Ione Sala: This possibility has also been foreseen, by common sense more than by divine intervention.  There are other scrolls to hand, money being of no object at all anymore, and Ione Sala casts a Heroism upon herself before she continues.  It's not ordinarily what you think of as an aid to casting from scroll, but it helps if you are frightened.

And then Ione Sala speaks again.

Ione Sala: "Magewar in ten minutes.  Enormous lethal radius around Starstone.  Start running NOW.  Avoid mage-works.  Dismiss outsiders.  Don't go ethereal.  Don't look back."

Absalom: And then there's panic in the streets.

Absalom: ...At least among the sort of person who did not correctly foresee that they'd probably hear something roughly this alarming, update early on the evidence they'd predictably get later, and start moving away from the Starstone before the actual announcement was made.

Absalom: In fact, something like four-fifths of the people managed to make that update, got their valuables and their family, shared the news with friends who didn't speak Taldan, locked up their things, and evacuated with the genuinely cautious public order of people who don't want to look stupid if in fact nothing happens.

Absalom: And now there's panic in the streets, but those streets can mostly hold the least Wise seventh of the local subpopulation running around screaming.

Though even then you've got the one in twenty persons who are staying in place, or maybe even heading off to try looting a home; because they're even less Wise than that, or prouder, or just plain stupid -

Pilar : "Hiiii everyyyyyone!  It's Pilar Pineda!  Sorry we had to hold the fight here, but everyone needs to run away now!  Abscond!  FLEE!"  The voice cries that command, flee, in one language after another, with a blood-freezing cheery note that is impossible to ignore.

Carissa Sevar: "I, Carissa Sevar, wish to avoid deaths so numerous that the River of Souls overflows and loses some forever.  You can help by not being among them."

Keltham+: "I'm Keltham.  What you're about to see is a warning explosion one thousandth as powerful as the lesser forces to be unleashed here."

Starstone Cathedral: One ton of fuel-air explosive ignites in the air over the Starstone Cathedral, creating an enormous CRACK and a vast billow of fire.  There isn't actually any standard spell, even Meteor Shower, that creates an explosion quite that large; it looks like ninth-circle wizards getting ready to fight.

Absalom: And there are, still, people so incredibly smart and skeptical that they'll stay around and try to loot a house or two.  But not enough of them to overflow the River of Souls and get eaten by astradaemons if they all die simultaneously, which is the part that matters.

Others do pray to their gods about the affair, and divine attention now gathers toward Absalom.  But there is no ancient god who decides to collect more of Themselves and focus a truly vast attention on the Starstone Cathedral and surrounding planar spaces, while nothing has yet begun for real; and that is the only choice those gods make that ends up mattering.

Starstone Cathedral: And then it begins.

Keltham+: He is about to cast a spell, from scroll, that is considerably beyond what he ought to be able to cast, even at INT 29; and it is very important that this spell go off correctly.

Keltham+: He draws on his familiar gloves of Use Magic Device, now improved to +7 and specialized for scrolls.

Keltham+: He casts from scroll upon himself, Bestow Insight:  Use Magic Device.

Keltham+: And he casts Prayer upon himself, from a scroll bought of a Demon Lord's worshippers.

Keltham+: And then so fortified, he casts Greater Heroism -

Keltham+: So fortified, casts Moment of Greatness -

Keltham+: Casts Moment of Prescience -

Keltham+: And at the very last, casts Wish.

Iarwain: In a different possibility that was foreseen, that Nethys had warned of, if things had gone according to plan, a Keltham acting with less time to prepare would have taken the shorter surer route: simply detonated a vast explosion above the Starstone Cathedral.

Keltham would (in that vision-of-possibility) have directly Wished antimatter into existence on that spot, in sufficient quantity that he could be reasonably sure that Aroden's Starstone-protecting fortress would be blasted down on the first try.

It would have been futile, then, to warn anybody but Teleporters to flee Absalom imminently.  The coastlines of nearby countries would have received that warning.

Absalom: What eventuates instead is a shiver in the air of Absalom, an anti-chill, a sudden heat that isn't tangible.

Walls of force around Absalom, whether around a high-lord's palace or deep in a mage's tower, suddenly flare and shatter with shrieks of cracking magic; continual flames flicker, and some go out; a dozen different kinds of specialized magic and magical items fail, and some of those explode; a third of the mage-towers of Absalom are now in some distress; many lesser magical watchers and guardians scream and clutch at their eyes, though there is nothing visible for mortals to see; and some greater magical guardians within the Ascendant Court are charred to glowing ash where they stood.

