And Ilderia, turning back to Iomedae "- there's a tinker device in my armor that deflects fast-moving projectiles; we might be able to get you something to wear under your clothes that does it. You said your other rings... also do deflection, and also does shielding against area effects. How do those work?"

"...I don't know, more descriptively than that. Deflection makes things miss me instead of hitting me, not reliably but where it's close. Evasion works in conjunction with other powers - if you're leaping clear of something, you leap farther -"

They still have a book open at the Rings section! 

This ring continually grants the wearer the ability to avoid damage as if she had evasion. Whenever she makes a Reflex saving throw to determine whether she takes half damage, a successful save results in no damage.

And

This ring offers continual magical protection in the form of a deflection bonus of +1 to +5 to AC.

"- AC is how hard it is to hit you. Reflex saves are how the game handles evading fireballs and things like that."

"- that sounds about right." She doesn't like it. Describing how paladins work and being slightly wrong is less disconcerting than describing magic items in terms of a - system of rules for predicting fights.

"On a a scale of 1 to 5, how powerful would you rate your ring?" They could just fire a lot of bullets at it and see if 5% or 25% of them miss, but they're a bit short of bullets.

"It's the most expensive kind money can buy."

So there's a general consensus they should all get together and tie up Ilderia until she agrees to put the ring on, right?

Yes.

Absolutely.

"Are there more expensive kinds money can't buy?"

"Arazni was going to - I recall a conversation in which a god aiding our war effort told me she could - make it also do Sustenance."

"- Right. I suspect you should keep that and the Evasion one unless we can fit you a deflection suit," she says, "you're much more deadly for your toughness than anyone else here except Zero, and her armor deflects bullets."

"Probably, though the alternative is that I should give all the magic items to someone tougher and cast my spells and healing on other people and stay off the front lines, between being our enemy's primary target and being ....not very likely to survive another few days of this." Iomedae temperamentally disprefers this, very strongly, but the book made it again uncomfortable salient that these people think Aroden doesn't exist and in fact her plan to get through this war was 'Aroden does exist and favors me especially'.

"Possible, but I think you're the best shot we have - wait. The Barrett gun you're using has a range of one thousand eight hundred meters - about four hundred times a man's height. Do you think you could hit a man at that range?" 

"...depends if he's Evil or not. Smiting does precision sufficient to compensate for being outside the good range of the weapon, usually, though I've never dreamed of a weapon with that kind of range."

"Any Counts that wasn't evil would have joined us," she says, "but there might be some knights on the other side who it won't work on."

"We're all evil," says the designated sane person, "the question is if we're Evil, Ilderia." She looks at Iomedae with cold eyes. "Have you tested Solaris?"

"I didn't get close enough." Iomedae is upset at the implication in the woman's words that - no, maybe she's just upset that she's been treating Evil as a sign about people when there's a possibility that here it's a hallucinated game she's playing with no external observer at all. "...you're Evil, and Ilderia is not. War is bad for people and often makes them Evil but - it matters a lot how hard you're trying to protect the innocent and make the world better -"

Ilderia isn't trying to protect the innocent and make the world better, she's trying to avenge herself on someone who hurt her.

(Someone with superhuman Sense Motive might have noticed that Zero is really quite rattled, she's just concealing it effectively because she never shows any expression anyway.)

She will nod her head a miniscule degree.

Ilderia will give Iomedae a genuine smile. "Thank you, Iomedae. I'm pleased to know that. I should tell you, though, that there is a genuinely good person on this island, the superhero Luminosa, and that while she prefers us to the Tyrant she is not fighting on either side of the war. Though part of that might be that Solaris can kill her with a thought and probably no one else in the world can harm her."

"...if it is possible I'd very much want to talk to her. I should have asked if anyone like that existed earlier. ...I don't have to think you're doing everything right to work with you, and you are - doing right - the things that matter the most for whether I can work with you, like not lying, even where it'd be very convenient such as on the question of whether my god exists."

"I try to not be the worst person I can be. I can contact her if you want, or you can, though you'll need to let one of us show you how to use our instantaneous messaging machines."

"I'd appreciate learning how to use those anyway. ...trying to be a better person does actually make things better. People claim it won't and all their evils are necessary and they actually just aren't. ...in my experience." Which she thinks is fabricated.

"I have heard that there are places in the world where that is true, and where you can follow your heart and obey the human urge to righteousness and still triumph, and if I had rebelled against the Tyrant as soon as I could no longer honestly serve him I would have died swiftly and alone. I believe that Novapest is a world of evil where a refusal to fight it with whatever weapons you can find is a refusal to fight, as Luminosa refuses to fight."

"But I don't see why I should be evil when it won't even help."

"- technically in the framework I am familiar with not rebelling as soon as you could no longer honestly serve the Tyrant is Chaotic not Evil. I agree you can't always be Lawful Good if there are no gods and the government's evil. ...this is very important to me but I don't think there's a good case it's very important to you right now, and I'm happy to talk about it at some later time."