairly for suggesting You look at this mortal in particular.

...

I am withdrawing My previous intention to lower My bid on Golarion.
I am instead substantially raising My bid on Golarion.

Most planets are lucky to get an industrial revolution once, I'm not letting another giant asteroid screw this up for Me again. I just wish Aroden was still here to help see it through, because I'm really not sure I can do it by Myself.

Two years ago:

In the middle of his secure fortress, a chess piece turned into a Holy Symbol.
After a month of resetting magical mechanisms, Stristyko is confident that nothing else is weird.
He would like to know whose fault this is, and how they accomplished this feat.
He is running out of ideas.

Several months later:

Estrella eats people, and needs a steady supply. Stristyko doesn't object to this.
Estrella goes on a supply run once a month, by Boots of Teleportation.
She takes up to 3 victims back with her in the teleport, any other supplies go in the Bag of Holding. It's a different place and plan every time, depending on what Stristyko needs from her. The days are randomised, her clothing and appearance varies.

Usually it's just to some defenseless village. This month is Absalom.

Most of what he's saying she's heard a thousand time before. He'll repeat it anyway.
He'll go over the shopping list as well as giving her written copies.
He'll be checking in by scry at certain times.

Estrella will listen intently. Everything Stristyko thinks worth saying is worth her attention.

When he thinks she's ready, she equips her mythril chainmail, Belt of Incredible Dexterity +2, Ring of protection +2, Cloak of Resistance +3, Headband of Inspired Wisdom +4, Boots of Teleportation, and finally her enchanted bow and sword.

When that's done, he'll make her explain the instructions back to him.

Finally, he casts Daywalker, Protective Penumbra, Resist Energy (fire), Nondetection, and Mind Blank.
And then gives her a pat on the head and wishes her good luck.

She lives only for the headpats.

She'll activate her Boots of Teleportation for their first of 3 charges, and find herself in the sewers of Absalom. She likes sewers.

She's a level 12 Ranger. Her favoured terrains are Underground and Urban, and her favourite prey is human. Nothing is going to notice her here.

Everything is for sale here, if you know where to look. Estrella doesn't. She hasn't been here in over a year and only a few times in the last decade, and the mortals are always moving things around.
She's not pretending to be a local, that's a lost cause. She's pretending to be some wealthy foreign adventurer.
She'll bribe a local street urchin to help her around for the day, and then eat the evidence later.

First stop: Selling loot. Stristyko has hoarded wealth from various evil schemes in the past, and prefers to pawn it off slowly and in batches. Anything he can't use himself goes in the for-sale pile, mostly coins already reforged into anonymous pure ingots. She'll want a moneychanger who takes whole unstamped ingots.

Second stop: Magical reagents. She'll want a place to buy them.

Third stop: Information. 

"Good evening, fellow human, would you happen to know about oh who am I kidding Dominate. Tell me anything you know of religious significance related to chess pieces."

Present Day:

The problem with trying to get revenge on a god is that it's basically impossible to get revenge on a god.

At least if it's for something they've done on the material, there's almost always a proximate mortal they acted through. Gods never just do things themselves, there's always a mortal somewhere, even if they're just a puppet of divine forces beyond their control.

Stristyko has read the assorted holy texts of this "Tet" now. Many different clerics are included amongst the highest rated authors, but some are outliers even amongst them.

One cleric, from Andoran, is getting particularly popular.

His claimed date of clerichood is amongst the earliest, definitely the earliest of the more credible claims. It's only one day after the chess game incident.

Stristyko will call it close enough.

Estrella's not being sent to kill him, necessarily. He might have very good defenses. She's just expected to get a look at him, see if there's anything to worry about here, or if he'd be easy to pick off.
If he's literally defenseless obviously we won't need to waste another month on planning.

Stristyko really hopes this whole "caution" concept has been conveyed properly by now.

And when she's prepared and the spells cast, she'll be in Almas, just after dusk.

Robaldo leaves his friend's dinner party in the evening, intending to walk home.

It's late enough that there's no direct sunlight at street level, but still light enough to see clearly. He'll Presiditigate his clothes to taste - and therefore smell - like garlic, just out of principle.

His evening Mud Buddy (2nd) is already waiting for him on the steps outside.

You create a Small minion out of mud, and it obeys your commands. The mud buddy has AC 12, 10 hit points, Strength 5, and a speed of 30 feet. It can perform any tasks an unseen servant can, plus any similar tasks its Strength allows (it’s able to lift up to 50 pounds), but instead of walking on water, it gains a swim speed of 30 feet.

He gives the little temporary golem back its small-sized tower shield, and its jar-on-a-stick, that he brought inside with him. Its already wearing the rubber boots that stop it spreading mud around and the bright red fez that straps onto its unshapely head.

And like a native of several years of Almas, he starts along the shortest route to his apartment at the university.

To ensure she isn't seen while hunting, she uses her Camouflage:

A ranger of 12th level or higher can use the Stealth skill to hide in any of his favored terrains, even if the terrain doesn’t grant cover or concealment.

To ensure nothing follows her, she casts Pass without Trace (1st):

The subject or subjects of this spell do not leave footprints or a scent trail while moving. Tracking the subjects is impossible by non-magical means.

To more quickly catch her prey, she casts Greater Longstrider (3rd):

+20-foot enhancement bonus to your base speed and a +10-foot enhancement bonus to your other modes of movement.

To grant her first arrow 30 bonus damage, Stristyko has already given her Greater Named Bullet (6th):

A normal hit scored using the target against the selected creature is considered to be a critical threat and deals 2 extra damage / caster level. 
Which will make her first arrow deal 30 extra damage.

Along with a carefully selected list of buffs, defenses and resistances, ranging from Protective Penumbra (2nd) to Resist Energy (Fire) (2nd) to Daywalker (5th) to Mind Blank (8th).

She'll open the scroll her loving master gave her.

It's her fault she needs it, if she were just a better ranger and a better minion, she'd be able to cast it herself. It shames her.

Still, she will not just refrain from using an item that she was told to use.
If she does what Stristyko says to do she succeeds, and if she doesn't she fails.
She knows this. She's seen it happen.
Stristyko always has clever reasons.
He always thinks a thousand steps ahead of everyone else.

She casts Find Quarry (4th) off of the scroll:

You sense whether a well-known creature you can clearly visualize is within a 20-mile radius of your current location, as well as the distance and direction to the creature in relation to you. You also discern whether the creature is moving, and its direction, speed, and mode of movement. The radius you can sense increases by 5 miles for every two caster levels you have above 10th (to a maximum of a 45-mile radius at 20th level). Anything that would prevent locate creature from finding a creature also prevents find quarry from doing so.

Robaldo is, at this point, well known to her. She's studied him for weeks. She knows exactly what he looks like.

It's gotten a hit, he's not too far and he's moving on foot at walking pace.
She'll outrun him and catch up fast, reaching his prior location and then tracking him until he's in sight.

Even without magically knowing his exact location it's too easy.
You can spot a cleric of Tet quckly because lunatics wish they had the self-confidence to dress like that.

On his feet are oversized boots clearly intended for trudging through mud in the rain, on his body are robes of bright pink and blue. Possibly if you have high perception you might look through the robes and suspect there is some kind of light armour underneath them.

Over his robes he wears a Cloak of Resistance of some kind, probably not the highest quality considering he's only fourth circle.

At his waist is a metal belt and on his wrists are metal hoops of the same design. Over his shoulders he wears a black stole depicting two white bishops, with another more finely crafted holy symbol on the end of a necklace, possibly a magical amulet of some kind.

On his head he wears a kind of tall, cylindrical "top hat" that would possibly be fashionable in some other century on some other planet, on which is embroidered four additional white bishops facing in all directions. Below that around his forehead is a headband of some kind, probably intelligence or wisdom.

Over his eyes he wears opaque glasses that prevents one from seeing his eyes at all and therefore knowing which way he's looking, of a style similar to what some sunblind races use to avoid penalties in bright light but which is even more incongruous given it is already after dark.

In his right hand he carries a metal cane, as if he were an old man in need of help walking. She'll assumed it's a magic staff of some kind making a purely symbolic attempt at a disguise.

By his side is a little muddy golem of a sort any second circle can make, that lasts only a few hours. It is wearing small boots that seem to match its masters, and a silly red hat that seems to match its masters.

In its left hand it carries a tower shield, as if to suggest it is a loyal bodyguard protecting its charge, which has on its face a depiction of seriously is that another holy symbol what is with this lunatic.

In its right hand it carries, just as incongruously with the rest of the situation, a short wooden stick ending in a sealed ceramic jar that one could carry some water in maybe, if they wanted.

If she gets close enough, her vampire/ranger senses will notice he already smells like garlic.

Why in the Abyss is he like that? Does he know an attack is coming?

What do you mean?
He's got no idea an attack is coming.
He dresses like this every day.
He's been dressed like this the whole time.

Prestidigitation is free, why would anyone ever not smell like garlic?
Holy Symbols are cheap, why would anyone ever not wear ten of them?
He's a cleric of Tet, this is pretty tame.
You should see some of the other guys, they're way worse.

