Carissa Sevar: They planned this out too but that's not the question they were expecting. "They draw from the other Golarion sapients, but - not from other places, that I've ever heard of -"
Keltham: Right. Nonhumans here too. He'll try describing one of the aliens he saw, maybe. He'll remember - that one, that was a pretty striking one. "I'll see if I can manage to learn Silent Image tomorrow, that's probably my top-priority first-circle wizard spell, and show you one of the aliens to see if it's already known." He wouldn't guess it to be known, but it sure is the sort of situation where he can be wrong.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa very dearly wishes she could read his mind, right now. "Yeah, sounds good. Tomorrow. ...is that all your spells?"
Keltham: "I've - got two of the Early Judgment, maybe it would give me a glimpse of somebody else's afterlife, if that's okay - again, I realize that's a pretty personal thing -"
Carissa Sevar: Not how the spell works, thankfully, it only shows the subject. "Go ahead. - though actually I think that it might just show the person touched. But you could try?"
Keltham: "All right, then. Obviously volunteers only, so, any volunteers?"
Pilar : "Ooh! Pick me! - I mean, I volunteer."
Iarwain: (Time for everyone to roll their Will save to realize that there's no reason for Pilar to be there! Pilar has four oracle levels, three wizard levels, and -)
Iarwain: (Never mind, Cayden Cailean seems to be expending energy on this particular occasion. Everybody including Pilar herself fails their Will save!)
Keltham: "You sure?"
Pilar : It's something she's been worried about ever since she got oracled, so it would make perfect sense that if Keltham called for volunteers for this party game for this test, she'd volunteer for it. Right? Right. Everything is fine.
"Yes," Pilar says, sounding very assured about it.
Carissa Sevar: On the off-chance Keltham sees anything from the spell, better for him to see Elysium, she doesn't remember making that decision but it does make sense.
Keltham: Spellboop on Pilar.
Pilar : Pilar draws a sharp breath and then doesn't seem to breathe at all for half a minute.
Keltham: Keltham isn't getting anything himself, and - people in Cheliax sure do control their facial expressions hard, he would not have been difficult to read while he was seeing wherever-that-was.
Pilar : It ends.
"I'm done," she says, a short time later.
Keltham: All right, if he didn't get any glimpse of her Early Judgment himself, then there's not any trust to be gained from questioning her, and she obviously doesn't want to talk about it. Though, if it was just Hell, there'd be no reason for her to - never mind, figure out her character's route later.
"Okay, so now I think we should probably all go directly outside the Forbiddance? If you're okay with that, Pilar, I think that opsec says you're not supposed to run off while we do that."
Pilar : With some effort, Pilar refocuses on ongoing events. She has no idea what Keltham is talking about, but she's obviously supposed to know and Security isn't acting like it's a bad idea, so clearly she's supposed to play along. "Of course," she says in an Asmodean fake perky cheerful voice.
Keltham: "Lead on, then," Keltham says to Security. "Reminder, boop me with Protection first in case there was a reason for that."
lintamande: Protection. (not From Evil, if there's trouble it probably won't be Evil trouble, from Good.) Also Invisibility, all around.
And then off they go.
Keltham: Well, it's not like Keltham knows exactly where the edge of the Forbiddance is, he's just along for this ride. He'll go where taken.
lintamande: They go out of the villa into the immediately surrounding forest; after a short while Security pauses and casts a barrage of detection spells.
"All right, if you stand here the summons should work," he says. "If I were you I'd try to summon an archon - Lawful Good - or an azata - Chaotic Good - and ask what their disagreements with Cheliax are but I haven't actually the slightest guess what your god is aiming at, here, and if you have any guesses then you should go with those."
Keltham: That makes sense and doesn't look on the surface like trapped advice, but - if the spell can take this input - Keltham would like, in preference order, whatever his god wants to send him, some entity that works for his god and that can answer questions, or an archon.
Cast.
lintamande: He gets an archon. It's a - glowing sphere of light, apparently.
(Archon gets Silenced and enclosed in an auditory and visual hallucination.)
"Hello! Ooooh, this place is pretty! What can I help you with?"
Keltham: It's not that unpretty itself! He probably shouldn't say anything that gives away his own special status, if this is something not favorable to him as well as Hell, and that potentially goes back to wherever it came from afterwards. Also it doesn't look like he has long on this spell so he'd better be brief. "Do Asmodeus's representatives tend to negotiate fairly and honestly and keep their commitments? What do you most dislike about Asmodeus and/or Cheliax?"
lintamande: "Asmodeus's representatives are Lawful and keep their commitments and negotiate honestly. I dislike their efforts to build a society where everyone is Lawful Evil and goes to Hell because it is better for everyone to live in a society in which most people are Good. Asmodeus makes decisions based on what Asmodeus wants rather than what's best for all sentients, and while Asmodeus mostly wants desirable things like prosperity and invention and peace, Good often believes his decisions wrong from a perspective concerned with everybody. For example, He doesn't care enough about shutting down Abaddon or stopping Zon Kuthon."
Carissa Sevar: (Carissa's proposed phrasings. She thinks they'll land but she feels nervous, hearing them actually said aloud.)
Nethys: Nethys's options for conveying information to human beings are limited. His use of standard divine channels will drive the message recipient irrevocably insane even in the afterlife, however light the touch.
But there was a purpose of oracles of old. They cannot receive arbitrary messages from gods. They can receive presentiments, under negotiated conditions meant to ensure that those presentiments help to bring about Prophecy rather than avert it.
Prophecy is shattered now, which is to say, depending on how you look at it -
- Nethys now knows more than anyone else about how the future is otherwise destined to go, so, if anybody was supposed to still go around sending presentiments to oracles, it would be His job, wouldn't it?
