Alternate title: "I am as a personal favor begging you sick little freaks to act normal for 5 minutes".
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I am Emmet Sophian, cleric of Gruhastha, god of truth and wisdom, and I am writing this to address the people of Cheliax.
I do not myself live in Cheliax, at present, though that might change in the future. And as always, all the words I say are equally true whoever might be reading them.

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Cheliax has recently become free from rule by Diabolists. One of the many meanings of this is freedom of speech and thought, for people hopefully no longer need to fear (even if some still do) that their thoughts and beliefs would be punished by the rulers above them (speech is more complicated matter, but it is still much less likely to be punished than before).
However, even if it is good for people to be free to believe and say whatever they want, what they believe and say is often not true. Not out of malice, but out of ignorance, and out of a deeper lack, not just of information, but of Enlightenment*.

There is much knowledge, and advice on cultivating Enlightenment, that could help people in Cheliax. I will focus on the parts I can explain simply, and will help the most, based on my understanding of Chelish life (that might of course be incomplete).

* Technically an untranslatable Vudran term, possibly coined by Irori, meaning something like "well built algorithm of behavior".

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In Cheliax, you had to be Asmodean. There was a narrow path you must not stray from, for everything else is heresy. All of society should have equally been following the same path (even if it is obvious that not everyone did, on practice).
In most non-Asmodean countries, including, hopefully, Restored Cheliax, that is not the case. There are many gods that can be worshipped, many ways of life, all of which, while different, are acceptable and legal. Some people might disapprove of any of them, but not everyone will, not with the force of the whole government.
Some actions and ways of life would still be outlawed, including, I expect, the worship of Evil gods.
But still, instead of a single narrow path, there are now many paths, all leading to metaphorical cities, fine to walk unless you stray between them, into a metaphorical forest or swamp.

Some would say this is madness, Chaos, not knowing which action is right and expected of them, not knowing who to obey, which truths to believe. A possible response to that is that is that only when having many options, and not told which one is correct, can your choice truly be right, can the ideas you believe be true, can your acts truly be loyal.

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An important question is, what is Good? Why is Good? A question many ask even outside of Cheliax.
Many answers exist. I will give mine: simple, imperfect, and yet hopefully mostly accurate.
It is Evil to harm others. It is Good to help others. It is Neutral to do neither, and just live your life.
Reality is of course more complicated. Some actions both harm and help people. Some harm one group of people and help another. But that is the core.

You do not have, I believe, a duty to be Good. You do have a duty, of a sort, to not be Evil. If you live your life without harming others, that is enough. No one in their right mind would outlaw being Neutral (the Diabolists tried, of course, by not only forbidding Good, but also forcing people into Evil).
But if you want to be Good, to understand what it is, the core is simple. Almost everyone reading this, unless they are very unwise, wants their life to be better, wants to have the things in life that they want. To believe in Good is just to believe, that just as it is better for you to have what you want, it is better for others to have what they want, too.
It is not always possible, but it is better, it is what you should strive for. That is Good. Even if you dedicated every minute of your life to helping others, not everyone in the world would become happy, there would still be suffering. So that would be excessive. But you should try, at least sometimes. To help people, if you see they have a problem you could help them with, and they want your help (the last part is important. It is never true help if people don't want to be helped). You can try it, and hopefully understand.

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And lastly.
Many people, in this new time, as in old times, call for punishment, for revenge, against those who are considered deserving it.
I believe, and believe myself to be right, that this a mistake, and will not lead to a better world.