In Taldor some of them have gotten legal sanctions for how they dress, especially when they're given invitations to noble parties because they're supposedly prominent successful clerics of good standing in the community.
This is Andoran though, he can dress however he chooses.
And he chooses this.

She'll follow beyond his slightest hope of perceiving her, while she prepares.

Quarry:

At 11th level, a ranger can, as a standard action, denote one target within his line of sight as his quarry. Whenever he is following the tracks of his quarry, a ranger can take 10 on his Survival skill checks while moving at normal speed, without penalty. In addition, he receives a +2 insight bonus on attack rolls made against his quarry, and all critical threats are automatically confirmed.

Hunter's Eye (2nd):

You gain the ability to perceive the target when it is invisible or ethereal as though using the see invisibility spell, and receive a +20 competence bonus on Perception checks to locate the target. You ignore concealment provided by fog or mist, blur, displacement, invisibility, and similar effects affecting the target

Lay of the Land (2nd):

In a flash of recognition, you learn about the geography of your surroundings within a radius of 1 mile per 2 caster levels (minimum 1 mile). This instant familiarity grants you an insight bonus equal to your caster level (maximum +5) on Knowledge (geography) checks and Survival checks to avoid getting lost so long as you remain in the affected area.

She guesses where he's going, based on the layout of the city around them, and picks a good spot ahead for an ambush.

Children of the Night:

Once per day, a vampire can call forth 1d6+1 rat swarms, 1d4+1 bat swarms, or 2d6 wolves as a standard action. (If the base creature is not terrestrial, this power might summon other creatures of similar power.) These creatures arrive in 2d6 rounds and serve the vampire for up to 1 hour.

She'll make a choice many vampires consider unwise, in an urban setting, and summon wolves. There's a higher risk of alarm in a city that from just vermin, but if he runs they can give chase with their substantially higher 50 ft movement speed, whereas rats or bats just wouldn't keep up and therefore wouldn't matter.

She rolls a four. Four is fine.

They're not as stealthy as her. She'll put them further up ahead of where Robaldo will walk, around a blind corner, after checking to make sure it's clear. They're just a precaution anyway, probably they'll be irrelevant.

She wishes she could've brought a few of her spawn, or maybe a dumb thrall with a big stick to hit stuff with. They're all not as stealthy as her though, and she'd have to sneak them the whole operation and not just summon at the last second, and it's not worth the risk of losing the surprise in expectation.

She knows this is true because Stristyko said so and Stristyko is always right.

Vampires are strong at close quarters, but there's a lot of problems they have to deal with if they try.

They can't enter a home without permission, can be repelled by garlic and mirrors and Holy Symbols, burnt by Holy Water or Channeled Energy, destroyed by sunlight or running water, incapacitated by a stake through the heart. There's a lot of ways to hold a vampire from closing in on you, if you're not averse to just, say, jumping into a river.

To avoid all those problems, she's specialised into archery. She shoots to kill or at least maim, and then feeds at her leisure. If her prey hides in the sunlight, she shoots them from the shadows. If they hide behind holy things, same answer. A minion can drag them back to her when it's safe, or she can just let their corpse rot in the river if that's their preference. She still carries an enchanted sword, but it's only a backup for emergencies or a tool for cutting her victims apart.

Vampires are an ideal predator, and Estrella a prime example.

Gravity Bow (1st):

Gravity bow significantly increases the weight and density of arrows or bolts fired from your bow or crossbow the instant before they strike their target and then return them to normal a few moments later. Any arrow fired from a bow or crossbow you are carrying when the spell is cast deals damage as if one size larger than it actually is.

Locate Weakness. (2nd):

You can sense your foes’ weak points, granting you greater damage with critical hits. Whenever you score a critical hit, roll the attack’s damage dice (but not extra or precision damage dice) twice and take the highest result.

Robaldo knows his way around town too, he's lived here for a while now.
Maybe not as well as an urban ranger who spent a round casting Lay of the Land.
There's a little alleyway over here that gets him back to the university way quicker.

Come along little Mud Buddy, he wouldn't feel safe going out at night without him.

Sense Vitals (2nd):

This spell makes your eyes shine blood red and allows you to see the vital areas and weak points of creatures within 30 feet of you as a warm glow. This allows you to use any manufactured weapon to make sneak attacks, as the rogue ability of the same name, dealing an additional 1d6 points of damage; this additional damage increases by 1d6 for every 3 caster levels you possess beyond 3rd, to a maximum of +5d6 at 15th level. This additional damage stacks with other sources of precision damage.

Bloody Arrows (3rd):

Whenever this spell’s target hits a creature with a ranged weapon that successfully deals piercing or slashing damage, the struck creature takes 1 point of bleed damage. Unlike most bleed damage, the bleed damage dealt by the subject of this spell is cumulative up to an amount equal to 1/2 your caster level (to a maximum of 5 points of bleed damage at 10th level).

She'll save her Many Shot and Rapid Shot for the first round of real combat, on the surprise what's most important isn't doing enough damage to kill a herd of elephants, it's making sure he can't get away.

Stristyko did his research and knows Robaldo's a diviner. Surprise isn't worth much on them but if you can stop them getting away it's worth enough.

She's wielding a Phase Locking short-bow. It's not her best hunting bow, nor her most powerful, it's just the one Stristyko says to use when assassinating this particular kind of wizard. Damage isn't going to be the problem anyway.

She's just under 30 ft away, behind him. The wolves are trying their best to be quiet another 60 ft away at the opposite end of the alley.

Game over, little holy boy. You shouldn't have pissed off my master.

Loose.

Footnote: This represents Discord chat's considered opinion over a full day of thinking as to what Estrella and Stristyko's best available strategy is.

The magically empowered arrow speed along towards its target, before suddenly veering sideways into the Mud Buddy carrying a small-sized Arrow-Catching Tower Shield:

A shield with this ability attracts ranged weapon attacks to it. It has a deflection bonus of +1 against ranged weapons because projectiles and thrown weapons veer toward it. Additionally, any projectile or thrown weapon aimed at a target within 5 feet of the shield’s wearer diverts from its original target and targets the shield’s bearer instead.

The fuck.

Robaldo has chosen to specialise in Divination, sacrificing Abjuration (because his cleric spells mostly cover it) and Necromancy (because he's not Evil) to do it.

This, for strange mystical reasons, gives him unusually good reactions to sudden surprises. Despite being flat-footed, despite not having expected this in the slightest a mere fraction of a second ago, he has enough reaction to take a five-foot step onto what remains of his defender, and yell "Emergency!" at the top of his lungs.

In response to a command word, the shrunken metal cylinder hidden inside his unfashionable head-piece returns to its original size, pulverising the thin veneer of ordinary cloth it was hiding inside of.

Robaldo has to rapidly duck to get out of its way, as it expands to 4 feet across and 8 feet tall, from its previous reasonable 3 inches across and 6 inches tall.

As the metal contraption magically manifests above him, Robaldo grabs his expensive magic shield off of where his minion dropped it and darts his hand back in to avoid the crushing weight.

You can't have Shrink Item-ed that.
You can only shrink an object up to 2 cu. ft./level.

It's collapsible: Vertically, it's several layers that squeeze down together, and horizontally it folds in quarters. It's held open by tiny metal pins, or I suppose large metal pins when it's not shrunken.

I collapsed it into a smaller, denser configuration, then shrunk it, then carefully reset it using tweezers.

Nevermind, carry on then.

As it falls into place she feels her divinations cut out, as if blocked.

She'll order her wolves to rush in, as she does the same. She'll get there first and stick her sword under the edge, using leverage to lift against the weight. The fastest of her summons will howl in hunger and delight as they slip under the opening to bite and tear at his supple flesh, he'll scream in regret as his blood is spilt upon the cobblestones.

With vampiric strength she flips the metal shell up and shoves it over the edge and onto its side. On the floor is a pile of loose earth the size of a Mud Buddy. The ceramic pot has shattered against the ground and raw kerosine has spilled out into a puddle, unlit.

There's nothing else inside.

On the roof of the cylinder, now resting on the ground, she sees an open trap door. He wants her to think he's cast Fly, or Invisibility, or turned into a bird or something and is making a break for it.

She would've seen through it immediately if he really had.

Estrella is not an Asmodean in the sense that she has not been raised on Asmodean propaganda, has no intention of ever going to Hell, does not consider herself as having any reason to obey Asmodeus, does not consider herself to be Asmodeus's slave. She is Stristyko's slave, she serves Stristyko.

Estrella is an Asmodean in almost every other sense.

She has been given an order from her master, to either track the target discreetly and report back or kill him quickly if an easy opportunity arises. If she quits now she has unambiguously failed that order.

She has named the target as her quarry, has already decided to kill him.
What right does some human idiot have to decide otherwise, to stop her in her intention?

She would have seen him Flying, even if he was invisible.
She's done her homework, with Stristyko helping when she got confused.
He can't cast Teleportation or Plane Shift or anything that powerful.
He would've had to use a scroll, and really she doubts it.
He could've jumped into a Bag of Holding and then used Anywhere but Here, but she doesn't see a Bag of Holding left behind and also that's an Insane Person spell.
Stristyko said he's 95% sure that Robaldo is only pretending to be insane.

