"Does that... work? What I was taught is that, if you're only helping others because you selfishly want to escape Hell - not that I'm saying that's a bad motivation! But if you're not helping others because you actually care about them, then it's not really Good? I'm not sure what Pharasma thinks, this is more - I was taught a guide to being Good, not a guide to escaping Hell if you're already Evil and Lawful."

(Feather's teachers' guide to being Evil said, as far as she remembers, 'to be Evil is to be selfish, so consider if you selfishly want to end up in an Evil afterlife instead of staying Neutral'. There are as many Evil druids as Good ones though, and they're probably just as Wise, so Feather assumes they must have some solution that she never bothered studying because she chose Good very early on.)

"So - I'm still new at this, I've been learning from the foreign Shelynites who've come in to help establish a church here but we haven't covered everything and honestly spend a lot of time talking about music - but one metaphor I overheard someone using was, imagine your soul's a cup of water and you're painting a picture and every now and then you clean off your brush in the cup of water. It'll turn the first color you use very fast, because water doesn't have its own color, so say you're painting in yellow, your soul will look very yellow. If you want your soul to be not yellow any more, say you'd rather have it be green, the fastest and best way to do that is with blue. It's a very normal thing to do, if you've got evil stuck in your soul, to want to drown it out with good, even if all things considered you're more of a neutral sort. It'll work fine, if you're not too old, and if you are too old maybe you save up to have Archmage Naima reincarnate you so you have more time. And then if you dump out your paint water at the end of your life on something white so the Judge can have a look at it, it'll look green. It doesn't matter exactly how much you meant all the evil you did first or all the good you did after. It got on the canvas, and it got there on your paintbrush, and it's there in your soul. Maybe it'll be bluer than it is green, even, if you tried very hard at being good and were just getting by with the evil.

"But also? Any time you want, you can dump out your whole cup, if you really mean it. You can chuck it all in the sea and say, that's not me, that's not what I was ever meant for, I am deciding right now to quit all of that forever and getting a refill, I'm going blue blue blue blue. And that works, too, and even Pharasma knows it - if you really mean it. There's a spell for that, too, called Atonement, which is so expensive and people only ever buy it if they need their alignment for their magic to work and have to have it all finessed right that very day. But it works without the spell, too, just - lagging a little bit while you reassure yourself that you really really meant it."

"I know about that spell! Druids have it too. And everything else you say makes sense. I'm just not sure if it counts as Good, if you're helping others just to escape Hell and you don't actually care about them. It's like - if you're very rich and you give all your stuff to poor people, does that count as Good because you're helping them, or is it neutral because you're selfishly buying something you want more than you want the stuff you gave away?"

"This isn't really important to me personally, it's just interesting. I'm Good already and I like it that way. I think I learned what I wanted from you but if you want to keep talking for a bit I'd enjoy that! Do you want to ask me anything?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by 'counts', if you don't mean 'counts' for Pharasma. It can still really help the people you help no matter how you feel about it. - How'd you become a druid?"

"Counts for Pharasma, yes. Although it's better for the rest of us too, if people really want to be Good and won't just stop doing Good things once they're no longer Evil."

Feather is happy to tell the story of how she became a druid! She may require some prompting for clarifications from Laia, since (as Feather is painfully aware) it can be very hard to explain a foreign way of life.

Looking back at it, her life was very - focused. Always on the same trajectory, even before she knew what it was aiming at, and before anyone could know if she would make it. Great Hoot the giant owl was the first to recognize her potential, perhaps, but it was only that - potential.

She studied with the other young kids, the things that everyone wants their children to know - woodscraft, survival skills, social skills, the war for the forest's survival that will touch all their lives when they are older. She studied the things she wanted, beyond that, found teachers who liked her and who considered her worth their time, until she was recommended for advanced classes. There she learned more, about everything in the forest and about the world outside it, about things that would not touch their lives unless they went out to seek them. She learned about all the different kinds of people in the forest - not to understand them fully, which is a much more advanced skill, but how they live, what they want and fear and like, to communicate without words when she does not share a language. To make friends.

The outsiders call people with those kinds of skills rangers. It's not inaccurate, but Feather thinks the term is too broad. Most of a ranger's skills - tracking, hunting, fighting, stealth, moving quickly, knowing the terrain and what you should eat and what is deadly - are ordinary life skills in the forest. Everyone in her extended family is a ranger, the way outsiders use the word, even if they can't cast any spells. Feather and her friends were taught meditation, ethics, working together with people of different races and alignments, world history, fighting with staves, predicting the weather. All valuable life skills, that also just happened to be the ones most useful to those of them who were approved to join the final set of classes.

By the time Feather was told what she must do to be initiated as druid, the only new information was in the remaining steps, not the destination. She worked and studied long and hard for those remaining steps, but she already felt that she could only be a druid - or a failed one.

Feather thinks a druid is the best thing to be - at least for someone like her. One reason for this is that if there's anything better to be then a druid can learn to become that other thing, even if it's something she couldn't become any other way like 'a dragon'. But another reason is that - druids are charged with keeping and improving the world, for everyone in it.

Feather really, really wants to improve the world.

"I... don't think you can learn to become any other thing you want by being a druid about it. Maybe you can learn to turn into any shape, but you're meeting kinds of people here who are, like, clerics and wizards and nobles and things like that, I don't think changing shape would make you one of those."

"It's true, a druid can't turn into a cleric or anoble," Feather agrees. "A cleric isn't really something you are, it's something a god makes you be, and they could decide to stop and you'd still be you. A noble is something a Queen makes you be."