Nethys does have any options for conveying information to humans. They're just difficult and expensive and not the sort of thing that parts of Nethys can do on a whim, there has to be more power and unity behind it than Nethys usually tries to muster. Difficult, expensive, painful. It's rare for that much of Nethys to agree on anything.
Iarwain: A number of girls are now back in the library, studying Taldorian history and customs again, which seems more urgent even than reviewing their math.
Hopefully this concentration of individuals is enough to warrant an invisible Security presence, because things are about to go badly for Cheliax if not.
Ione Sala: Ione sees a brief and terrible flash of a man with skeletal forearms and white eyes, a Presence of Evil and Magic so strong that she can taste His name Takaral like a dead and slimy worm in her mouth, and she knows that this is one of the Heralds of Nethys that Nethys long ago empowered with scraps of His sanity and will, and knows also that -
Ione Sala: "INCOMING FROM NIDAL! CALL REINFORCEMENTS! CAST RESISTANCE AGAINST NEGATIVE ENERGY! INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING!"
Ione Sala: Ione Sala will then slump over with blood starting to trickle from her nose.
Otolmens: Otolmens is now COMPLETELY FED UP with the THIRD direct divine intervention in MINUTES. She has had ENOUGH of these SHENANIGANS.
(For a very exact and particular sense of 'fed up' which would be very predictable, if you knew enough about Her, a series of cumulative provocations with little time to decay putting Her over a threshold.)
Otolmens: She can't do this very often without re-authorization that Pharasma may never get around to giving Her at this rate, but -
IN PHARASMA'S NAME I REQUIRE ALL GODS TO STOP ALL UNAUTHORIZED DIVINE INTERVENTIONS CAUSALLY AIMED AT -
Irori: Rapidly, His intentions clearly legible as friendly and Otolmens-goal-promoting, because He knows what Otolmens has trouble sometimes realizing on Her own: Otolmens if you tell them exactly where to look things may become even more complicated, center it on Ostenso, that will also include the critical region without giving them too much info.
Otolmens: ONE HUNDRED DISTANCE UNITS AROUND <coordinates for the top of the tallest tower in Ostenso>.
Iarwain: Acknowledged, send almost all the gods in Golarion, and then, most of them, start paging Abadar asking if He knows why Otolmens is this upset and if they should also be concerned.
Iarwain: There is one god who is an exception to that, as He is an exception to many other arrangements among gods.
Zon-Kuthon: Fuck you, I'll do what you don't want.
There's more to it than that, of course, Zon-Kuthon is not that easy to manipulate. Zon-Kuthon was somewhat on the fence about Nethys's strange request and stranger warning - He doesn't do what other gods want of Him, usually, but Nethys went more legible than was usual for Nethys and seemed to show knowledge about how the mortal, who admittedly looks rather strange, was likely to oppose Zon-Kuthon's own purposes and have the power to do that for some reason? That the mortal is in Cheliax is also not a good sign; Asmodeus is foremost among the gods who would actually choose to annihilate Zon-Kuthon and not just dislike Him. Zon-Kuthon ordered a strike team assembled, targeted, held ready, but has not given them the go sign.
Zon-Kuthon is likewise aware that Otolmens is as wary of Him as of any god save Nethys. Dou-Bral once fought to seal Rovagug. Even if the expected balance of pain and pleasure and things that Zon-Kuthon now cares about, changed when Dou-Bral Himself changed to Zon-Kuthon and changed His expected effects on the world, one would expect Zon-Kuthon to be a lot closer to unleashing Rovagug than most other gods.
The latest attempt at Otolmens telling Zon-Kuthon what not to do is sufficient to swing His decision, especially given that Zon-Kuthon does not expect to be caught.
He orders the recipient of His vision to tell the team to attack immediately, and then to kill himself, without mentioning to anyone else that this was a fresh divine intervention rather than a previously given order. There's a closing opportunity window here, since if the strike team arrives fast enough, the belief of other gods should be that it was already in motion when the edict was laid. It's very unlikely anyone will see Him about it; any god trying to pay that much attention to all of Nidal would fragment themselves and drive themselves irrevocably mad.
Iarwain: Gorum, Chaotic Neutral god of battle, god of strength and weapons and soldiers, receives a message from a certain Someone who He is rather fonder of, than She is of Gorum. This is only to be expected, given that Her workings often conduce to His purposes; His workings, to Hers, not so much.
She offers Him information, under the condition that She wishes it not revealed to other gods that She was the source of that information.
Gorum accepts. He does not expect to be harmed by the mere reception of information however suspicious, He could always choose to ignore it and do nothing with it.
Zon-Kuthon is about to violate Otolmens's order in Pharasma's Name. If you look exactly here, you should be able to catch Him at it.
Interesting. Yes, there it is. What of it? Zon-Kuthon is not as opposed to My purpose as to those of others.
Zon-Kuthon has not much margin in His tolerance of the expected future state of Creation. If nothing else is done about it, He is likely to attempt to release Rovagug during an upcoming major disruption to the world.
As much as You might have wished to use Zon-Kuthon as a counterbalance to Asmodeus, and have been among the foremost proponents of that, events have now been set in motion such that it is no longer safe to try to use Zon-Kuthon for that purpose. He cannot be allowed to remain as He is now.
Part of the goddess speaking to Him goes legible; She is being truthful, though it is also clear that She is withholding much, for She does not likewise make legible that She is sharing all relevant information.
Some of the shape of the connivance is becoming clear to Him. Would this upcoming major disruption be any of Your own work, perhaps?
Perhaps. If it were, I would wish to conceal My hand and show it to few other gods, with this exception made to reduce the probability of a foreseeable outcome where the world ends up destroyed.
Gorum knows He's being used, of course, but it does not offend Him as it might offend other gods; a soldier is a soldier whether they die for another's profit or their own. There is only one question He asks. Will there be battle and bloodshed?
Deaths shall come faster than Golarion has seen in an age.
