Thoughtspace

"If you saw them, you'd understand." Edos was in Taylor's thoughtspace, wearing Sacred Blade's face rendered in white stone. All the remote disciples were gathered, as was Mataba from Red Tower.

Edos continued, "They have a single train to carry water and one old gurantor. Urban thinks he can go north overland, which he can, but it'll wreck his troops. They don't even have proper clothing. The whole mission is so slipshod, it'll never reach Red Tower. I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't out to kill us."

"Maybe we can kill Urban and rescue the rest," Taylor mused, "and score some goodwill with Gallia. We'd be doing them two favors, so they'd owe us twice over."

"What about Prelate Lerudis? He started this crusade. And, he paid for it out of church funds."

There was silence among the avatars.

Taylor knew he was in difficult territory. "Morally, I don't have a problem with killing a civilian leader who organizes and funds an attack on Nexus. That makes him an enemy in my book, and enemies are valid targets. But this guy's a priest. Do we want to set a precedent that killing priests is okay? Will people see it as justified, or sacrilegious?"

"They've already set a precedent," Obsidian-Ma reminded them all, "when they tried to kill you in Lavradio, and then again at the Ullidian border."

"But the public never saw any of that," said Antilope-Leila, "and if we told them they'd only have our word for it."

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The four-armed obsidian woman wasn't convinced. "What if he does it again, but better? How many free shots do we let him take at us? Make an example of him, and he won't have imitators."

"I won't condone savagery in the name of religion," said Futobel-Phillip. "If we have to kill someone, we just kill them. No torture or mutilation." He had already spoken to her about her fiery revenge against the one priest they had burned. So far, she had kept her promise to kill cleanly.

"That said, we can't let our enemies operate unopposed. We should be keeping tabs on all the prelates and major temples, in every country. I don't care if they call us heretics, but if they're organizing crusades, that crosses a line." Taylor hadn't even thought about building a proper information network until that moment. His fielded disciples all had contacts and relayed any news, but it wasn't enough.

Antilope-Leila rubbed her horns against a tree trunk. "We all have friends we can trust to do simple things like report on what the prelates are preaching. What we don't have is a way for them to send regular reports to Nexus. The usual way is to hide messages in caravan goods, but the caravans aren't running. This link thing you sent me is wonderful, but it only talks to Red Tower disciples and I only have the one."

"It would be a bad idea for all the informants to share a channel with disciples. Or even with each other," Obsidian-Ma warned. "They're safer if they know less about each other."

Giant-Edos agreed. "Keeping a few ears on the big temples should be easy, and the work itself is safe. It's the reporting that's risky."

"I'll work on it," Futobel-Phillip promised them. "It'll take a couple of weeks to get devices out to you, and there will have to be procedures for using them, but these are solvable problems."

"What about getting our views to the faithful?" asked Leila. "Nexus News was very popular, but it's going to take a long time to get printing and distribution running again. In the meantime, Enclave is filling people's ears with lies. We all preach when we can, but it's not enough."

The futobel avatar gleamed with pride. "I'm already working on it. Expect a wondrous solution the next time we meet."