The only realistic option is that he had Dimension Door as a failsafe escape route, probably after being traumatised by being caught with no escape spells before, and that he cast it from inside the box where he knew she wouldn't see it happen, and opened the trapdoor as he did so as some attempt to trick her like he thinks she's the idiot here.

Estrella's Pride is at stake here: as a predator, as an assassin, as her master's slave, as her master's most valuable possession.
Estrella is going to kill him.

Stristyko is the kind of lich whom, if asked 'how many scrolls of this obscure 4th circle ranger/inquisitor spell called Find Quarry that help you find your quarry and cost 1000 gp each should you give to your assassin before her big important mission?' will spend an entire 600 consecutive rounds thinking and then answer 'four'.

This is part of why he lost 20k gp in defensive investments just because a chess piece suddenly turned into a holy symbol.

He will then explain to Estrella that these are very expensive, that it is best to save them for future missions, that if she's finding herself needed all of them it means it's probably a ruse, it's not the situation Stristyko was anticipating, and she should just teleport out and report back while she's still alive.

What he anticipates, he says, is that she will use one scroll on arrival to find the target, go there and follow his tracks normally to find him, and if a suitable opportunity exists lay an ambush and kill him before coming home.

It is not out of distribution, he'll explain, that the clever wizard of a clever god might do something clever, and he anticipates that clever thing will amount to enough to survive her opening ambush and Dimension Door away.

It is within Stristyko's ordinary intelligence to anticipate this also, and Estrella should use the second scroll of Find Quarry to locate him quickly only if she cannot otherwise locate him immediately by her ordinary senses.

She should then run him down very fast and hit him a second time before the city's defenders can mount any kind of response and before he can get to proper safety.

If they are mounting a response, she should just immediately leave. Morgethai lives in Almas. It is not a good place to take risks, and Estrella is worth far more to him than the mission ever could be.

He will reinforce the importance of this point with headpats, if he has to.

She casts a second Find Quarry.

He's moved himself diagonally about 600 ft, to avoid any additional ambushes that might have been on his previous path, and is running as fast as he can which in Estrella's opinion is not fast at all directly towards the university.

She knows the Lay of the Land.
She knows how fast he can move.

She'll draw the third line of the triangle, the earliest point that she can intercept him, it's still before the campus itself begins. She'll sprint along the shortest possible path, and her wolves will run along behind her.

Dimension Door.

And he'll take off running in a straight line towards his university and his wizard friends and Morgethai and safety.

What the fuck was that? Have they finally come for him? Is this how he dies?
He's not exactly a sprinter, and it's still 2 miles away.

There are other people, civilians. It's not like it's the middle of the night.
His cached answer, what he prepared to do, is that he should keep quiet instead of yelling as he runs.

They're only after him probably, and he doesn't want to get other people hurt, and he's legitimately safer not being found, and it'll attract attention, they might not find him quickly if he isn't starting a commotion.

That wasn't exactly what he'd been anticipating, though. He'd expected a Malediction spell to be the only warning he should activate his hat, or else to be Dominated and shoved into a sack, or incinerated by spells or-

Did he hear wolves?

Right before he dimdoored out, there had been a sword forced under the hat, and he had heard... howling?

Why would there be wolves? Cheliax doesn't use wolves for anything, dogs maybe. There aren't any devils that sound like that.

It's the middle of the city, how could there be wolves inside the walls?
Did someone teleport them in? Sneak them in under cover of darkness? Are they summoned? Druids might do that, he thinks.

When did Robaldo do anything that would piss off druids?

Is this about that one time with all the spiders?

Robaldo stops mid-sprint and casts his second wizard personal safety spell, Nondetection.

Then he takes a ninety degree turn and sprints down an alleyway.

If it's not Cheliax he shouldn't expect Almas University to be his safest option, that's what they're expecting him to think. He should do literally anything else.

Estrella reaches ahead of where he should be by now, and starts backtracking along the path she expects he would have followed. It's only a minute before she finds his tracks, darting off towards the side.

She and her wolves are sprinting down the street in the half-light of dusk, visibly monstrous. People are seeing them.

It's still worth it for a chance to finish him off, Stristyko will forgive her probably.
It's still at least a minute before a competent response.

The tracks lead to a townhouse.

It's a private dwelling. She can't enter.

She's starting to realise how much she's screwed up.

She'll smash a window on the ground floor, she'll smash down the door.

When her wolves get here they can run in and bring him down, probably.

Are there any humans around outside? She tries to detect a human.

The emaciated child is lying in an alleyway off of the main street.

He is cold, he is confused.

Some of the locals give him food, or money, or offer him warmth, or shout at him or try to make him go away.

He has never passed a Will save in his entire life and is not about to start now.

Dominate.

She'll give him a dagger. Not her good enchanted sword, just a regular blade.

"Go in that house over there and kill the man with red hair in pink and blue robes."

He doesn't speak Avistani.

He's been getting by on gestures, mostly.

If no common language exists, you can communicate only basic commands, such as “Come here,” “Go there,” “Fight,” and “Stand still.” You know what the subject is experiencing, but you do not receive direct sensory input from it, nor can it communicate with you telepathically.

She'll sort of mime the idea of going in there and killing a guy dressed like a lunatic.

He'll run into the house, then.

He's figured out that the wolves are on his mistresses team, he doesn't need to be worried about them.

Can he find the guy?

Robaldo, along with the home's resident family, have rushed into an elevated storage space. He is trying to pull up the ladder while promising the residents he'll pay for all the damages this will cause them later.

He healed their daughter once, for free. They owe him, he hopes.

Wolves can't climb ladders, he's pretty sure.

He can grab the bottom of the ladder and use his weight to gain an advantage in the shoving match.

Can Robaldo successfully hold off an emaciated child fighting uphill with only a dagger for 60 consecutive seconds?

Estrella was hoping he'd be too Good to hit an innocent, mind-controlled child, a lot of people she meets are like that.

You're asking for a lot from him, you know?

He has a big stick, that's a kind of weapon.

He really hopes he can shove him back down while staying out of range while not killing him.

The guard are alerted now, they can't respond instantly but they'll get there.

They have wizards who can Dimension Door in if they have to, if it'll save lives.

They've got paladins too, vampires hate those.

Yeah ok this is a fuckup.

Stristyko has told her what to do if she fucks up.

She Teleports out to beg for a survivable amount of punishment.

It's absolute nonsense if Robaldo doesn't get a huge amount XP for that.
That random encounter was ridiculously unfair.

He spent almost the entire fight running away, until he hid in an attic.

The attacker was eventually chased off by the locals: town guards, two paladins and a nearby wizard.

He somehow managed to cause literally zero hit points of damage.

Even the starving orphan he shoved down a ladder eight times in a row and then pinned under a table somehow didn't get hurt.

He defeated a 12th level Ranger Vampire, trained and equipped by a 15th level Wizard Lich, who had the full advantage of surprise and substantially more money than him, almost entirely by himself.

He did this despite unfavourable terrain, incomplete information on the threat, and having already spent most of his spell slots on other tasks.

It might have taken place over less than five minutes, but it represents the accumulated result of months of effort on his part, in terms of spell research and strategic planning and magic item design.

It is, at bare minimum, a CR 15 encounter that represents enough experience for a level up by itself.

In what sense have either of them been defeated? They've barely been slowed down.

Estrella can come back literally tomorrow and do this again, if she wants to.

Stristyko is so far from having been defeated that he didn't even leave his own fortress, the location of which Robaldo is no closer to knowing than anyone else.

Robaldo doesn't even know he exists.

He was being ambushed.

His Win condition was only to not die, and to make sure nobody else he cares about died either.

He successfully did not die.
He successfully ensured that the innocent child was pinned down until the Dominate was cancelled.
He had nothing to gain by killing Estrella, would not have preferred to kill Estrella, was at no point even trying to kill Estrella.
Estrella was trying to kill him and that was a problem he was motivated to solve, and he successfully solved it.

How are clerics of non-violent Good supposed to get anywhere, if the rules themselves only acknowledge violence as a valid way to solve problems? Have We all signed up just to give all utility to Gorum and nobody else?

Robaldo is doing everything in his power to play your game as he feels it should be played. You should award full credit for monsters avoided as for monsters killed.

Just give him the XP already.

If nobody feels like they've lost, nobody else should get to feel like they've won.

Not all games are zero-sum, you know.

Pretty sure he passes that standard too, though.

Estrella will exist briefly in the intermediate teleport room, before teleporting into the main teleport room, collapsing on the floor and crying profusely with no explanation.

He really doesn't know what he's supposed to do here.
He'll tell her it's okay?

She's still under Mind Blank, so they couldn't have traced the teleport.
Unless she somehow got mind controlled and spilled all his secrets, it's not that big a problem.

Can she explain what happened?

She will be barely comprehensible over the noise of her own misery.
She will tell parts of the story out of order, depending on what is emotionally salient to her.
She will pause the explanation to add more apologies in between every sentence.

As the first part of her punishment, she will have to write out exactly what happened in each six-second interval from the moment she teleported out to the moment she teleported back.
Maybe she'll find writing difficult. She can command a spawn to help scribe it.
List everything she observed that could possibly be relevant.
List anything that isn't relevant but that she found surprising.