Gorum will go along with this, then.
lintamande: "Passcode to reenter the Forbiddance is 'erecura'," Security suddenly whispers to Keltham. "Say it and run."
And then things start happening very quickly.
Fights among high-level casters, in Golarion, don't last long. Most spells are deadly, and if one side or the other has reason not to use deadly force, there are plenty of decisive ways to end a fight with the other person living but, say, transformed into a hamster, or Plane Shifted, or turned to stone. An outnumbered wizard might have time to get a single spell off, or to empty the contents of their Bag of Holding onto the battlefield, or if they're well-trained to empty the contents of their Bag of Holding onto the battlefield while getting a single spell off, and then it's pretty much over, if they didn't pick that spell well.
Keltham: He doesn't understand but has ever been through an Alien Invasion Rehearsal Festival so "erecura" and turn to run towards the villa -
Zon-Kuthon: Sudden Nidal strike team! They're mostly flooding in towards the villa, accompanied by a horde of undead shadows, but with other teams placed to guard the villa's circumference.
They spot Keltham and the others.
They can move a lot faster than Keltham can run. Anybody who can keep that much track of tactical information, happening that quickly, may note that they seem to be interested in Keltham specifically rather than Security or either of the two women.
One of them casts a spell, from a scroll, targeted at Keltham. Enchantment-compulsion.
lintamande: Ideally one counterspells that but Security is busy casting Haste and flinging an arc of beads of Fireball out across the whole perimeter and drinking a potion of Greater Invisibility and communicating Keltham's position to the rest of Security and communicating clear places for arriving reinforcements on the edge of the Forbiddance -
Carissa Sevar: Ideally one counterspells that but Carissa, because she is an idiot, assumed that Abadar was mad at Cheliax and that the stuff about Zon Kuthon was a lie and the spells she prepared today are for Keltham's pretend escape - well, she can Fly, and if necessary attempt to drag him into the villa against his enchanted will -
Keltham: That might have gone a lot more poorly for Keltham if he didn't happen to have an Enchantment Foil.
Keltham now knows that somebody tried to use mind control on him. He could very easily pretend to play along with it if he wants, let it look exactly like the enchantment is controlling him, but that doesn't actually seem smart because the compulsion is telling him to freeze in place.
Iarwain: Somebody's now in front of Keltham and about to stick an incredibly deadly-looking magical sword in him. Are Security or Carissa in position to do anything about that?
Carissa Sevar: How the fuck are they - but of course, they're Lawful Evil, and the Forbiddance deters them not at all, and they would've teleported already combat-enhanced -
Carissa is flying over there but not particularly in the expectation that she is faster than that sword -
lintamande: Security is dead, which is generally what happens when you're hanging out alone throwing enormous handfuls of Fireballs at an oncoming army.
Pilar : Up to her then.
Obedience and serving Asmodeus's best interests comes naturally to her. Pilar doesn't actually think about the consequences before she throws herself in front of the sword.
Once the sword is in her she has time to think, very briefly, that it's not what she wanted she can't even be Maledicted but Elysium didn't look that bad after all there are people who'll hurt you there even if they don't mean it.
Then she dies.
Keltham: Keltham saw it in only a fragment doesn't turn his head to watch the rest because that would be stupid that won't stop them he's going to die (temporarily?) like she did is there anything he can do -
He only remembers then, just then, too late, that he is supposed to have magic now.
He casts Sanctuary.
Iarwain: Random Kuthite assault team members can sometimes make their Will save against a fourth-circle cleric, but not necessarily on their first try. It also takes a moment to realize why you suddenly aren't choosing to cut down the target who's right in front of you.
Keltham will live for at least another six seconds.
Carissa Sevar: By then Carissa will be there! Spells are nice but the best way to kill someone when you're flying is to drop rocks on their head. She doesn't have rocks but she can cancel the Fly, which is sort of the same thing.
You'd think that dropping out of the sky on someone would hurt you as badly as them, which is not a good tradeoff when you're outnumbered, but 1) it's possible for even a random civilian to survive a fall from 60 feet if they let their legs break the fall, whereas it's less possible to survive the same force landing on your skull and 2) she has a healing spell almost finished as she lands, which means she's back on her feet faster, which means shortly after that it doesn't matter if the original injuries would've been fatal or not because Carissa can pull the sword out of Pilar's chest and stab him until they definitely are.
Cheliax has reinforcements teleporting in, by now, outside the Forbiddance. There are enough spells flying that all you can see are streaks of light and all you can hear are explosions and occasional screams.
Does this dead guy have, like, a dagger, in addition to the ridiculous ornamental sword, Carissa super does not have the strength to wield the sword effectively.
Iarwain: No, and also there's now an additional three Kuthites who unfortunately look more interested in killing Keltham than in killing her.
Carissa Sevar: When your situation is that your wizard is in a hand to hand swordfight with three actual fighters your situation is very bad. Carissa can do a Minor Illusion that she has backup de-invisibling themselves but that's about all she's got.
Iarwain: It gets the three Kuthites to pause for a couple of seconds before one of them snarls something and they turn their attention back to Keltham.
Carissa Sevar: Well on the bright side the Queen of Cheliax will have no opportunity to deny Carissa Hell.
She gets in the way.
Iarwain: Before Carissa can actually get herself into the way, it becomes a moot point.
Reinforcements now include that elderly and long-serving retainer to the House of Thrune, Gorthoklek, general of Cheliax's armies, and more importantly at the moment, a pit fiend. With relatively few exceptions across Golarion, the general rule is that the pit fiend wins.
He lands on top of the Kuthites about to attack Keltham without that significantly slowing his massive clawed feet from striking the ground. "Stay near me," he speaks in low rumbling Baseline, words that Carissa can probably recognize by now as dath ilani in intonation, even if she doesn't know the meaning. Then Gorthoklek begins speaking spellwords, and from him spring scorching rays, quickened fireballs, a meteor swarm.