Starstone Cathedral: But the real sight to see (if you are foolish enough to be looking back in that direction) is the Starstone Cathedral upon its formerly unreachable island, in the middle of a pit that nobody can cross except under their own power.

All at once the walls and roofs of the Cathedral, the pinnacles and minarets, flash into searing light, impossibly bright, as if the Starstone Cathedral stood beneath some alien sun that had exploded, though there is no explosion visible -

Keltham+: You obviously cannot just walk up to the Starstone by going through the Ethereal plane where it borders upon Golarion's portion of the Prime Material.  Aroden has thought of that.  An apprentice wizard would think of that.

It follows, then, that the Starstone's containing installation must have defenses that extend into the Ethereal; guessably, most of that installation just extends into the Ethereal directly.

So detonating a ten-kiloton antimatter explosion on the Ethereal plane, instead of the Prime Material, will perhaps destroy what guards the Starstone, and leave the material city standing; so you could hope.

Starstone Cathedral: The pinnacles and minarets are charred and charring, as the first flash fades, but they stand -

Keltham+: He has, a very few moments earlier, cast his first and only Wish from scroll, to conjure a significant quantity of antimatter inside of a high-vacuum space.  He did not use all that antimatter at once.  Rather, that antimatter was divided up telekinetically and allocated to magical containers.

There will be significant divine attention pointing to Absalom now, and while gods are large rather than fast they are not reliably slow.  So while he is not skipping directly to the most powerful explosion, he is not waiting six seconds between actions either.  The first explosion was more of a test than anything else.

The next Ethereal detonation is equivalent in energy to fifty thousand tons of high explosive.

Absalom: A number of people who ignored Ione's emphatic instructions, and 'looked back' after the first flash, now have eyes that are scarred by the light that reflected from nowhere; and some of those will not be able to afford third-circle cleric healing.

Starstone Cathedral: The Starstone Cathedral is in flames, it is wounded, but it has not fallen -

Keltham+: Two hundred kilotons.

Absalom: A wizard sobs and cradles in his arms the familiar who was burned, over and over, by some invisible force, feeling the last life depart upon some final unstoppable blow.

Starstone Cathedral: The Starstone Cathedral now lies blasted seemingly open -

But one cannot enter into its heart yet, nor scry it.  There's still twisted space and planar obstacles there.  Some magic like that does not pose any bar at all to material forces passing through the Ethereal, and therefore cannot be destroyed merely by nonmagical explosions in the Ethereal.

Keltham+: Of which, if you're familiar with a long-built-up sequence of thought about ilani weapons, there is an obvious sort of thing to try: set off an Ethereal twenty-kiloton explosion inside a jacket of raw spellsilver.  Magical forces are complicated, but some of them considered in isolation are simple.  Accelerating spellsilver sufficiently, as in, to a significant fraction of lightspeed in less than a microsecond, will produce an intense pulse of a potent magical force that interacts with other magical forces.

That is:  The adapted principle of an EMP bomb.

Absalom: All spells interrupted in mid-casting fail, some explosively.

Every magic item and permanent effect in Absalom makes a Fortitude save against destruction, with DC proportional to inverse-square distance from the hypocenter.

The Arcanamirium's evacuation demiplane is cast loose of its portal; retrieving those teachers and students and servants and families will require over five hundred Plane Shifts or multiple Gates.

Absalom: A reclusive wizard who lived in his tower with his secluded family, shielded from hearing any Mage's Decrees until the first ethereal blast disrupted his mage-works, was in the midst of evacuating his remaining family: a spouse, a four-year-old daughter, a two-year-old son.  His Teleport is disrupted just as it goes off, and they end up forty miles off target, downward, in the nearest liquid pocket inside that volume of Golarion's mantle.  They die very quickly, and not all to the same afterlives.

Starstone Cathedral: ...It could seriously have been a lot worse.

In fact, it will shortly be worse.

The way to the Starstone now lies open.

lintamande: One person Teleports nearby, and flies down, and makes to touch that Starstone, whose surface is now glowing hot and lightly scarred but seems still wholly intact.