Stristyko wants to do a full failure analysis here.

Non-lethal failures are a valuable thing, to Stristyko, they help him figure out how to avoid the lethal ones without dying in the process.

Once he has the evidence, it's damning.
It's clear on review that all of this was entirely his fault.

It's not like it could have been anyone else's fault, really. Estrella's job is to do what he says and his job is to say the correct things. If Estrella failed at a task it's his fault for commanding a task she might fail at.

Even then, one could describe him as having made an entire series of unforced errors.

The key to understanding Stristyko is that he does not believe he is smart.
He believes he is a person of wholly ordinary intelligence, who survives more than five seconds against the greater monsters of Golarion through sheer grit and hard work.
He is wrong, but it would not benefit him at all if you told him that.

You may imagine Stristyko as having a rare cognitive injury:
He is able to remember what he was thinking and why he was thinking it.

An ordinary person is misled and tricked and fooled a thousand times a day, and he does not remember any of them.
When he learns something new, he confabulates himself as having always known it, explains away his own past.
When he makes a mistake, he cannot focus his own mind on the shape of the thought he was thinking, at the moment he made it. He remembers the action, and the consequences of it, but cannot feel the decision at all like he felt it on the first occurrance.

Stristyko remembers every mistake he has ever made from the inside.

Stristyko remembers sincerely believing that his home was under attack, that any evidence otherwise was a trick, that his unlife was about his end, that if this could happen how could he trust anything, that if he was foolish enough to let this happen how could he trust his own thoughts, that everything he owned was clearly already priced in and therefore worthless and therefore worth breaking for another second in which the new wiser Stristyko who knows finally how naive he has always been might finally think something actually clever.
He remembers hours after, coming slowly to understanding of what had actually happened.

He hates himself for it.
He hates his own idiocy.
He hates Tet, for having caused this.
It burns in his mind like every other dumb misunderstanding he has ever made.
Another indisputable proof that he isn't good enough to deserve to exist, that everything he's ever done was just dumb luck.
He can't even bring himself to try to swear that he'll be better.
Making an oath you know you can't keep isn't Lawful.

Stristyko remembers thinking through the orders he chose to give Estrella.
Stristyko remembers imagining all the possible consequences.
Stristyko remembers believing it was a safe plan, a good plan, the best plan he could produce.
Stristyko is not so naive as to believe that that was his last error, and that now finally after all these decades he has run out of mistakes to make and become a smart person.

Estrella's favourite subordinate will coldly narrate the relevant details of how Estrella executed Stristyko's plan, including the bits that went poorly for her mistress because her mistress told her to obey and Stristyko told her to leave nothing like that out.

Left to he own devices, Estrella would have chosen to use her primary, straightforward +5 bow, which would likely have killed Robaldo instantly. He had imposed the Phase Locking bow because he'd been thinking of dimdoor as Robaldo's obvious response and had wanted to block it. He had mostly been imagining the more ordinary enchantment as a way to make it more likely to hit and more damaging if it does, which given how empowered the first arrow was going to be already would have to be irrelevant.

They only needed to worry about the case where he's somehow surviving it and Stristyko was imagining either way more hit points than he'd logically have or else Protection from Arrows or something, where maybe they could still deliver the Phase Locking effect even on without an immediate kill and that would be enough to pin him until his defenses could be wittled down to nothing.

In hindsight that's clearly insufficient. If he's not dead on round one it should have seemed likely that the overly empowered first attack hadn't hit him at all, so Phase Locking would have been a waste, and a more powerfully enchanted bow could possibly have avoided some possible defenses he could have towards blocking the arrow in the first place.

He does still need to be able to apply a Dimensional Anchor effect somehow, both in this situation and in more general assassination situations that he should plan for as a class, he just can't trust an arrow alone to do it and ought to still want to have a full +5 magical enhancement on any important arrows anyway. He could've spent another 1000 gp enchanting the arrow too, if he'd thought of it, but he doubts in retrospect that he would've thought that worth it beforehand, and doubts that that's the correct policy to have over the expected distribution of behaviours of his future assassination targets.

Intending a second Find Quarry and a high-speed chase if he does get off a dimension door had also clearly been bad planning, in that it exposes Estrella too much and gives the target a huge opportunity to lead her into a trap. Rather he should have ordered her to take it slow. 

Inside of a city, there are plenty of places to hide that Estrella can't enter. Anyone who can survive the first arrow long enough to dimdoor out isn't worth trying to run down. In that case, Estrella ought to return to stealth or disguise or both, look around for him without resorting to scrolls, see if she can find him or his tracks. If a general alarm is raised she should leave, but otherwise a few hours later it'll be the middle of the night and the target's immediate buffs will have worn off.

Estrella can Find Quarry then, and take her sweet time preparing an attack on a stationary target, for which she has really quite a lot of options.

She could have climbed onto the roof and used Summon Nature's Ally II or III.
She could have summoned fire elementals.
She could have tried to burn it all, starting at the top and working her way down.
She could have dominated locals in advance, sent in a whole gang of a dozen innocents.
She could have had a bunch of cheap skeletons or something in a Bag of Holding.
The skeletons could have had buckets of oil on them.
Anything to make leaving seem a good idea, so she can chase them down again and shoot more arrows.

If he's got a nondetection, or if he's fled directly into a lead-lined coffin, or teleported to a different country or used a plane shift, he's back to just the fact that a competent target has to be killed in one round or doesn't die at all.

Really he had already gone wrong before the fight started. Estrella will judge a target in Robaldo's position as vulnerable because she can't see what magics he has readied. A regular old Detect Magic would work, but anyone who gets seen using it is raising alarm bells, and she needs the surprise.

There aren't any good ways he can think of to give Estrella the ability, and even if she had it she wouldn't be able to interpret the results. Really he needs to be sending two subordinates, and not just one, but Estrella is his best minion by a considerable margin and he's only got the one pair of boots and if they know anything there's a risk of information leaks.

If he'd at least been on a Telepathic bond he could have tried to interpret a description of the target, but the description wouldn't've been much better than "is dressed weird and has a mud buddy who is dressed weird" and if that's enough to scare him off he can never kill anybody.

New idea: Have Estrella visit target location a few days in advance to scout. While there, she picks a suitable victim who isn't powerful enough to resist and steals some hairs. On the actual day, he'll use them to target a Greater Scrying right before the mission, and tell Estrella their location. Estrella picks up the victim and Dominates them, and orders them to be Stristyko's eyes. He can then cast detect magic through the victim, and Message to let Estrella know if there's anything that changes the strategy. He can't cast any illusions that would hide the scry from the target, but there's probably some plausible excuse.

He's not going to trust the idea yet. He's an idiot, it's an idiot's idea.
He'll test it on a softer target a month or two from now.

Really Stristyko wishes his assassinations failed more often, Tet's cleric has taught him a lot.

Estrella's favourite subordinate will coldly narrate the irrelevant details, small things clearly not related to what happened but that Estrella did technically notice, because Stristyko commands her to do that too.

Stristyko is no longer certain that the +5 bow would have been enough to kill Robaldo. Robaldo is clearly a man with more than one contingency. Stristyko can respect that.

Open questions:
Why did the Mud Buddy have a fez?
Why did the Mud Buddy have boots on? Why did Robaldo have similar boots on?
Why did the Mud Buddy have a jar on a stick? Why was it full of Kerosine?
What's with the glasses? They were probably dark enough to give him a penalty to perception in dark environments, is it really just to stop you from knowing where he's looking?
What's with the brightly coloured robes? Okay maybe that one is just a style thing.
The metal belt and wristbands are weird, probably not what they look like either.
The cane was weird, Estrella thought it was probably a magic staff but Stristyko doubts it.
What's he got going on in all his other spell slots?
And in all of his pockets?

Please tell me Estrella looted what was left off of the dead mud-buddy. "Always Loot" is the third most important concept he's tried to explain to her right after "If in Doubt Run Away" and "Don't Leave Home Without a Mind Blank."

The magic shield and hat were grabbed by the target prior to fleeing.

He couldn't get the boots, which were partially buried under all the mud of the dead mud buddy, and the jar was left behind because it smashed open when it was dropped and hit the ground.

Estrella was in a rush, but obeys orders above all else. She grabbed the boots and one of the ceramic fragments of the jar as a sample.

It's ordinary ceramic.

The boots aren't magic, and are clearly custom. The closest things Stristyko is familiar with are a kind of mundane Fire-Resistant Boot made using brick dust, and an Alchemical Remedy that protects items from oozes, rust monsters, and corrosion, and Wading Boots which go up high and are water-tight.

He's had them custom made, Stristyko assumes, to let his Mud Buddy walk across a very shallow puddle of corrosive liquid without dying in the process, long enough to drop a small ceramic jar full of kerosine.

Why is he expecting that ability to be useful?

You have no idea what level I'm playing at.
Maybe its only job is to be a red-herring.
Maybe I switched the boots out at the last second, and it used to be wearing different ones.
Maybe I switched the jar out at the last second, and it used to have acid in it.
Maybe I really am crazy.
Maybe I just thought it'd be funny to watch.
Maybe it doesn't matter because you've already seen too much and now I'm going to change all my plans.