One claw makes a beckoning gesture to Carissa.
Carissa Sevar: She will come when beckoned, and confirm for Keltham "he's on our side", though presumably he's inferred that from how he's breathing.
Keltham: Yeah, that's assuming way too much about Keltham's priors being strong enough to relate his evidence in any solid way to reality.
"Orders else -" he starts in Baseline, per emergency training, and then switches to Taldane. "Orders or situation report."
Carissa Sevar: The Chelish norms for emergency communications are different enough she's not quite sure what he means. "Gorthoklek serves the Queen, stay close and shout at him if something's after you."
Keltham: "If you're not otherwise busy, what's currently happening and are we likely to win it."
Carissa Sevar: "Zon Kuthon attacked us and yes."
Keltham: There was supposedly only a 4% probability of that happening this quickly even after updating on his god's warning. Keltham doesn't know if the read here is that his god understood which exact leap of wild guessing he'd make, or if Cheliax is dumb enough to fake the attack he indicated being nervous about in the most blatant way possible. He can't trust his truthspell, now that he knows what Fake Being Enchanted actually does, he knows exactly how easy it would be for a fourth-circle cleric to defeat, and they didn't mention that to him even if Carissa said (honestly?) that she didn't recognize the spell -
"Pilar's dead. Is that permanent when somebody does it using a horrible-looking sharp thing."
Carissa Sevar: - the sword isn't an elaborate sword of soul-trapping or something, is it? No, perfectly normal +3 vicious cruel sword. "Not permanent. - though if we're at war with Nidal now they might be prioritizing resurrecting soldiers."
Keltham: Dead for a while is not an emergency, dead forever is. Keltham remembers Carissa's own fears fast enough not to say it.
He looks upward, then. Strange auroras are flickering in the twilight sky, visible even without full night fallen.
The phenomenon doesn't look centered on the villa.
It looks like it's stretched all the way from horizon to horizon.
"What's happening to the sky?" says Keltham.
Carissa Sevar: "....I have no idea."
Iarwain: Gorthoklek's voice answers instead. He is no longer casting fire about him, battle is dying away, and now Gorthoklek himself seems to be looking up at the sky.
His rumbling voice sends chills down the spine of all who hear it, Keltham and Carissa alike.
"Those above all mortals now battle."
Asmodeus: An observation:
If Zon Kuthon were to have just violated a Pharasma's-Name edict about nonintervention, that would rather settle the question of whether it is safe for Golarion for Zon Kuthon to continue to exist. If He is inverted such as to not just fail to coordinate with, but to deliberately defy, such edicts, even only occasionally - if there's even a chance that's what happened here...
Iarwain: One would expect Gorum to be first to speak, on such occasions. He is a very great god, though not quite as great as Asmodeus, and has always been the foremost proponent of keeping Zon-Kuthon as a counterbalance. Asmodeus's insinuation would be noted, would shift some probability estimates a tiny bit, shifting other negotiations a little bit in Asmodeus's favor; but His suggestion would soon be rejected.
Gorum doesn't speak, for some reason.
Irori: Irori knows fractionally more than other gods about this matter, or so He believes, and is not particularly a fan of Asmodeus.
He's not a fan of Zon-Kuthon either.
He is less yet in favor of unnecessary conflict between major deities.
There have already been multiple divine interventions meddling in an issue of some concern to Otolmens; She is understandably annoyed. While I do not think we stand in danger of imminent destruction, I would fully advise that everyone listen to Her about this and comply with the spirit as well as the letter of Her instructions and not meddle here any more.
That said, this same record of previous divine intervention, and the timing, suggests that Zon-Kuthon probably already had His warriors on the way when Otolmens issued Pharasma's Edict and stands not in direct violation of it. I doubt He had an army already assembled and waiting, to be directed straight into Otolmens's interdicted region almost the moment she issued the Edict.
Iarwain: There is discussion of this, leaning of course towards Irori's viewpoint. Actually disciplining Zon-Kuthon in any serious way would be a lot of unpleasant work.
Iarwain: Gorum speaks then, after the fashion of gods.
He shows them the evidence of Zon-Kuthon, in fact, specifically instructing His people, directly after Otolmens's order, to violate Her edict in Pharasma's Name.
Gorum has been persuaded.
He is obviously not willing to go along with Zon-Kuthon's destruction; that would give the portfolio of Lawful Evil to Asmodeus alone among the ancient gods, with reverberant effects at the deepest levels of reality. But let Zon-Kuthon be sealed up away as much as Zon-Kuthon can be sealed, in a vault not unlike that which holds Rovagug, to be released only as a counterweight to Asmodeus if that becomes necessary. Asmodeus will be strengthened by this too, of course, and not trivially, but that is a price Gorum would sooner pay than see Zon-Kuthon release Rovagug.
Iomedae: If such a thing is to be done, and it does appear it might be necessary, it should be done at once and unanimously, because a day of war Golarion can withstand, but a fight that would last any longer than that will flood the crops in the fields and destroy the people and, down the line, the kingdoms relying on them.
Iomedae has considered, long ago, how this could be done. At the time it did not seem wise, and She has been apprised little of whatever prompted so many gods to change their calculations, but here is how it would be done, if sufficient resources are committed to the doing.
And if it is to be done She should hold the key, obviously, as a Lawful god opposed to Asmodeus (let's be honest, the Lawful god opposed to Asmodeus), and one who can be predicted to release Him under conditions satisfactory to everyone else save Asmodeus, whose awful conduct is of course the reason they've even been pressed to this dilemma.
Iarwain: Gorum would prefer to hold the key Himself, of course, but He realizes that other gods are more likely to go along with the suggestion that it be Iomedae.