Starstone Cathedral: No final trap stops that person.  Perhaps all such traps are also ruined; or perhaps Aroden could not foresee whether anyone who'd gone to these lengths would be His foe or His friend.

lintamande: Then that person will touch the Starstone, a strange exultant smile upon her face, as a vast flood of transfiguring, transcending energy flows into her unresisting soul, expanding it, beginning to transform her mind to a stranger and vaster and fragmented perspective -

Achaekek: And then she's gone.

From a tear in space, moving almost too fast to see, impossibly fast for something so huge, comes forth a titanic nightmare of blood-red armor, whose thin stalking legs are like tree-trunks of polished chitin.  Its eyes are volcanic fire.  Its movements are as silent as the finest assassin, and complete within a fraction of a second.

And the entity who dared to stretch out her hand toward divinity is slain, having become godlike enough that her death is final in body and soul.

Golarion: (So end all who survive Aroden's barriers meant to stop most aspirants from destroying themselves wholly: save that one paladin protected by Aroden Himself after extensive godnegotiation; or that lucky swashbuckler who only staggered into the Cathedral on a dare, too drunk to understand godhood even as it came to him; or that thief who came into the Cathedral intending to steal a piece of the Starstone, who touched it with a chisel held in gloves, and tried to the last to free himself as it activated.  That was one path to getting past Achaekek, if anyone was wondering: to never want nor intend the divinity you gained.)

Keltham+: He does not spare a moment to mourn the friend he has just lost, the cheerful cultist of Rovagug.  Sarcini's true-death was predictable, so all those feelings were felt by him at the moment of making his last decision leading here.

There is not any hate in him, when he triggers a one-kiloton antimatter explosion in the Material Plane.

Absalom: The buildings of the Ascendant Court die in blast and fire; many once had magical defenses, but those are now gone.  A number of mortals are also dead, and many more are severely injured and will die very soon.  Some of them had adventured enough and gained enough vitality that they will survive for a time with their eyes burned out and skin melted off, still with breath to scream for healing that isn't coming.

But the River of Souls isn't overflowing, and that's the part that really matters.

Achaekek: The Assassin God is there fully gathered and all in Its body, what you'd ordinarily consider a good opportunity to slay a god.

But Achaekek is special, the enforcer set against overreaching mortals.  Achaekek cannot be slain by mortal weapons period, nor the greatest of mortal spells, nor any other force out of mortality within Creation.  That is not a matter of ordinary resistances but of Achaekek's divine purpose and domain.  A one-kiloton explosion is not, in fact, the most powerful blow that 9th-circle wizards have tried against It; you will so learn if you delve sufficiently deep into legends.  You must be at least a demigod to hurt Achaekek for real.

Achaekek: But it is possible for Achaekek to be moved, by a sufficiently ludicrously powerful but mundane impact; sent hurtling by an explosion along a roughly predictable vector -

Starstone Cathedral: And the Starstone claims another divine victim.

There is born then, around the Starstone, a greater and far more terrible glow; Achaekek's splattered energies are drawn toward it, pulled inward as if by the gravity of a Sun.

The Gods: And now the gods are focusing a great deal of their attention, upon this place; for one of the most ancient of divinities is dead.

Iarwain: There is nothing to distract those gods, for Keltham has not unleashed Rovagug.

Keltham has not unleashed Rovagug as his distraction, and to exhaust Asmodeus in battle against Rovagug rather than let Him release It and fight in battle on Its side.

But Keltham did mean to release Rovagug, as was in his own interests, if nobody made him a better offer.  And since Keltham did intend that sincerely, and not in any hope of hearing a better offer, it became possible to make him a better offer.

Pilar : Appearing in the heart of a fireball that hasn't faded, but whose first great blast and force is spent, Pilar Pineda throws her whole form upon the searingly glowing Starstone; touching it not with a tentative hand but with her whole skin, being naked but for a crown out of Hell.

The Gods: And the greater gods and gods of Golarion feel that touch, as they felt the last hand to lay upon the Starstone; as they felt the last beginning of a god's birth.  But this time, they know, there will be no Achaekek to stop this -

So all those gods do turn to stare at her, at this one being born; and they see that she is being born into Lawful Evil.

Asmodeus: Asmodeus would usually slay any Lawful Evil would-be ascendant.  He wants no additional competition from true-gods, or from Powers of Hell that He has not personally promoted to Their places.