I'm a man who has been to Disboard, and you're a lich who has not.
What chance could you possibly have?

Stristyko is well aware that he's only seeing one timeline here, one possible response Robaldo would make against one possible threat. He's reasonably confident that these unused pieces represent parts of different defenses, against some other threat.

He's not just going to give up though, now that he knows that.

He'll have to study his adversary all over again, conditioned on the assumption that he now has some considerable evidence for, that Robaldo is a certain kind of clever person who thinks a certain kind of clever way and produces plans based on that, of a kind Stristyko who is an idiot could never easily duplicate himself and must therefore make up for with enormous quantities of time and effort.

It's looking like more wealth than he would've anticipated someone at Robaldo's middling circle and young age having on hand in general, let alone to use on personal self-defense. He's not seeing where he earnt that much.

He's also clearly left quite a few of his spell slots free for combat, who does he think he's fighting exactly? And the ideas here seem pretty original, has he been working a lot on this kind of thing? The university probably knows his official areas of research, even if everyone knows everyone secretly works on other stuff too.

Actually, now that he's got this all written out in front of him...

Stristyko is not inclined to believe an idea, the moment he thinks of it.
Stristyko is an idiot, that's an idiot's idea, it cannot be trusted.

But he's not as uninformed as you might expect for a guy who lives under a mile of solid stone and sees the sky only a handful of times per century.

Just to be sure, he'll want their copies of recent papers, the Andoran ones and the merchant ones and do we have that recent statement from the bank of Abadar and there was an article about a privateer who kept saying he wasn't allowed to say stuff but Andoran has public trials and the slavers they catch aren't as easily kept quiet and...

She'll diligently fetch document after file after diary after broadsheet, in neat piles.

Hopefully Estrella isn't too upset later over all these opportunities to serve Stristyko she's missing out on, because of her huge mess.

He hadn't thought as hard as he should have about followups to the attack failing because he'd mostly expected Robaldo to raise alarms immediately, himself.
Most people raise an alarm, if they narrowly escape immediate death by assassin.
What kind of person doesn't, even if he's done nothing wrong?

Captures of enemy galleys went up a lot about three months ago, faster than should be possible given their fleet.

The Abadarans are trying to buy up diamond dust at higher prices than they were before, they've got a new design for a magic item for making ships move more quickly. They've been warning everyone who'll listen about upticks in piracy off of the same mechanism.

Commander Reginald Cormoth really sounded, in that recent interview, like he wasn't trying to claim any personal credit or glory even by paladin standards for the recent successes that had brought wealth and freed peoples to Andoren shores. He didn't sound like he was giving it to anyone else either. Nobody in particular was winning medals at all, as far as the newspaper reported.

Estrella's had some irregular scouting missions, she'd been in Almas recently to get an idea of the city security before she even tried touching the target. Her last feeding trip wasn't Almas though, he wouldn't want to raise the vampire alarm by an ordinary mistake. She'd gone to Augastana instead, grabbed some bloodbags off the dockyards there far enough away to avoid being correlated but close enough to have useful general knowledge.

Stristyko makes sure to milk their minds for anything he can get, just on principle.
One of them had been loading a lot of barrels of kerosine onto privateer ships.
They'd mentioned that the barrels were reinforced, mostly steel in frame.
He hadn't thought much of it at the time.

It's not for burning down slaver galleys, Andoran tries its best to capture them whole. Maybe it's for warships?

If it was a big enough problem from a small enough target, Cheliax absolutely would kill and damn them for it, whoever they might choose to blame.

You have their release now?
This "magic item" is just some carefully shaped steel and two springs with "Shrink Item" permenancied.

It's still admittedly pretty overcomplicated for it's task too.

What kind of mind makes an expanding shell to hide inside of, and then adds a trapdoor to the ceiling in the hopes of convincing his enemy he didn't just Dimension Door away?

The kind of mind that's spend all its free time thinking about overly complicated mechanisms for overly complicated tasks.

Stristyko is aware how rare smart people are.
He's not one himself, but he's fought them before occassionally.
Andoran has at most a dozen of them, total.

Stristyko isn't convinced yet, he's going to check more of what's been dug up on Robaldo's early adventuring and evangelism stories. Give him a few more hours. It's okay. He's an idiot. Stuff takes him a while to figure out.

...He's not mad about it.
Well, he's upset about how dumb he feels.
He wishes that he hadn't needed to see the guy use the same spells, the same tricks, the same combustable chemical in self-defense as he'd already developed for his real job. A smart guy would've known already.

He doesn't want to do something about it that would benefit Cheliax.
House Thrune has its own two-page spread in his revenge diary.
He hasn't done a survey or anything, but he's pretty sure they're on most revenge diaries, at least in Avistan. Stuff that would help them is like, the exact opposite of revenge.

He'll think it through tomorrow.
There's business he needs to attend to today.

Estrella is ordered back into his room.
She'll prostrate herself before his throne in silence.

"I would have hoped, by now, to have managed to explain to you the concept of an information-gathering mission.

You will need some punishment for that.
You will not need punishment for the mission itself.
You followed my commands as well as I judge could have been hoped for.

Frankly, I am impressed. Well done, Estrella.

Thanks to your diligent obedience, I have learnt a substantial amount about the targets situation and intentions. When you're ready, I'll explain to you the important facts you've obtained for us. Before then-"

...This was all Stristyko's plan?
He'd been expecting this? He wanted to see how they'd react?
He's the perfect master, who will rule over her forever.

She'll never doubt his orders again.

She'll start crying more.

Stristyko is physiologically incapable of empathy.

He can still perform the actions though, he remembers what they are.

He'll pick her up off the floor and sort of pull her into a hug and try to wait her out.

He'll think about his reagant supplies and if he needs to put more black onyx on the next shopping list until she seems to be feeling better.

It takes him a few tries, but Robaldo manages to disarm the obviously mind-controlled victim, and pin them down. After only a minute or so he starts trying to kill himself but is failing, and half a minute after that his expression changes, like the connection was severed by the controller. It could be a ruse, but Domination Link exists and if you've decided to flee it's a liability. Robaldo's willing to put some trust in it.

Will the victim fight back if he unpins him, and tries to get him to sit in a chair? Also, can he hand over the knife?
Great. This will be fun to explain.

They were first alerted by howling inside the walls.
Then a monster that looked more like a blur was spotted on the streets, and they tried to chase it down.

A few split off to try to find where it came from, where the reports started. It's usually worth it to do that.

It's impossible to track. Almost completely silent, even as it runs.
The only giveaway at all is the four wolves chasing after it.
Vampire, they'll assume.

An alleyway with a large lead-lined box in it.

He's seen that kind of thing before, they're used by smugglers for high-value magic items, or by murderers to hide a corpse. He hasn't seen one this big before, admittedly. It's not supposed to be there, and it's not obvious how it got there in the first place.

Obvious hypothesis: This is part of how they brought some feral night-creature into the city walls, and either it broke out, or they just left it for when dark would fall.

The chaos leads them to a house.

The door is smashed open, the insides are generally quite messed up, and local notable mystic theurge Robaldo is with a street urchin. No monsters in sight, besides the obvious candidates.

Andoren really prefers giving Good clerics the benefit of the doubt, for this kind of thing. They need as many of them as they can get and the gods often have reasons for doing unexpected things.

Still, they're going to have to do an investigation.

Robaldo will be truthful because Zone of Truth exists.
Robaldo will use surrounding evidence because he wants to avoid suspicion.
Robaldo will not be complete because he's still hopeful that wasn't Cheliax and Cheliax doesn't know yet.

He was walking home, from this location to that location. Here are some people who can testify for when he left, that he left alone with his Mud Buddy, that he left wearing his hat. Observe that he is not currently wearing his hat.

Robaldo was surprise-attacked. He experienced an arrow fired from behind him. Observe here is the arrow in question, Robaldo picked it up off the floor before he fled.

Robaldo has no realistic choice except to reveal his clever contingency item, and explain the thing with the hat.

Observe in the alleyway he describes, there is a big lead-lined cylinder. Observe it has no bottom panel. Observe Robaldo can describe its shape from the inside.

Robaldo predicts if they go there they will find the big lead-lined cylinder, probably still pushed over by the attacker. He predicts the remains of the mud buddy, and its boots, and there'll be a shattered jar but the kerosine will dry up he hopes and he really doesn't want to explain that to anyone yet if he doesn't have to.

Your description is off by a bit. The boots were missing.

They must have stolen the boots, then.

Yeah, that's plausible.

Any idea why they'd do that?

Besides the obvious ones like that they're a bad guy who wants to steal stuff and they were nice boots?

None that I think it's a good idea to share.

Do you have any idea who would attack you, or why they might do it?

None that I think it's a good idea to share. Reasons known to me why vampires might want to try to kill my are probably best kept as secret as possible.

Anyway, once I was in the hat, I tried to grab as many useful items inside it as possible and then Dimension Door as far towards safety as I could, to that exact spot in that exact street over there if any witnesses might testify about it.

I started sprinting towards the university, and then at this point I stopped, cast Nondetection, turned down this alley on your map here and started sprinting this way towards this house.