Iarwain: ...there is clearly plotting going on here, gods are not stupid, Gorum did not come across this information by coincidence.
That Nethys could have given it to Gorum is almost too obvious to need thinking; but you can't go around blaming Nethys for everything, that's a way to miss all the other possibilities that aren't "Nethys did it". Also, contributing information leading to the downfall of another god, even Zon-Kuthon, would be pretty daring for Nethys; other gods are aware that Nethys could do more than the usual damage if Nethys started acting deliberately against other gods, and while Nethys might be able to get away with moving against Zon-Kuthon, out of all the gods, once, He'd be walking very thin ice after that, if He were ever found out.
A plot between Gorum and Asmodeus?? Some weird accommodation between them???
Gods' minds are large enough to explicitly consider many possible hypotheses. They will consider the possibility that it was Somebody Else who made an accommodation with Asmodeus, and then successfully persuaded Gorum to turn against Zon-Kuthon using this information. They will consider the possibility that Zon-Kuthon was lured into doing this and that is why Gorum knew where to look to collect the evidence.
It doesn't change the fact that Zon-Kuthon did in fact deliberately violate a Pharasma's-Name edict from Otolmens. This is kind of a big deal for any god, let alone Zon-Kuthon, who maliciously withdrew His powers from the Star Towers that Dou-Bral used to impale and weaken Rovagug within Its prison.
Asmodeus: Asmodeus is confused, and dislikes it.
Those are inadequate words for the experience of being Asmodeus; words are generally inadequate for it, but those ones especially so. All of Caina grows colder, as Asmodeus withdraws His power from Hell in order to think; few ever enter or leave Nessus, and there is no word of what is happening there.
It obviously serves Him, for Zon Kuthon to be warred with, and locked away; it's why He bothered to vaguely insinuate this might be warranted. And it does seem like Zon Kuthon might be more willing to war with Asmodeus - not even for any clear reason! - than previously imagined, which makes the case for being rid of Him stronger.
But this was orchestrated, unambiguously, maybe by Nethys, maybe by several gods collaborating (Iomedae and Irori? Sarenrae and Abadar and Cayden Cailean, who has been intervening in Cheliax for some not-known reason? A minor god, gambling everything?) and it is hard to imagine that the end towards which it was orchestrated was simply the removal of Zon Kuthon.
There's lots of minor things that could be attained in the short term by distracting Asmodeus with a war with Zon Kuthon. Cheliax will be drawn into a war with Nidal. Ground might be lost at the Worldwound. Perhaps a difficult province in Cheliax could break free.
It seems unlikely that a god made a move with these stakes for that practically trivial prize.
Asmodeus is confused, and dislikes it.
And yet, when confused, it's better to have more resources than fewer, and it's better for Zon Kuthon to be gone.
He indicates willingness to back imprisonment of Zon Kuthon, with more resources if the key goes to Gorum. And He'd like Iomedae to note that absolutely none of the recent nonsense is his fault; he's intervened only when fully paid by other gods, to direct his people in not harming mortals They got suddenly attached to.
Iomedae: Iomedae ignores this. She's not sure why Asmodeus bothers to talk to Her without paying Her to listen.
Abadar: At this point Abadar has no idea what is going on (lit: plenty of hypotheses and little evidence) but He wants Zon-Kuthon sealed up rather a lot; Abadar is the one who, long ago, bargained for Zon-Kuthon to go into a temporary imprisonment that should have lasted much longer than it did.
Asmodeus benefits greatly from this, more than any of the rest of us. I suggest that we designate this threshold level of resource commitment as Asmodeus's fair contribution and probabilistically collectively withdraw our support in proportion to how He tries to contribute any less.
Iarwain: There is debate, but quickly; somebody might tip off Zon-Kuthon and then it all becomes harder.
Most gods, not all, combine their powers; the rest agree at least not to interfere.
The forging of a vault begins, with a key that Iomedae alone can turn.
Sarenrae temporarily focuses nearly all Her will on the vault where Rovagug is imprisoned, she could not protect that vault from a full assault by Zon-Kuthon from every direction, but with Zon-Kuthon otherwise distracted she will be able to fend off any lesser attempts at that, if it does not come as a surprise. There also does Otolmens stand guard.
And most of the other gods of Golarion assault Zon-Kuthon, everywhere that is not that vault; Zon-Kuthon must put the greater parts of Himself within it, or else be vastly diminished.
That Zon-Kuthon will scatter smaller-sized fragments of His will and power beyond the vault, yet linked to His greater whole, is inevitable; it is not easy to really, really kill a god, if they have not made themselves vulnerable by collecting themselves too much into one place.
lintamande: A few minutes after Gorthoklek's arrival there is no one else moving in the wreckage around the villa. Cheliax is teleporting most of its emergency response teams out. There are some people walking through the grounds, identifying bodies, disabling trap-spells and unexploded fireballs from a distance with Unseen Servants.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has forced herself to stop looking at the unnerving lights. If Asmodeus has decided to kill Zon-Kuthon then good, that's very reasonable of Him, nothing to it.
Keltham: Keltham has so many Additional Questions that don't seem like the right time to pester somebody with an endless list of.
"What now?"
Iarwain: There's still at least one emergency response squad nearby.
"I am needed elsewhere," rumbles Gorthoklek. He addresses the emergency response squad telepathically. "You. Obey her." A claw indicates the Asmodean in question.
Gorthoklek then launches himself into the air, beating his vast black wings in a way that is blatantly insufficient to actually support his weight in any way whatsoever to the eyes of anyone who has even heard of aerodynamics. When he has risen above the Forbiddance, he teleports out.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa watches him go, which is a mistake, because now she's looking at the lights again. "Is there an area of the villa that's been cleared."