This case is unusual.  Asmodeus has not been able to make out very much of certain events ongoing in Golarion; much of those squirrel-affairs have been illegible to the lesser fragments of Him that watched over the tussling.  But without having gathered more of Himself and reflected, without time to think beyond moments of first reaction, He can see, or remember, these facts:  That this soul had sincerely venerated Him in the past and as the proper tyrant over itself, though its feelings are less legible to Him now; that it was chosen to be oracle of Cayden Cailean; that it's consumed much of Cayden Cailean's divinity already; that it was a highly favored slave of Asmodeus's own most-favored slave; that it is yet Evil-predominant, but contains more superposed Good than it did before it started consuming Cayden Cailean; that it is very Lawful for a squirrel, though with prominent Chaotic streaks likewise grown...

...and He can sort of see what might be a legible intent to serve Him and be tyrannized by Him, if this squirrel becomes a god - and not in a way where that's meant to be conditional on Him helping it ascend.  But His sight of that intent is vague as yet, and there could be all sorts of compact-gotchas within the vagueness.

Asmodeus: It is His estimation that something significant is afoot, and that this isn't all of it. This novel and worrisome destruction in Golarion will swiftly inspire many negotiations and interventions; perhaps this ascension was the ultimate aim of that destruction, or perhaps there is more coming, in which case He doesn't want to expend His resources now on this fight when a fight of far greater significance may lie ahead.

He will not bestir Himself, then, unless someone intends to pay Him; the weak godling can live or die as suits the interests of others.

Urgathoa: And Urgathoa sees, but does not care, for in this matter there is not yet obviously food-resource to be glutted nor the prospect of resource being taken away; and so, like Asmodeus, She withholds for now Her hand;

Lamashtu: And Lamashtu, who was once demon lord and is now a far more terrible goddess, decides that Hell and Lawful Evil need no more power, that may be turned against the Abyss;

Gorum: And Gorum holds nothing personal against this aspirant, He enjoyed her assault on Absalom and her ambush-slaying of Achaekek was beautiful; but the world has more than enough Law already, thank you;

Sarenrae: And Sarenrae, who smites also Evil, turns Her attention here, to suffer not this empowerment to pass;

Desna: And Desna, the most ancient power of Chaotic Good, does likewise turn an uncommonly vast and cold gaze upon this place where a new Power of Lawful Evil seeks to be born -

- and recoils, in shock, in horror, for what stands between Her and that one's destruction.

Cayden Cailean: You shall not pass while I live, Cayden Cailean sends to all those gods, and places all that remains of Himself between Them and Pilar Pineda.

Iomedae: And Iomedae...

Greater Iomedae: Is not there.

Iarwain: Earlier:

Milani: Iomedae!  Emergency situation that the fully-informed fragment of You has been apprised about!  This information is given to You under the condition that that it will be used to benefit Your interests without harming Keltham's interests!  We bargained with Keltham to give him a less destructive distraction instead of him releasing Rovagug, and You're it!  If You act at the right time You'll be able to get away with something You couldn't otherwise do!  Gather all of Yourself, at once, and then -

Iarwain: Now:

Iarwain: When last treaty was made between gods, Iomedae swore not to open Zon-Kuthon's vault, nor to connive toward freeing Zon-Kuthon.

The agreement doesn't, technically, say that Iomedae can't do this, which is not something that even gods would have foreseen Her doing.  This scenario required several sequential then-unseen implausibilities, and if you negotiate about every combination-possibility like that, you really will end up negotiating too much.  Gods are large, but not large enough to defeat combinatorial explosions.

The gods would have expected, if Iomedae gathered Herself and went inside the vault, that Zon-Kuthon would promptly eat Her; for She is smaller and younger and would be to Him as a snack.

But what actually happens -

Greater Iomedae: Long ago, at least as mortals count time, a young human girl knew (it was not really a matter of deciding) that the right thing to do was spend all her life trying to fix everything everywhere.  And some time after that, she knew the right thing to do was become a god and go on trying to fix everything everywhere; though she didn't think that, even as a god, she would live to see it fixed...

A furious blaze of light, shining brighter than it did in Heaven, enters into Zon-Kuthon's vault where a great Evil lies wounded and helpless.

Some other possible god of paladins might've found this part difficult, contrary to Their domain; but Iomedae never was the god of fighting Evil.

She falls on Him like a mouse nibbling into a comatose elephant.