Why did you change direction?

I didn't get a good look at them at the first location, because they were behind me and then I was in a hat, but just before I escaped the attacker pushed the blade of a sword under the edge and was about to force their way in and I heard what sounded like angry wolves nearby and closing in.

It's obvious if you understand game theory that hearing wolves implies I should change direction about a hundred metres after the dimension door.

I knew the family who lived in that house where you found me, I healed their daughter and they owed me a favour, and they all agreed to flee into the attic when I explained I was probably being chased and probably by wolves.

The boy over there came in after and appeared to me to be under Dominate Person and atacked me I was able to pin him and I believe the spell was cancelled moments before you arrived.

He had this knife on him, which seems a higher quality than he was otherwise dressed in and so I infer it was provided by the party doing the dominating, who I infer couldn't themselves enter the house on account of how they are a vampire and weren't invited.

That matches our observations and inferences. We'd still like a bit more information about whether you represent a continued danger to others, by being here.

Do you have any reasons to think they're likely to make additional attempts on your life?

Yes, obviously shouldn't say that.

I think the fact they made the first attempt is reason already to think they might try again. I think the fact the first attack happened where it did is reason to think they wouldn't try attack on university grounds.

If I'm anticipating further attacks by vampires I am willing to agree that, whenever I am in Almas, I will not leave university grounds after dark.

Those sure are some evasive answers.

Have you been involved in anything of a criminal nature, that this might be connected to?

Nothing that I think it's in my interests to mention.

We can't help you if you won't talk to us.

Yes I have been directly involved in a number of crimes

That's true for me too. I can't always help people if they won't talk to me, and they won't talk to me if I'll turn around and talk to you.

I ... don't have any clear reason to think this is connected to any previous crime I know about, or at least not the ones that happened in Andoran. I know a couple things it might be related to that aren't crimes and are also very very secret and unfortunately I can't share them.

Well that's cryptic.

There are enough Caydenites and Desnans and the like in the electorate that they cannot just go around arresting priests for that sort of answer. The Eagle Knights are trying to be Lawful and have the same problem, he understands that clerics really do need to be able to say that sometimes, and knights like him really should just drop it and look for other evidence.

Knowing Chaotic Good priests, crimes outside Andoran almost certainly have to do with helping slaves escape and he's not going to think about it because he doesn't want that information either.

He doesn't think he needs to waste a truthspell on him, all those answers were evasive enough and grounded in other evidence enough that he really doubts they could be lies, and there's few enough clerics total that far too many people have seen him use healing for that to be a lie too.

He'll interogate the person who got dominated.

This person doesn't speak Taldane.

Has this child just been wandering around homeless?

He'll find an Osiriani family who can take better care of him, and maybe translate some questions.

Coincidentally, there is exactly one second-circle Gruhasthan cleric in Andoran, who because of his god can cast an obscure spell nobody else knows to gain insights about the history of an object.

He is strongly in favour of using this ability to spread knowledge and understanding and enlightenment, and is therefore well-known to the eagle knights because actually it's kind of overpowered.

It's not a coincidence! He lives in Andoran because it's the one place where the most good can be achieved by words spoken to Good people. 

Mind Blank protects the subject from all divinations targetted at them, as well as objects on their person. Object Reading targets the object after it has already left their possession, and can sense psychic imprints completely undetectable to all other magic, even if the wielder was Mind Blanked on the past.

Information Security is a hard problem anywhere, but Golarion has it much worse than that, on account of all the gods of knowledge and understanding and such empowering clerics about it.

He knows the spell. To the best of his ability he's already optimised to minimise any useful information you're going to get out of it.

Of the arrow, he shares that the last owner appeared as a teenage girl of pale skin and red eyes, and when the arrow was fired she was - he pauses to try to explain the sensation in words - confident in herself, hopeful that she would prove useful, trying her best but not for her own benefit, that she was following a typically good impulse to do an act of service to someone she cared about greatly, but turned towards ill ends.

Of the dagger, he sees the child they have already found, and can describe enough of what it felt like to be dominated to confirm that story. He sees how he saw and felt about his mistress at the time but does not want to share much of that because it is a lie, a false feeling created by the magic.

He manages to glimpse a bit further back of the dagger. Another night, maybe two years ago, the same vampire as before first obtained it. She is in an upper-class villa in the earliest hours of the morning, she is slaughtering the family that lived there and the father is trying to take her down with the dagger and she kills him and takes it for herself. He sees just enough of her mind as she obtains it to see that she is trying to be Lawful in a strange and damaged way, trying to follow a rule that she had been told to always obey, but instead of something good or lawful or helpful the rule was just "Always Loot" that she is trying to follow when she takes the dagger off the man's corpse.

Also it looked like they weren't from Andoran. That previous owner was - he's trying really hard here to match the psychic impression to the cultures he has met - Varisian, he thinks?

Well that sounds fun.

The search for the vampire isn't turning up any results. No tracks, no trails, no scent, no magical auras. It's a reasonably safe bet she teleported out.

And if this is some international serial killer who teleports everywhere, there's not much a local Eagle Knight can do about it. They'll try a scry because it's worth trying but it will predictibly fail.

He's disappointed, it doesn't seem like anything useful will come of this. At least nobody got hurt too badly.

The arrow had a divination spell placed on it, 6th circle.

Greater Magic Bullet is the most plausible guess.

Over the next few days from how long the aura lingers, they'll be able to infer it was placed by an incredibly powerful caster, at or around eighth circle.

Well that sounds terrible.

They'll warn Robaldo, but really there's not a lot he can do.

Robaldo awakens the next morning to find he can manage a bit more magic than he has managed before. Tet gives him a couple more spells too, he'll pick an extra Remove Disease so he can sell it.

He really needs more money, last night was completely terrible and he doesn't know how to recover.

The guards have had enough of a look now, they'll let him carefully collapse his hat-cylinder so he can re-shrink it and take it home for repairs, not that it's worth anywhere near as much now that the rumours are already spreading and complete strangers are coming up to him and asking if there's any way they could get one too.

No, sorry, there's no way you can get one too, you have to either be a third circle wizard or know one who'll cast the Shrink Item for you every few days and Robaldo is too busy-

Oh you are a third circle wizard in that case sure but it needs a lot of lead and I'm low on supplies for it-

You just want the steel cage version? But that can't block divinations-

Yes it'll still block arrows fine okay you can place an order and pay in advance and I'll get back to you in a month.

Okay maybe that happening wasn't so bad.

An 8th circle? Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

Robaldo needs to rethink his life choices.

For example, it's been really convenient these last few years living at the university, but he knows approximately all the spells now, and is starting to feel like the fact his location is public knowledge is starting to be a disadvantage.

There comes a point in any successful wizarding life where he starts living in an inaccessible box under constant wards and Robaldo really hopes he hasn't hit it yet because he wanted to have done more interesting stuff by now. He'll try a bit longer, even though it's terrifying.

The Church of Abadar has stolen purchased an idea from the Church of Tet. While the Tettians wanted to crowdsource theological writing, and so offered prizes to the best chapters, the Abadarans want to beat piracy and facilitate international trade.

They want a way to get a heavy trading galley up to the sorts of speeds speedboats have been managing, so that trade can compete with the pirates.

The Shrink Item Two-Stroke Spring-Engine costs 15,000 gp and needs a full time fifth circle engine-wizard to run, and can produce around 150 horsepower. They'd appreciate anything cheaper than that, per unit output. They'd really appreciate anything that can produce 10,000 horsepower, because that makes a lot of things possible that aren't otherwise. It's better if it's cheap and doesn't need constant expensive service to maintain.

They'll offer really quite large prizes, for anything with enough economic potential to pay back the prize. They checked and Abadar said it was a good idea.

Wow, sure hope you find what you're looking for.

Why would you hope that?

You're the bad guys, shouldn't you want us to lose?

We want faster ships so we can avoid you!

You still haven't realised how this works, have you?

When we Win, you Lose, because we can steal more of your stuff, and when you Lose you have less to steal so we Lose too.

When you Win, you make international trade easier, which makes there be more of it, which gives us more to steal from, which makes you Lose but not as much as you're already Winning, and we're Winning too cause we get more loot!

We both want the same thing here, more international trade at greater speed and volume.

No matter what clever trick you pull I'm sure a small speedboat with the same tricks will still be faster.

...

God, please smite these people for us.

Anyway, suggestion anyone?

You can get a surprising amount of thrust out a Decanter of Endless Water, for just 9,000 GP.

The decanter itself is maybe 10 horsepower of force, because it comes out at a high speed.

What if build a tube like a mast, put it at the top, set it to geyser? The water fills the tube at 30 gallons per round, and the weight of the water creates water pressure equal to the height of your tower. Putting it at at the top of a 50 metre tower and you can get an extra ... 12 horsepower.

Never mind.

That's not a solution for boats but it is a solution for quite a lot of other situations.

Here, have a small prize.

Robaldo will anonymously submit a larger version of the spring-engine he already designed, faster than anyone else because he's already did it all before the contest was announced.