Iarwain: The leader of the squad sends a message, receives a reply. They've had very little briefing before the assault other than 'don't tip off the guy wearing weird clothes that Cheliax is Evil' which like ???? he's just seen a pit fiend but orders are orders. That Gorthoklek addressed them telepathically may imply that he didn't mean weird-clothes-man to know that Carissa is obeying them.
"We are fairly sure that one wing was unbreached. The other option is to begin clearing an area of the imperial palace for visitors. We're awaiting clarification on that." Namely hers, apparently.
Carissa Sevar: She's in an evening dress befitting a countess's heir which is covered with blood in a manner also befitting a countess's heir, and her sword is incredibly expensive. She looks tiredly at Keltham. "Confirm: you're uninjured, as far as you know not affected by any mind-altering magic?"
Keltham: His foot sort of hurts, now that he thinks about it. Maybe some sort of slightly twisted ankle. A very light push, a channeling of energy, and the feeling vanishes. "Uninjured now. No compulsions, the blocking spell was effective." If for some reason it helps at all to have him say that.
Carissa Sevar: Oh, so now he'll know exactly what Enchantment Foil does. "The fourth-circle one? We should get someone more senior to identify it for you, I'm still pretty sure it does something besides that but maybe your god gave it to you for that. If it's all right with whoever's in charge," she says to the emergency response team, "I think we'd like to go to the secured wing here so we can talk privately?"
Iarwain: Security made its stand protecting the library, and all the girls who could get to it in time - for lack of anything particularly better to protect, once they realized Keltham wasn't on the premises; might as well try to save Cheliax the cost of a few Raise Dead spells that Keltham would probably insist upon. The surviving rooms are full of response team, but they could clear out one of the two rooms of the library without much trouble; this does imply going through the library first.
Asmodia was in her bedroom and got swarmed by shadows, after which some summoned monster or another gnawed off all of her legs below her mid-thighs; after Asmodia's body got retrieved, it was dumped in one corner of the library, for use in later Resurrection or Raise Dead + Regenerate. A dead Security wizard's body has been dropped beside her.
Ione is unconscious, and would ordinarily have been evacced, but, library oracle; if she's got to be in some library that's not a triage center, it might as well be this library? Ione's body is occupying the largest, best-padded chair in the library, arranged with some detectable amount of respect, hands folded in her lap like a noblewoman. Things could have gone much worse without that brief warning to put up buffs and ready items. If Nidal had been able to lock down communications before they could call for reinforcements, or get assassins past the wards without triggering them, it could have been much much worse.
The other girls are - reading, some of them; Paxti is talking too fast to somebody who's tolerating that; one of them is examining a spiky dagger with a gem-studded hilt, not in the manner of somebody who expects to keep it, but somebody who wants to take a good look at it before Security takes it away.
Keltham: Keltham catches sight of Asmodia's body and after the first horrible gruesome shock is past, there's an odd sense of reassurance. They wouldn't treat her body like that if death was going to be more than an inconvenience to her, right? Ione's body is actually more unnerving, if you think of it that way, but maybe she's just unconscious and that's why she's carefully arranged. Or - can they not resurrect her, if she's not really a worshipper of - "Is Ione okay?"
lintamande: "Alive. Got a vision, warning us, right before -" Shrug. "People often make full recoveries from having been contacted directly by a god."
Keltham: ...any god but Nethys. Any god but Nethys. It could still have been some other god besides Nethys. And if it was Nethys, there is nothing Keltham can do about it except raise up science and engineering in this world to a point where it can reprogram damaged souls, even if that takes a while -
Is all of this real? Is this a LARP? It doesn't make sense to hear about the one god who can destroy mind-states, and then Ione just happens to get touched by that one. Nethys is supposed to not do that anymore.
"Can you tell if her mind's okay? Did we temporarily lose anyone else? Besides Pilar."
Iarwain: Quick messaged updates to Sevar from surviving Security: Maillol's temporarily dead (and obviously top priority since Maillol himself could cast Raise Dead), Elias Abarco is temporarily dead, Ione Sala did in fact shout out warning of a Nidal attack moments before it happened, there isn't anybody left who could plausibly give orders overriding Sevar's.
Carissa Sevar: Wow. Okay. Minimal lies to Keltham stands; this is, she thinks, good for the project on the whole, it will make Keltham seriously reconsider departing. She imagines they might now be at war with Nidal in which case resurrections will be in short supply. Probably Keltham should be informed they're at war with Nidal even if for some reason that's not happening, it allows for a lot of flex in supplies and resources for the next couple of months.
lintamande: "Her Intelligence shows up normal to the spell for checking that. We've been advised not to try to rouse her, just to heal her periodically and let her rest. None of your other girls are dead, most project staff are dead."
Keltham: Keltham thinks of something he should've remembered earlier. "I have healing powers left for the day, not sure how much, is that helpful right now - Carissa are you injured."
Carissa Sevar: "I'm injured and have already had enough healing to keep me on my feet."
lintamande: Security calls "heal" and persons still injured gather around Keltham within his channel distance, expectantly.
Keltham: Keltham is expecting a queue of people to be tapped, but once they explain to him that he can channel a burst of positive energy, he'll do that at everyone in his insanely huge healing radius. (4d6 hit points apiece, 30-foot radius.)
...wow. Keltham had no idea fourth-circle clerics were that kind of good news.
"I think I can do that again at least once and possibly more," Keltham says, still feeling a bit stunned.
lintamande: "We could use one more," a surviving Security says. (The girls cannot; 4d6 is enough that the healing magic is running across the surface of their skin patching up papercuts.)
Keltham: He does it again.
...he is - beginning to understand, from this, from the vision in the Early Judgment - that being a cleric is not entirely about, it isn't only - he doesn't have the words for it.
"Still have at least one repeat left," he says.
...shouldn't he be doing this every evening, to people packed into appropriately dense arrays around him? Or maybe Cheliax is saturated on healing already, at most other times, if other clerics can also do this sort of thing.