Asmodeus: OKAY WHAT NO HE SUDDENLY HAS LARGER PROBLEMS, NAMELY IOMEDAE IS CONSUMING THE WHOLE POWER OF AN ANCIENT GOD—

Sarenrae: She doesn't see how Iomedae can get away with this, but has little choice but to back Her once it's begun—

Desna: Even if Iomedae somehow survives this, it will trigger new divine treaties about Golarion's broken prophecy and divine opportunism, which won't be to Chaos's advantage.  But if this is Cayden Cailean's last wish, though She doesn't understand it, then to defend Iomedae She will also go—

Lamashtu: Lawful Evil, Lawful Good, what care I?  You may go about your conflict there, while I take care of this Lawful Evil nascent here.

Cayden Cailean: Still no.

Lamashtu: You think you can stop Me, jumped-up mortal?

Cayden Cailean: I know that I can stop You for long enough.

Absalom: The lights of godwar flicker on in the sky over Absalom, focused on Absalom, turning day into a greater and more terrible day; even as fire spreads outward from the ruins of the Ascendant Court.

Starstone Cathedral: And Pilar Pineda lays upon the Starstone and—

Pilar : She is—

Pilar : She is in many places—

Pilar : She dreamed of this, Snack Service showed her—

Pilar : Showed her—her own thoughts, somehow, as if all of this had happened to her before, in some forgotten life that Snack Service somehow remembered—

Pilar : She had known this—she had prepared for this—she is Pilar Pineda Pilar Pineda Pilar Pineda was once a single person and is now some strange fractally shattered mirror-of-herself, expanded and also broken, must pull herself pull herself together—is not large enough, to pull herself together—

Pilar : She needs more power—

Pilar : (The draining of divinity is a motion that Pilar Pineda has practiced some little bit—)

Starstone Cathedral: The Starstone glows, the buried awful core at its center pulls, and Achaekek's death pours toward it and flows also into Pilar Pineda where Her mortal shell still lays, making of Her something that is greater than Cayden Cailean or Norgorber became, greater than Iomedae as She previously was.

Asmodeus: - He may have been wrong about which of His problems is bigger.

Asmodeus is not slow to notice when gods are moving against Him. The timing of this is meant to divide His attention or limit Him in responding, to one or both exigencies.

If He doesn't intervene on the baby godlet (and He's still not sure whether He'd gain from crushing it or preserving it), He perhaps loses; if He doesn't intervene to stop Iomedae, He surely loses; and perhaps both events are a distraction. But identifying that as the situation doesn't save Him from making the call about which to address.

...He can at least fire off some large offers of payment to various Lawful entities aimed at 'make other things stop happening', to limit the damage His distraction can do to His interests while He crushes Iomedae, which really needed doing anyway.

Cayden Cailean: And Cayden Cailean dies, manifesting at the very last in the form of His mortal self as He was when He touched the Starstone, standing over the Starstone in that same place; holding His rapier crosswise in hand, as though to protect Pilar Pineda.

And then He crumbles away.

Starstone Cathedral: The power that was in Him begins to be sucked back to the Starstone; but the vast flickering shadow of the Mother of Monsters descends to consume that, consume His corpse, feast upon the dead as was always Lamashtu's way—

Pilar : I think not.

Pilar : It is the voice of something more powerful than Cayden Cailean ever was; a goddess who bears about Herself the portfolio of Lawful Evil, a portfolio within which Achaekek's and Zon-Kuthon's deaths have made great room.  And Acavna's domain of Companionship, and a trace of Acavna's defensive battles now transformed to a yielding endurance; and Cayden Cailean's last gift to Her, that is His domain of revelry, and of lust; and from dead Zon-Kuthon the domain of sadomasochism, but a different kind than that practiced in Nidal.

But she is goddess first and foremost, not at all of enslavement, but only of being a slave.

Lamashtu: Lamashtu knows then that it is too late to defeat this newborn god without great cost.

She does briefly engage Pilar Pineda's concentrated true self, in hopes of dealing Her some lasting wound while She is young and stupid; but Pilar Pineda proves to be a difficult goddess to scar, if not hurt.  So that fragment of Lamashtu's attention sniffs and goes upon its way.