It uses four springs, each of which is 10 feet long and weighs 800 pounds. Rather than a helix, they're made of solid rings of metal at an angle, stacked on top of each other and thin enough that they can compress inwards.

It's way too much power for a small vessel, and too heavy also, but it's the best they're going to get for an industrial scale. It can't get a galley to speedboat velocities but it's still faster than sailing or rowing.

We'll give it a prize, but it's still really expensive.

We are now only accepting entries that don't involve permanent Shrink Item being flipped back and forth really fast.

An Iron Golem- It costs 150,000 gp. Golems aren't the solution here.

A Huge Animated Object can be permenancied for 15,000 gp, a comparable price. It's only got a "Speed" of 30 ft, but it can lift 6400 pounds straight up above it's head so ... it's 60 horsepower?

A Gargantuan Animated Object needs a 16th level spellcaster to make, or you can use a few tricks like a Prayer Bead of Karma to increase your caster level temporarily. You can turn your Gargantuan ship into an Animated Object and permenancy it for 15k gp, but it's dispellable, or you can make it properly as a construct creature for 40k gp.

It has 38 strength, so it can carry 38,400 pounds, by default.
Muleback Cords increase the strength by 8 for carrying purposes, for only 1k gp, so 46 strength or 920 * 4 * 4 * 8 = 117,760 pounds (as a heavy load).
Ant Haul triples the carry capacity, you can either have a low-level ships' wizard on board or buy an item for it too, it's only first circle and lasts 2 hours per level, getting you 353,280 pounds which is 176 tons.

How much is our target here?

A trading galley typically carries up to 150 tons or cargo or up to 250 passengers, but that stuff isn't that dense or small. It's 20 ft wide and 130 ft long and 3 decks tall because it needs all that space for goods and people. Most cargo isn't just a huge stone block.

Also galleys only cost around 10,000 gp, and usually travel in groups, so suggestions that increase supply by more than just buying more galleys will be of far more value.

What's the current status-quo for teleport-based logistics?

How do the prices of using it compare to cargo ships?

Most teleports are provided by fifth-circle wizards, or clerics with the Travel domain, who usually don't like working as mules. They only have a couple spell-slots per day, and usually want to teleport back the same day.

They can usually get a couple of pack animals to teleport along with them, mules are common, who can carry in the vicinity of a few hundred pounds each, more with Ant Haul or Muleback Cords or Bags of Holding but nothing that can compete with the sheer volume a cargo ship.

It's worth it for military logistics, for high-value items and magical equipment, for dense items like gold and silver if you're the Bank of Abadar and want to move a lot of money around very securely.

It's not even close to worth it for grain, or fabrics, or beer.

It's outright impossible for some goods like lumber where there's no way to put an entire tree on the back of a mule no matter how strong the mule is, or economy-class passengers where you can't stuff more than a handful into a Bag of Holding and the experience is terrible.

Gargantuan Constructs are massive overkill.

A Huge Quadrapedal Animated Object Construct is enough, and only costs 25k (construct) + 1k (muleback cord) + 2k (Heavyload Belt for Ant Hauling) = 28k gp.

The construct lives below deck, walks continuously in a circle, and pulls a wheel that spins the propeller with a massive gearing ratio.

Carrying capacity is 4800 pounds (30 base strenth + 8 muleback cord, heavy load) * 6 (huge quadraped) * 3 (Ant Haul) = 43.2 tonnes. It gets 4 Construction Points, spend them all on Faster to boost base speed to 70 ft, reduced to 50 feet due to heavy load.

With reasonable estimations that's ... 650 horsepower? How much are we looking for here?

We want 100 horsepower for every 2 tons to get to 20 mph, which means for a galley with 50 tons dry weight and up to 150 tons of cargo we want 10,000 horsepower.

If we can get it for less than 20,000 gp it'll be cheap enough to reduce shipping costs substantially. If we can get even more power than that we can move ships even faster and so it's worth exponentially more to international trade.

A Campfire Bead can burn for 8 hours a day and costs 720 gp, so 2,160 gp for constant use.

It produces around 5000 horsepower in heat-energy, which makes high-pressure steam if we place it under this airtight watertank I've designed.

The pressure of the steam lifts this piston allowing us to recover 1.5% mechanical efficiency for ~86 horsepower, way cheaper and with less weight than those other people are suggesting.

It's possible to turn pressure into energy?

Buddy just put a Bag of Holding full of water in your tank and repeatedly turn it inside-out to empty it and then outside-in and let it refill with water.

That'd move your piston up and down just fine, right?

That's ...

We're going to have to talk to some expert smiths to see how difficult it is to make a secure pressure vessel, but you're both getting some prizes.

A portable hole is 10 ft deep, and 6 feet across, and anything inside one has no effect on the mass of the ship the hole is on, even though it's still got gravity.

You could put two on opposite sides together like a sandwitch, and put a several-ton weight inside one, and spin the holes together.

When the weights at the top it'll fall down, and you can put it on a steel piston attached to the sandwich and generate ... about 14 horsepower for every 1 ton of mass to drive it.

They costs 20,000 gp each though, so not cheap.

I still think you should be going with the Gargantuan Animated Object here.

Set it up as a big square table, 25 feet to a side, that you can stack up to a hundred tons of goods on with the enchantments.

You can't teleport a gargantuan creature, but there's no reason it can't teleport itself.
Give it Boots of Teleportation and show it on a scry the other warehouse in the destination.

A 10,000 gp galley can make comfortable around 800 gp in trading-profit per trip.
Most of that is spent on costs and wages for crew, but some of which eventually pays off the cost of the ship before it sinks or needs retiring.
You'll need a legendarily powerful caster, and you'd be investing 15k for the permenancy, 3k for the carry-capacity items, and another 50k for the boots but you can sell those again if it doesn't work out.
You'd expect the same 800 gp in trading-profit per trip, 3 trips per day, every day, plus the cost of scrying for it until it knows the destinations and loading and unloading.

It'll pay itself off in ... 40 days?

Wait no not like that how are we supposed to do piracy if you're doing it like that

Is ... is that possible?

Can we find some master Transmuters and Arcane Crafters to tell us if that's possible?

Oh Abadar above please let that be possible

Hey Abadar, I notice You're trying to do an industrial revolution.

Could You maybe Don't?

It'll increase My utility by thiiiiiis much to do an industrial revolution.
Can You stop Me and if not how much would You pay Me to stop Myself?

I don't particularly want to give You more power to optimise Your values, given how opposed they are to Mine.

I'm not certain I can stop You by Myself but I'm certain I can make it way more difficult.

I'm also not alone, there are other gods with interests opposed to Yours.

Hi Abadar.

Of all the other planets that have had comparable technological transformations, average quality of life went down in a lot of them. Some of them were substantially destroyed in the process.

It'd take careful guidance to get this to work, and with prophecy broken on Golarion there's no way those of Us sympathetic to Your values here could reliably produce a Good outcome.

I think You're going too far and should stop.

I'm weakly on Abadar's side here but open to opposing bids.

I anticipate that greater mechanical technology will tend to benefit tyranny over the individual in the long term, even if the transition might be chaotic.

I was going to say I'm neutral but if Asmodeus is on that side I'm on this one.

Gorum is ... Neutral.

This could go a lot of ways, for or against His interests.

Unless either side wants to make a convincing case for His utilities here, He'll support whoever is losing and try to make this godconflict as destructive as possible.

Lamashtu has always opposed it, whenever this recurring disagreement has been re-litigated. This time, the lines of conflict are drawn in unusual ways, Her interests might be different now.

She thinks about it ...

She'll stay on Gozreh's side for now, and retain the ability to backstab Him about it if incentives change.

If the mortals would not have brought this about on their own I would not place it upon them.

But I estimate We have together delayed this outcome for longer than it would have taken on its own. I do not think it appropriate for Us to force something on Golarion, that Golarion would not have made for itself.

If We do not let it happen now I do not trust that We will let it happen ever.

I have explained My position to Erastil and it seems We have a genuine values-difference.

Can someone explain to Me what's being argued about?

Why don't we just agree to do the good parts of an industrial revolution and not the bad parts?

Because they're complicatedly intermingled.

A lot of planets are already post-industrial and they tend to end up very same-y. The ratio going to different afterlives doesn't change a huge amount but it's usually slightly Evil on net.

I still want to explore more of the kinds of places that can happen if pre-industrial society without prophetic god-interference persists for longer, there might be Good things here We haven't found yet.

I'm voting against.

I ... don't want to spend effort opposing Abadar on this.

I've got better things to spend it on.

Hi guys! Is this the group chat?

I'm on Asmodeus's side by the way, whichever one that is.
He's pro-industrialisation? Me too, then.
Not that I've got enough influence for it to matter.

But it'll help further My master plan!

Hey Tet, You're a Good god, right? If you've got a Good reason why helping Abadar and Asmodeus benefits Good, You could tell it to Me and if it's valid I won't oppose You.

It's not so much a Good reason as a Tettian one.

You wouldn't understand.

By My count, there's enough consensus against Me to at least make My default action much more difficult.

Rather than taking opposing interventions, is there a compromise We can reach?

My allies estimate We could stop 80% of Your effective interventions at a cost We could afford.

Then I'll only do the 20% You couldn't stop and I'll pay You all to split the difference?

