[Agema]

You did the right thing, I think: you can cast returning from assassinations and horrors, but you have to be away from the home province.

If your pretender has astral or air, if you wanted to Dom push or something, you could move him out with teleport or cloud trapeze, and hope he lasts a while before there's an attack that he returns from. Although if the god was unable to defeat likely attackers, planning to replace him (empowering a mage, building temples) in some way might be a cheaper alternative than perpetually spending gems dodging bullets.

Assassins and assassin spells can be effectively neutralised with extra commanders as chaff, assassins can be removed by heavy patrolling/PD, and spells by shields.