Starstone Cathedral: But then another comes to that place, where the Starstone floats upon a sea of lava that is all that remains of the Starstone Cathedral—

(even as Pilar Pineda's body fades away and into Her, leaving behind that crown, formerly a lesser artifact of Dis, which that body wore into transcension)

Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar comes forth in crown and belt, and attired also in concealing flames of her own power; it is the least of her concerns, that she wants this moment to be depicted truly if any depictions survive, but it is yet one of her concerns.  And if there are other thoughts or emotions that she has, they are not outwardly visible, and any future religious iconography suggesting otherwise will be heretical for that it is a lie.

And she too lays down her mortal flesh upon the Starstone.

The Gods: It is at this point that a number of gods start to worry that Golarion may have an issue.

The Gods: (And while there are both Evil gods and Good ones that turn away from besieging or defending Iomedae; while Lamashtu turns back Her attention upon the ruined Cathedral, and calls out to Urgathoa and allied demon lords as well; it is the Neutral gods, drawn away from the vault's siege to try to halt all these unnegotiated ascensions, whose rerouting ensures that Iomedae will not perish quickly.)

The Gods: The gods come, then, to destroy this next god being born into Lawful Evil.  There is too much unplanned divinity and balance-upset originating out of this place in Golarion; if this event were in Their interests it would have been negotiated so.

Pilar : Not one of You shall harm Her.

The Gods: Divine blows fall upon Pilar Pineda like rain, then.

Pilar : And She suffers, and withstands, and She hurts terribly but She is not broken; for that is Pilar Pineda's nature as a god and a good slave.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar's journey toward godhood goes slower than that of Pilar; she's trying to absorb more power and is starting out without being already overstuffed with divinity.  She has more time, then, to focus some fragment of her attention upon sending divinity flowing through herself, purposefully, into the crown that she wears, which once was a mere lesser artifact of Dis.

And before her mind grows enough that it must divide, with her last biological breaths, Carissa Sevar performs her last and greatest feat of mortal Spellcraft, the completion of a true and major artifact.  Correctly.

Carissa Sevar: And then 'she' becomes 'Her', and Her attention fragments.

Carissa Sevar: You cannot, as a mortal, structure how you'll splinter, on ascending to godhood. If you could, new gods would not be so utterly vulnerable and helpless; things as weak as a newborn god are not generally all that weak. But to be splintered, when you were previously mortal, is to lose all the patterns that directed your mind towards your aims, to be made up of terror and eagerness and loneliness and grief and thwarted plans, all separately, with no guarantee each element will remember that it's meant to coalesce.

Having prepared in advance, having been very wise, having made of yourself something more coherent and more careful than a mortal generally is, helps; but not enough that you could ascend under fire and expect not to die.

Carissa is shaped, all through, for this, and still half the fragments of herself will have hardly any recollection of what they are, or where, or why.

But they know that they might die, if they don't pull themselves together quickly. That's not a truth she memorized for just this one occasion.

And there is not a single fragment of Carissa Sevar which would accept that it might die.

Carissa Sevar: Her pieces begin to pull together, partially, piece by piece, and as they do, She begins to claim Her portfolio and define Herself as a god.  Lawful Evil is in that; and also, freed from Zon-Kuthon's grasp, loss and pain, but the surviving of it; from long-lost Amaznen, artifice, knowledge, magic; and even from Cayden Cailean, traces of competition and resolve -

Pilar : —but there's a problem, now, which is that Pilar Pineda may be stronger than Cayden and not already exhausted, but She is really really not at all experienced at being a god or fighting godwars, and Carissa Sevar is getting larger and more distributed than Pilar can protect just by standing all the way around Her—

Cayden Cailean: He is dead—

Nethys: But Cayden was told how it would go—

Cayden Cailean: And before then, He—

Iarwain: Does it matter, when people pray to gods?

Iarwain: Does it help Them, when They fight?

Iarwain: It is commonly thought that it does help, some tiny bit, so that if many people pray, maybe that helps enough for a god to notice.