No. If it's going to happen at all it ought to be well-guided, to ensure it happens right.

I'm with Erastil. It's not worth doing if it's not done right, and it won't be done right if We accept the limitations on Our intervention Gozreh would wish to impose.

No, it shouldn't happen at all, and if sufficient obstruction would render it not worth doing then I should sufficiently obstruct it so You all don't do it.

That - Is that a threat?

Give me a minute I need to figure out whether that's a threat or not.

I was going to be Neutral but if Lawful Good manages to get controlling power over it than I'm changing my vote to Against and also joining in on Gozreh's "just mess it up so they regret even trying" plan.

Has anyone noticed that these factions We're forming don't make any sense?

Also by the way I'm voting in favour of doing an industrial revolution and also in favour of letting Chaotic gods screw up Lawful factions control over it so that We don't just end up with another post-industrial Asmodean Tyranny-planet where everybody goes to hell.

So if I add up our intervention prices and calculate the Shapley value and-

... We're just going to end up all agreeing not to do anything useful again, aren't We?

Sure hope the mortals can pull this off by themselves, then.

Nethys knows what they'll do, and approves.

He just doesn't want to mention it where the other gods might hear and change their minds.

He'll sit off in a corner and pretend He's too insane to know what's going on.

Gozreh is going to hope they can't ruin their whole planet very fast, but yes, He'll agree not to do anything useful either.

The year is 4710.
Hell has ruled Cheliax for 50 years.
Abrogail has ruled Cheliax for 18 months.
International trade is collapsing, and thousands are expected to starve of it.

It's all Andoran's fault.

The abadarans are investing in designs to propel heavy cargo ships at great speed, but it's going to take years to develop and input from some of the best dwarven craftsmen imported liquor can buy.

So far they can get engines that only blow themselves to pieces after a few weeks instead of as soon as you turn them on.

It's not going to be ready in time, to make a difference.

Abrogail Thrune has been patient. Abrogail Thrune has training as fast as she can, that she would before it is too late become ready.

Her nobles have been beaten into line. Promising young men have been sent by the thousands to the worldwound, to fight endless hordes of demons, and those who survived unbroken have been made officers and commanders and ennobled knights of Cheliax who will lead the next wave after them.

It will be delivered by many channels at once, and timed to arrive in the morning, a few hours after sunrise.

Dear residents of Andoran,

Whereas they have unlawfully rebelled against their lawful overlord,
Whereas they have relentlessly attacked honest shipping on international waters,
Whereas they have prohibited the lawful and obedient worship of a lawful god,
Whereas they have denied the divine right of monarchs respected since time immemorial,
Whereas they have executed our messengers,

by rights mine by the laws of Cheliax and by my compact with Lord Asmodeus, 
I, Abrogail Thrune II, Infernal Majestrix of the Empire of Cheliax, hereby declare war upon the Peoples' Republic of Andoran.

The Royal Army, Royal Navy, and Nobility of Cheliax, as well as Organised Clergy of the Church of Asmodeus in Cheliax and of His Archdevils, are hereby commanded to wage war against them until victory is obtained, with all the resources entrusted to them.

Honest subjects of the Infernal Majestrix residing in Andoran are encouraged to render no aid to the Peoples' Republic, to sabotage them at all opportunity, and to surrender to chellish forces upon first sighting, carrying no fear of death but instead the faith that Asmodeus shall recognise his own in the world that is to come.

-Signed, Abrogail Thrune II

You have all been preparing for this, this whole time, right?
I mean, it should have been obvious I was going to do this.
I wasn't like, telegraphing it or anything, that would be dumb.
But still.

It is really, really difficult for a paladin to be a politician.

He couldn't at any point say that it was a smart idea to elect him, that any of his policies would definitely have good results, that he'd be trying his best to keep the everyday Andoren citizen safe, that he was looking out for the little guy, that he was avoiding a war, that he was safeguarding their futures.

He was not in fact doing any of that. He was trying to disadvantage Asmodeus as much as humanly possible and minimise the amount of people who'd go to Hell, in the longterm and averaged across Creation. He'd well known if he succeeded he'd get everyone who'd ever trusted him killed for it, and a lot of people who'd trusted him damned.

He does have a lot of charisma though, and he can say that he loves his country and cares about everyone in it, and that's better than most other candidates after you apply the not-required-to-be-telling-the-truth discount.

Andoran voted for him anyway. He knows how they'll react.

Andoran has been expecting this any minute now for its entire existence.

They were never going to stop antagonising Asmodeus just because it was definitely going to get them all killed.
Half the country gave up being afraid a long time ago and decided to do the right thing anyway.
For the youth, they can either surrender and suffer and die and go to Hell, or they can fight and suffer and die and go to Elysium. It's an easy choice.
There's been enough clerics offering enough healing and truthspells and stories of the afterlives that aren't terrible that they'll put their faith in it.

They'll revel in their freedoms tonight, if it's the mortal last night they ever do, and raise a toast to their own impending dooms.

Andoran has been doing a lot to antagonise Cheliax, and everyone else too while they we're at it, but they've been doing that for quite a while.

Her mere existence had been enough to stop this happening before.
Cheliax expects they can fight a ninth-circle archwizard and win.
There are not many things that can expect to fight a ninth-circle archwizard and win. She knew Abrogail was a sorceror, she infers now that she is a very powerful sorceror.

She's already got plans, but she thinks she can do better.
She'll come up with more.

Asmodeus probably knows that much of the reason His slaves haven't taken over the world already is the number of powerful Lawful Evil entities who hate Him and are willing to use all His strategies right back against Him, in addition to all the other corners of the alignment chart.

When a country goes on an aggressive footing, it usually makes itself much more vulnerable to attack. This is a good opportunity to get some long-delayed revenges.

He's already got plans, but he thinks he can do better.
He'll come up with more.

Robaldo hears the declaration at the same time everyone else does.
He knew this was coming eventually, he'd hoped he had more time.

His default personal-security spells, prepared items and selection of Healings to sell or hand out aren't the worst to have at the start of a war, though he'll make plans to pick better ones tomorrow for whatever seems most useful.

Hah, you thought you had till tomorrow.

She'll attack an hour before dusk.

Two thousand elite units, led by a ninth-circle sorceror and two pit fiends, sprint out of the Gate placed at a major square well inside the walls. 

Summon Monster V: Large Fire Elemental.

We've a ninth-circle of our own, and a stronger and older one than Abrogail.

We've got three at seventh, a dozen at sixth, dozens at fifth, a hundred at fourth (one of whom is Robaldo, for those keeping track), a thousand below that.

We've got thick walls and prepared demiplanes and underground panic shelters and hired soldiers and allied clerics and all of the home-field advantage a genius archwizard can accumulate over decades of wanting to keep her students safe.

What makes you think you can break that?

Mage's Decree.

We won't attack the university, that's suicide. We'll just destroy the rest of the city, set it all on fire, and kill all the civilians who supply you. You can come out here and fight or you can stay in there and become irrelevant.

Hellfire Ray.

I could do the same thing to Egorian, if I felt like it.

Explode Head.

I'm pretty sure it's a bluff. They'll all go to Hell and it'll be your fault and if you'd instead found a way to beat Cheliax without slaughtering all its people first they'd have a chance at redemption and paradise and as long as that's true you're too weak and naive to hit me where it'd actually hurt.

If I'm wrong you can go ahead and kill them.

Hellfire Ray.

Then you're a fool for putting all your most loyal units in one place where I can kill them and spare the rest.

Spellblight Jinx.

I've felt worse.

They're spread across the city already. No Area of Effect spell could hurt them without killing everyone else in Almas too.

Hellfire Ray.

You've been to Hell, but I've been to Disboard.

Teleport Object: Enchanted Steel Sphere of Permanent Shrink Item into the area completely surrounding Abrogail.

Shrink.

That's not even the real Abrogail.

Scroll of Possession.
Scroll of Teleport.

You think you can not participate for two whole rounds? Another handful of Asmodean clerics will be dead when you get back.

This isn't even the real Morgethai, just a Sarenrite with depression who volunteered.

Abrogail's wearing a mid-level fighter because it's cheaper than putting on a belt.

Since she's using a teleport anyway, she'll pick a different part of Almas where she saw a lot of civilians fleeing. It's basically cover.

Cloudkill.

If you're not bothered to show up yourself... this is a distraction isn't it?

Teleport.

Where does she think she's going, I can totally keep killing everyone.
Oh wait she's figured out the real army is marching across the border, hasn't she?

She'll have to grab one of her pit fiends and -

Teleport.

...

Fighting door to door is chaotic and dangerous. They'll take many injuries, even if it's few deaths.

The random high-level fighters and paladins in the city can choose their battles and set costly ambushes, but the only thing that stops an army is another army and there isn't one ready to meet them, so they should prevail.

Arrow of Resized Arrowhead.

Unshrink.

Unshrink.

It's an urban environment, there's a lot of avenues of attack available here.
A few faster guys will come up around the side to flank them.

He's spread a few large sheets over the floor, and then prestidigitated the whole alleyway to be soiled by a thin layer of horseshit.

Is that going to slow you down?

No?