This is not just an Asmodean mistake. Many people, Evil, Lawful, and Good, believe in hatred and punishment (but the diabolists cultivated it in people as best as they could, for it is a simple and effective path towards Evil). That if you did something good, you deserve suffering or loss. But that is not true. Or at least, that is not Good.
No one deserves, anything, ever. It is good for people to be happy, and bad for them to suffer. At times, it is inevitable that for one man to be happy, another must be suffering. This is not good. It would be even better if both were happy, were it possible. It is hard to look at the world knowing that some would have to suffer for no reason, and so you tell a lie to yourself, tell that the suffering of some is good and just, as they are sinners. But it is not.
(One fact that often surprised defectors from Infernal Cheliax, and was even the reason for the defection of some, was discovering that Good cares about them, not only the rest of Good. That Iomedae wants to save from Hell not only her own worshippers, but Asmodean clerics too, for the torments of Hell are always bad, no matter who is tormented. And that Nirvana wants to accept all souls, even of the Evilest mortals. Though I admit i know much less on the thoughts of gods and outsiders that I do about justice and the thoughts of mortals).
Punishments are often essential. As is fighting your enemies. The goal in those is to prevent the bad man from doing whatever bad thing he was doing. Which, as I said, must mean he will inevitably suffer, or at least be prevented from achieving the result he wants. This is necessary for Good, sometimes, but is not itself Good. If the punishment doesn't prevent Evil happening in the future, then it is not Good, not just, not righteous. If an enemy tries to harm you, you should prevent it. If the only way to prevent it is killing him, kill him. Not otherwise. The prevention is good. The killing isn't.
Do not hate sinners. Do not hate criminals. Do not hate your enemies. Because it will not help you, and might even harm you.
You do not need to hate your enemies, of course. You need to only see them as they truly are. If they try to harm you, or someone else you should protect, take action that stops them. If it harms them or causes them suffering, accept that. Do not desire harm or suffering to your enemies. They do not deserve it. Deserving does not exist, when you see the truth. The desire to cause suffering to your enemies, in belief that will make your life better, might blind you to paths that will in fact make your life better.

All that is true even when "the enemy" or "the sinner" is you. Do not punish yourself, do not think you deserve suffering, no matter what Evil you did. If you think your actions are wrong, stop doing them. If you are unable to control yourself, find ways to prevent yourself from your evil action in other ways. Relying on other people might be good, though it might not work in Cheliax, where other people know no more about Good than you do. If suffering is the only sure way to stop yourself from Evil action, cause yourself suffering. It will not still be Good, only the result will be Good. And ask yourself, is it the truth, that suffering is the only way to stop yourself from wrong actions? Or are you just believing in the great lie, that most succumb to, the lie that punishment is essential and just, that the guilty must suffer?

Enemies exist, but you shouldn’t seek them where they don’t exist. There is much Evil in the world, and it will only be happy to see good people, or at least with potential for Good, eat each other alive for imagined crimes and sins. This already happened in the civil war that gave power to the Diabolists. Try to not let that happen again.

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Grow wiser, and seek the truth.

Emmet Sophian.



 

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It's a bit longer and nicer looking of a pamphlet.  Someone was charging an entire silver for it, and they didn't seem to know what it was about (perhaps they are a reseller?), but Estella has money to spend and this pamphlet looks different.

And... it's a serious sincere pamphlet, with what seems like standard Goodness (insofar as Estella can even recognize that)… so much for the bit of entertainment she was hoping for!  She skims some anyway.  There are a lot of concepts she doesn't recognize and could only vaguely guess, and she mostly doesn't bother trying to guess.  (Among them, "freedom of speech and thought", Enlightenment, the way it talks about paths.)  No punishments sound nice.  She's been happier since she hasn't had anyone to spend time hating, but she thinks it would be mistaking cause and effect to claim she should simply stop hating some people, as opposed to entirely avoiding them in the first place.

She decides to make this pamphlet a donation to the Abbey she resides in.  Top back shelf, across from the Asmodean texts.  Thea doesn't trust any pamphlet at all after she caught just a few blatant contradictions with more standard Holy Texts.  Irori may advocate for considering many sources of wisdom, but there are limits, and Estella doubts a minor God with a name she doesn't recognize is particularly relevant to Irori anyway.

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Of the students of the Abbey that break the Abbess's rules to read pamphlets, they mostly go for Badgers. (And pamphlets from the Badger's rival/master the Wandering Wolf!)

But one student, who spends every bit of free time, rewards, and selectable punishments she can on reading and writing does read it.  To her, it sounds mostly like something Iomedae would say (she's read The Acts of Iomedae over 6 times and was only distracted from further rereads by a glut of romance novels), maybe the writer copied off some of some commentaries of The Acts of Iomedae?  Not that she knows what those commentaries say yet, (the Abbess says they will get commentaries on it eventually)!  And the way they talk about paths reminds her of how the Abbess talks about Irori's teachings!  Maybe she can be a Monk-Paladin one day?

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Someone reposts the entire pamphlet but on cheaper paper with a overtitle of “THIS IS GOOD, SO THIS IS WHY PHARASMA IS EVIL ACTUALLY!”

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