His brain has some brief weird internal fight about the obvious thought that if healing is expensive he should do it, and if it's cheap he shouldn't, but common sense wins there.
lintamande: "I'll ask if anyone else needs it," says whoever's apparently appointed himself Security spokesperson, and he trots outside to do that (and to inform the injured that the friendly LN cleric is not allowed to know Cheliax is evil.)
lintamande: "So," says Meritxell, "who's angling for Duchess of Nidal." She's looking at Carissa, though she doesn't quite dare to say it to Carissa with Keltham right here having no reason to think Carissa's in the running for any duchies.
Carissa Sevar: "Sounds like a miserable job," says Carissa curtly, though, of course, she'd take it. She is...concerned that Keltham seems to be having a religious experience about healing, that seems very much not ideal.
Keltham: There's no free chairs. Keltham will sit down on the ground, breathe to recover, and try to figure out everything he just did wrong. Was he supposed to use the Owl's Wisdom? Could he have seen this all coming if he'd used the Owl's Wisdom on himself at the right time? Why put Keltham right outside the Forbiddance when this all happened? How is anything being predicted that finely, even by gods, quantum indexical-uncertainty doesn't let ideal agents pull that kind of shit, isn't prophecy supposed to be broken around here? Possible answer, that was an event triggered whenever Keltham went outside the Forbiddance but then - then -
Keltham really doesn't get it.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa sits down next to him.
"The other room of the library's clear and free. If you want to go rest somewhere."
Keltham: He - is he in more trouble than others who'd pay more for that room if it were priced? Plausibly yes, he is from a Civilization with no Worldwound and was squarely caught in the middle of things. Also if Carissa thinks he should, maybe he should.
"Make sure they know where to poke the healer."
Keltham pushes himself to his feet and goes with Carissa to the library's other room.
Carissa Sevar: How to do this without being pushy in a way that he won't be into, or without seeming like she needs comfort - she finds a sufficiently large chair and sinks down into it next to him, and puts her arm around him and rests her head on his shoulder.
"I don't understand much about what happened or what we were supposed to do," she says after a moment. "But this is... a pretty good outcome, from the space of possible outcomes of a force of that size trying to take you. And we'll get the dead back, assuming they want to come back."
Keltham: "Probability that Asmodia and Pilar want to come back?"
Carissa Sevar: "To life? Uh, ninety percent, they're young and they're wizards and I don't know either of them to have been really excited for an afterlife or anything. To the project.... maybe lower than that." Which allows for not raising them, if it seems not worth it on reflection, though Carissa is very reluctant to authorize a lie that big and that total which isn't utterly necessary.
Keltham: 19% on one of them not coming back is an awful lot of probability mass on - he's thinking about this the wrong way, they're in another continent where one of them might choose to stay, that's all. He just needs to see one of them come back and he'll believe it.
"Did my god. Set me up. Not to die obviously, but to trigger - at that time -"
"What just happened, which parts of this could a god predict and choose."
Carissa Sevar: "I have no idea. They shouldn't have been able to - with prophecy gone - they could've been able to see that Zon-Kuthon was planning something, and - maybe seen that you were going to attempt to leave and that when you did you'd die or be captured, if you were intending that, especially if you were intending it in prayer? Otherwise I don't think they could've operated even at that level of knowledge - before prophecy you could have things like, they thought it was better if you were outside for the attack, but not since prophecy broke. If they knew it'd be because Zon-Kuthon was amassing his forces and They could see that."
Keltham: Keltham is tempted at this point to poop out all this shit and tap himself with the Owl's Wisdom and to hell with personality integrity, shit just got visibly really serious instead of quietly really serious. He doesn't consider the thought for very long; the time to tap himself with Owl's Wisdom, if he hadn't been an idiot, was either the moment when the crisis started, or sometime before then. If it's not an emergency you don't take mind-altering performance drugs in the kind of state that Keltham is in right now.
Were the two Auguries meant to indicate that this particular Augury was really important - that's plausibly - that's plausibly it, if he'd cast the second Augury then, and got a result of massive disaster from heading outside the Forbiddance, that would've - maybe that was what was meant to happen but how was Keltham supposed to know, he'd thought it was one spell to figure out what the spell was and then the second one when he'd had time to think of a question -
Not his fault, plausibly, in a way that makes sense to blame himself for; there's no obvious actually-general heuristic to update, here, that isn't just "use both Auguries on the first question to enter your mind". Keltham's god might not have been able to exactly predict -
"I got two Auguries. I thought the first one was to find out what the spell was and the second one was for when I'd had time to think of the right question. If my god thought that three-quarters the first Augury wouldn't fail, but if it did fail, I would use the second one - or if people just always get two Auguries for redundancy - then maybe we weren't supposed to go outside, we were supposed to get a result showing disaster if we went outside and that would have tipped us off without us going outside. If that's true then my god is not a perfect predictor, they're not looking into the future, they're working off a fallible model. In that case they wouldn't have been able to do exact timing, and that attack was set to go off the moment I went outside, not because my god predicted the timing that precisely."
"Similarly, when it comes to Zon-Kuthon, our two obvious hypotheses are, one, attack was building since yesterday, god warned us of it yesterday. Two, that spell was a warning of something else, I misinterpreted it as Zon-Kuthon, and somehow that triggered the attack by Zon-Kuthon, like by my thinking of him loudly enough that he heard it like a prayer, which does not seem particularly plausible to me but I'm saying it out loud anyways because Golarion."
Or, of course, somebody in Governance heard him say it, and thought it would be a great thing to fake without the slightest use of subtlety. The light shows overhead - could have been locally faked to look global. Maybe Ione can grab a newspaper from Ostenso library and see if it mentions -
Well, that might work if Ione is still Ione.
"So. How did they know the moment I went outside."