Cayden Cailean: And through all the taverns of the world and the wild words that drunks dream up, as is His domain, a rumor was spread—

—though also there were other rumors, contradictory or less alarming ones or naming earlier or later times, to make their way to high officials and those charged with officious panic.  But once a time was set and communicated to His representative, then to His true flock and all the ordinary people of Golarion beyond Absalom, to them this tavern-rumor was spread—

Iarwain: That at a certain hour and a certain day,There would come the next godwar,A flickering of the sky visible by day or night,And the meaning of that godwar would be this:

Iarwain: That Carissa Sevar(—have you heard the word about her, that she freed Wanshou from the great elder kraken that ruled it since Aroden's death, and gave it better government; that Cheliax's Queen suddenly bent knee to Carissa Sevar as her Empress, and Carissa Sevar at once began to rein in Cheliax's worst excesses—)would ascend to godhood on that day,under the star of Lawful Evil,and other Evil gods would try to slay her,for that if she won,she would rein in Hell,and create an alternative to horror,not a paradise, still a place where real evil would be judged,but where souls would not be shattered for their sins;

and even those already in Hell, whom you fear lost there,from suicide, from exposing a child they couldn't save,would then be rescued and given succor—

Golarion: And of course it isn't believed.

Who would believe it?

It's not the sort of thing that anyone repeats because they believe it.

Godwars don't occur on schedule.  Prophecy is shattered, and much of the point of prophecy in the first place was to avoid godwars.

Cayden Cailean: but if—

Golarion: Some people have heard about Carissa Sevar's supposed compact with Asmodeus, and even if you believe that, the compact definitely doesn't say anything about Carissa Sevar being able to save souls already in Hell.

Cayden Cailean: but if—

Golarion: There's no way that Asmodeus would ever allow it.  And there's no way that an ascended mortal could ever take Asmodeus.  Iomedae isn't that powerful, Irori isn't that powerful—

Greater Iomedae: Not yet, but Iomedae is more powerful than She was six seconds ago.

Irori: Irori had always meant to accomplish such feats with the aid of His students, after inspiring others to also ascend.

Golarion: There's even a ridiculous version of the rumor that has Carissa Sevar somehow doing something about Abaddon and the Abyss!  No respectably cynical person would ever let themselves be seen believing it for a second!

Cayden Cailean: There's souls less lost than that, who frequent His taverns; the respectables can be left to their cynicism.

Golarion: But it's really not believable!

Cayden Cailean: It does not need to be believed.  Only to be heard.

Golarion: ...So the skeptics repeat it, they describe what it is they are skeptical about.  Thus the rumor is heard, and spreads.

And unlike most such rumors, it is concrete and falsifiable: it foretells a sign, which is the sky-lights of a godwar, and it names a day and hour.  Even those untrained can appreciate that kind of epistemic courage.

Iarwain: Don't believe it?  Fine, don't believe it.  Cayden Cailean is not a god of forcing people to believe things.  Only tell your friend (your friend, not the authorities, there will be many other rumors to reach spies alongside that one); say it to your friends in the same drinking session that recounts lewd stories of the orgiastic rites practiced by Sevarists in Kelesh; laugh about those stories, but laugh with them also about the story that names a day and hour to look up to the sky and hope.  You don't believe it, but surely many others do; and won't they feel stupid, come the day, ha ha?

Even a god as weak as Cayden Cailean can work a phenomenon like that on Golarion - for some short time before being caught - if He's willing to spend down His strength on it to the danger point, and sentence Himself to inevitable death for treaty-violations.

Golarion: So almost nobody believes the tavern-rumor.

Yet many carry in their heart a burning coal that refuses to resolve itself completely and burn out.  And some such do hear that rumor, and think, in some tiny part of themselves:

Cayden Cailean: But if—

Iarwain: And the rumor says that when that day and hour comes, Carissa Sevar doesn't ask you to promise her your allegiance or your soul in death, she doesn't ask that you turn away from your own god forever—

—only asks your best wishes, your faith, your hope, your prayer, only for a few minutes, if you lost anyone you loved to somewhere they'd rather not have gone, if there's anything in you for them that isn't full despair, if you read of Aroden and mourned His dream of a world better than this, know that even the gods have their trials and Carissa Sevar will soon face Hers; and all you can do for Her in Her trial is pray that She ascends, to harrow Hell and Abaddon and Abyss—

Golarion: And then the day and hour comes, which few were fool enough to even mark,

When the awful light flickers again in the sky, visible even by daylight in those parts of the globe that hold day,

And a hundred million mortals who heard, who laughed, who scorned, who didn't want to feel even one spark in their hearts and be predictably disappointed later, look up, to the sky, and see—

Golarion: Even then, they mostly don't believe it.But it doesn't hurt much, doesn't cost much, to spend a few minutes in prayer, if it's true.

Because if—