"That's - huh. Well, I'm sure that some gods exist and are really gods. They make clerics, and the strongest clerics can talk to their gods. And the gods choose clerics who will do what the god wants, and take away their power if they don't. As far as I know Gozreh does all those things, but their clerics in the Forest aren't strong enough to talk to him."

"I'm not sure it really matters, though? Something makes those people clerics. Maybe it's a different god with a different name and Gozreh really is - all of nature. Many people have magic without being clerics, not just druids. Maybe some of that magic is - given by someone, I don't know how we'd tell. The important thing is who gets the magic and what they do with it."

"Well, that's fair. But Itarii conceptualize ourselves as not-having-gods, and we have clerics of Gozreh." 

"What does it mean not to have gods? Some people in the Forest worship Gozreh, does that count? Or do you just mean being clerics?"

Feather is fascinated by learning about a new kind of people and would happily spend weeks doing just that if she didn't have to eventually go back to trying to understand the Outsiders, but she can definitely spend a few hours!

"Gozreh doesn't count to us because Gozreh is--in our minds, at least--just the world. Not having gods means..."

How much can she tell Feather? Feather isn't bad, but she's not an Itarii, and therefore not entitled to their secret lore. 

"...Itarii legends say that a very long time ago, we were--separated, from the gods. And since then we don't worship them or anything." 

Feather knows all about having secrets that aren't meant for outsiders! She bobs sympathetically.

"Most of the people in the Forest don't like the gods. Because they're mostly helping outsiders and not us, and the outsiders are mostly our enemies. And some gods are themselves enemies of the forests, like Aroden and Asmodeus and probably some others, and there's no god who's really on our side. I'm not sure even Gozreh are on the forests' side; they're said to care about wind and rain and waves, not about - people. We don't refuse cleric spells if they give them, but - they give them to the humans outside the forests, too."

"The only reason I know the name 'Asmodeus' is that I eavesdrop on the human towns a deeply weird amount, and it's the only god's name I know. --Except if you count Gozreh as a god," she adds belatedly. 

"I got history lessons! And I've talked to humans before and not just eavesdropped on them. Only the humans who live around the Forest though, I've never been this far from home."

(They flew through the Barrowood on the way here and it was incredible and really made Feather wish she could stay for more than a few days, but alas. Maybe on the way back...)

“…Can you tell me about the gods that all the other delegates are going to know and care about? So I understand what they mean better, at the convention.”

Oh wow, an exam she didn't prepare for Feather can totally do this! 

"So, um, bear in mind I don't know most of it yet, and also the humans seem to disagree with each other a lot. Maybe it's because there are humans here for the convention from so many different places, as far apart as this place is from the Forest. But here's what I've learned so far."

"Asmodeus is the god the humans followed until last year. All around here, in the huge area they call Cheliax. So everyone cares about the fact he's gone and they hate him now, or pretend to hate him."

"Asmodeus is double-alignment, Lawful and Evil, and he wanted the humans to sort of own everything and everyone else, and each other too. Like, every thing has an owner, every person has an owner, humans own the non-humans, stronger humans own other humans, all the way until the top two humans in the country were owned by Asmodeus himself. And he wanted everyone to hurt and terrorize the people they owned. And no, I have no idea why they went along with all this, because as far as I can tell all the humans were miserable all the time. Asmodeus is really weird, even for a double-alignment god."

"Iomedae is the goddess of fighting Asmodeus. So last year everyone here thought she was weak and bad at her job, and now she's suddenly won and everyone thinks she's strong and scary. I don't know if they'll follow her now - or rather, they don't know, they're waiting to see what the new Queen does. Iomedae's Lawful and Good."

"Erastil is the god of humans farming, Lawful and Good. I don't know why farming is Lawful and I don't think they do either. His clerics get the plant growth spell, and the humans relied on that a lot. After Asmodeus drove out all the clerics of Erastil and also made war on the forests they didn't have enough food, and now I think they're hoping Erastil will like them again."

"Pharasma is the goddess of safe childbirth. Most races that don't lay eggs are fine but humans have a lot of babies and even mothers die in childbirth, it so they like Pharasma. She's Neutral."

"There's a lot of smaller gods, or at least ones that fewer humans around here follow. Cayden, god of drinking alcohol, it may seem like a very specific thing but humans care about it a lot. Desna, goddess of butterflies, I don't know why there's a goddess of specifically butterflies but gods are weird and I guess it's better than not that. Abadar, Lawful god of buying and selling and trading, the humans who have a lot of money care about him and the others not as much. Uh... Oh yeah, Shelyn, the Good goddess of beauty and song and art. She sounds like the best one of the lot but I haven't met any of her followers yet."

"Oh yeah, and Aroden was the god they followed before Asmodeus but they say he died. A century or so ago, when a lot of horrible stuff happened around the world - I guess I don't know if you've heard about stuff like the Worldwound. Anyway, the one good thing that happened was Aroden dying, because he was the forests' biggest enemy. And since then the humans have been fighting themselves half the time and not bothering us so much. I don't know what Aroden was god of, besides humans destroying the forests and conquering the world, maybe he was like a Lawful Neutral version of Asmodeus and the humans went with the closest thing they could get."

"...I don't think I've heard of the Worldwound, but about a hundred years ago there were a few years of really bad storms. What is it that you mean about double-alignment being weird?"

"I mean, it feels a bit weird, like - doing two things at once is twice as hard and you're not doing either one very well? But really I don't understand it well enough, I haven't learned to become any double-alignment people yet. But - it seems like the gods who have just one alignment, or are True Neutral, are the sensible ones doing stuff it's easy to understand? Childbirth, beauty, trade, those are - kind of natural concepts. But Aroden was just Lawful and I don't understand him either - well, I guess 'conquer everything for ourselves' is easy to understand, I just hate that there doesn't seem to be anything else behind it... Maybe it's just me, maybe double alignments are hard to understand but that doesn't mean they're wrong or unnatural, right."

"What do you think about the alignments? You, or the Itarii, I guess. I was taught a lot about them but that's mostly important because I'm a druid, other people don't really have to care."

"So the thing is, alignments aren't necessarily something you're doing on purpose? Like, my tribe's chief is Lawful Good, but she's not trying to be Lawful Good, she just wants to be good and then a lot of things she cares about happen to be lawful. Like, alignments are just...descriptions? Of the way people are? And you can use them to point yourself places but even if you're not trying you're still going to be somewhere. Saying Lawful Good is weird sounds to me, like, Northwest is weird."