Carissa Sevar: " - I don't know. Security cast - really cast, I'd have noticed if he did something weird - a bunch of standard detection spells, at the edge of the Forbiddance. There wasn't a scry up on the other side, or an alarm spell set to trip, or any magic at all, or anyone hidden and waiting - could've been someone's bonded familiar, a ways off, with vision enhanced to see through invisibility. Or could be Security was compromised, or Pilar, or me. Or you, I guess, if we're being thorough, though even then, they'd have had to have activated a magic item or something to alert people, and the others ought to have noticed.
....why was Pilar there. She isn't usually - when you test your spells - she wasn't when we did Detect Anxieties or Detect Desires -" Pilar had been checked and had totally satisfactory Anxieties and Desires but the plan had been not to have her mostly because there wasn't a good excuse to have her and not the other girls. Oh and now that Carissa thinks about it the reason Pilar was there was obviously 'some weird thing to do with her oracle powers' and she should not have completed that sentence aloud, though probably Keltham would himself have noticed the discrepancy, at some point...
Keltham: "Oh, that's amusing. So all of us got tagged by mind control at least once tonight, possibly including Pilar herself, possibly excluding Security if he was the source, and it either went right through anti-enchantment or it wasn't enchantment or it happened before I cast that blocker -"
"I am - trying to figure out if my successful prediction about the results I'd get from my poll, about people's surprising revelations if I date them, also implies things like 'It's not Carissa's headband because that's too obvious of a red herring' or 'It won't be Pilar it will be one of the other girls and you already have enough information to figure out who, but you're not actually going to figure it out before dating her because the information was too subtle'."
Carissa Sevar: " - I don't really understand what you mean," Carissa confesses after a little while spent internally panicking that that is an accusation of some kind though it doesn't exactly sound like one.
Keltham: Of course not, you have to be really far into a relationship with a girl before they can hear you talking about the eroLARP itself.
Actually he should just check that. "Can you repeat back what I just said using your own words, and then make some sort of inference about it which shows your brain is processing it?"
Carissa Sevar: "You said you're wondering if an implication of your successful prediction with the poll about peoples' surprising revelations is that the cause of the Kuthonites being able to track us is not my headband, because that's obvious misdirection, or if another implication is that one of the girls betrayed us, but you will have to date her to learn that. Uh, it sounds like you think" Cheliax is lying to you "...some god or entity is - trying to communicate with you? But - in a way that I don't think would work, with prophecy broken - and I don't know what you mean about my headband being misdirection, whose misdirection?"
Keltham: "That which is above all gods, but if you can hear me talking about it then that's some evidence against 'tropes' being a thing here. Never mind, mostly a stupid thought and if it wasn't then I almost certainly have to see it on my own. What would you say in real life is the chance you should swap out that shiny new headband that bypassed government Security checks."
Carissa Sevar: "I would've said very low and that Acquisitions was being way too paranoid but I would also have said that about a Kuthonite attack and - and I wouldn't even have put a probability, on a war among the gods, that's happened once in recorded history. So if you think I should then I think I'll just concede you're better at thinking about this stuff, and do that."
Keltham: "It almost certainly wasn't the headband. That said there's no reason not to swap it with a headband that has been in ordinary quiet use somewhere much less sensitive, which you personally selected to make sure nobody in our supply network or command structure slipped in an evil headband for what would actually be the first time. Never trust what you can verify."
Carissa Sevar: "I'm reluctant to leave the Forbiddance again right now but I'll take one off one of the dead Security and maybe swap again later once it's safer to leave."
Keltham: Can she just do that? "And - leave a receipt about the swap? Wait do we feel comfortable around that giant sharp thing you're carrying, in Alien Invasion Rehearsal Festivals it is often very not safe to steal weapons off dead aliens, and for that matter if somebody actually invaded Civilization I expect they'd have a bad day trying to swipe weapons off Exception Handling."
Carissa Sevar: "Yes, I'll have to leave them a note, and they'll be annoyed but see the logic, it's not like they wouldn't do the same thing if I were dead and there was cause. The sword's a +3 vicious cruel longsword, it doesn't have an innate personality or defenses against being stolen and I already used it to kill its bearer so if it were going to manifest any it might've done so then. If it's got tracking it'd be impressively subtle tracking but I guess I shouldn't rule that out confidently. - I was a weapons enchanter, by specialty, so I've looked at a lot of really fancy swords."
Keltham: What is a manufacturer doing at the site of combat... nevermind, economicmagic.
"What do we - actually do now? When does the project restart, when do Asmodia and Pilar get back, where do we sleep tonight?"
Carissa Sevar: “When Asmodia and Pilar get back depends on whether we’re at war with Nidal. If we are they’re going to be using all our Raise Dead and Resurrection capacity for the military for a while. I don’t know how badly the villa is damaged, but I think it’ll be in repairs for at least the next couple of weeks, and they might decide to relocate us to the Imperial palace - which is the only other place in Cheliax with a Forbiddance up, and which has security adequate for an invasion from anywhere I’ve heard of. We can ask for that now, if you’d rather be somewhere where something awful didn’t just happen while you rest and recover.
And that’s what I think you should do next, is rest and recover. People often need a couple of weeks off after their first real battle at the Worldwound, and that’s people - born to our world, with some dead siblings, who’ve attended some public executions -“ (She looked it up, they have those in Taldor too, though they only make it really slow if the crime is treason or something.) “You’re from farther, and you might need longer, and you’re our most valuable resource, it’d be stupid to run you too hard.”
Keltham: "Ordinarily I'd ask why you thought you knew the complete list of everywhere in Cheliax with a Forbiddance, but I'll skip that since you think the complete list is the center of Governance plus one single secret government project that started up a couple of days ago and which you happen to work at. You know, I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say something that sounds adorably naive and trusting compared to the mature cynicism of a wise young boy like myself."