"I don't know if a druid can become a wizard. Some people think that wizards, or at least archwizards, are different kinds of people, and maybe being a druid would help with it if it required a - very different mindset. A druid might be - good at changing the way they think to better understand and fit a god, maybe? But that's not what I meant."

"A very wise druid can learn to become an elf, or a dwarf, or an owl - the kind of owl who's as smart as a human - or a dragon, or even an elemental. These are all very different kinds of people. They're not just body shapes. An elf isn't exactly like a human except with different looking eyes and ears, although an elf's mind might be more like a human than an owl. Different people - races, or creatures - are different in mind, as much as in body, and you need - that is, we druids need - to learn all about them and really understand them, in order to become a person like they are. If you know an elf - or a treant, or a dragon, or a giant owl - and you talk to them a lot and get to know them well, you can tell they're different from humans, even if you don't have any druid training."

"I know there are wizard spells that just change your body shape for a little while but leave your mind the same, maybe that's the confusion here. It's not how druids do it. When I become an owl I'm not - an owl-shaped human, I'm a smart owl who's also me, as a person, with my memories and personality and thoughts. But still an owl and not a human. It's - hard to explain in words, that's part of why it takes druids many years to learn how to do it."

"That sounds so unpleasant, actually? I know in Nirvana they say everyone becomes a new shape but I think they still think like themselves."

"Well you certainly don't have to do it if it's unpleasant! And - it would in fact be unpleasant if you didn't learn to properly be that kind of creature before you did it, or if after you learned you decided you wouldn't enjoy being it. I love being an owl, I chose it as my favourite shape, that doesn't mean all druids like being owls."

"I don't know what Nirvana does exactly but presumably it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable, that wouldn't be Good at all. Maybe it helps people learn about being new kinds of people. I think that understanding different kinds of people, the way you understand other humans, probably helps with being Good, because it helps you see everyone as people and not care about their race. Some humans are Good but only really care about other humans, and if they care about elves or halflings it's because they superficially look like humans, and when everyone is a different creature regardless of what they were born as, it helps you care equally about everyone. But I don't think Nirvana would do that by making someone be a person they didn't enjoy being."

"What about when Archmage Naima reincarnates people and they wind up turned into something new, like that lady in the pamphlet who was turned into a kobold?"

"When she - what? I haven't heard about that." She hadn't heard the word before, but her new magical layer of understanding Chelish informs her it means... Dying and being reborn in a new body? "Why... did she turn someone into a kobold? That sounds - cruel, if the woman didn't want to be a kobold and didn't know how." On top of apparently being a newborn kobold, or maybe an egg.

"Oh, she would've paid for it! - not specifically to be a kobold, I assume everybody hopes they'll be a human again or maybe some especially nice nonhuman species like an elf or something, but the spell the Archmage uses doesn't let you pick, the important thing is that whatever it turns you into, you'll be young and healthy again, and have longer to go blue. I mean Good."

"Huh. That's - interesting? I guess if you're Evil and really want to be Good and are too old to change, then it's worth it. I hope there's a way for the humans who end up as kobolds to learn how to be kobolds, though. Or at least to be comfortable."

"I haven't met any yet. I did meet one who looks Garundi now, it was sort of funny with the posh accent, but luckily she was still human. Or he was, I'm not sure how to - it can sometimes make a man into a woman or the other way around."

"I guess now every time I meet someone I'll need to keep in mind the possibility they're actually a human mind in body they're not used to? And are probably Evil. Um." Feather can see her goal of learning to understand Chelish humans recede before her eyes. "I - guess that's why they say archmages can do very strange and novel things no-one else can."

"I don't think it's very fair to look at somebody who got turned into a kobold or a dwarf or something and say, oh, that means they're probably Evil! It means they want to work on being Good and they think it will be hard so they want to work hard. They didn't just give up."

"You're right! Thanks." Feather smiles. "I'll keep that in mind. Do you know how widespread this is?" Maybe if the archmage turns all the Evil humans into kobolds and random other races it will help them learn that different races are equally people. Feather isn't sure if 'build Nirvana on Golarion' is possible but she'd be very happy to learn someone's trying.

"It costs about a hundred dollars? And there are all kinds of warnings posted about how a lot of people really hate even more than you'd expect being in a new body. So - it's expensive, but less expensive than a slave or a city house, and not everyone who'd maybe benefit will decide it's for them. But there are a few just in the convention, I think mostly nobles, and more scattered around."

"I don't - really know how many people can afford that much," Feather confesses. "Even if it's all their life savings that they're spending on having another chance to make Good. I'm just wondering if it means a few years from now you'll end up with one human in ten thousand going for it, or one in ten."

"Either way, it's a very Good thing, giving everyone a second chance, it's - the essence of redemption, right? I'm really glad to hear the archmage is doing it. Hopefully with more time people can learn how to be comfortable and enjoy their new lives." Feather can't exactly offer to teach druidic meditation to a tenth of the humans in Cheliax and she isn't sure what else would work, for someone already stuck in an unfamiliar body.

"Yeah, I hope they can all get used to whatever they wind up with or at least afford another try if their first is awful. I heard she turned somebody into a flail snail, I don't even know what that is!"

"Wow. Can she end up with, like, any kind of creature? I've never seen a flail snail either but I've at least heard of them. They live underground and have their own language and their own magic. They're not very cunning but they're very wise. And they're, well, snails, really big ones with beautiful coloured shells, and every snail has a different pattern." Half the reason Feather remembers this is that her mother told her made-up tales of pretty flail snails going on adventures when she little. 

"I think she wouldn't turn anybody into an owl or anything like that, just various kinds of person - no idea if she could get a dragon or not out of this spell. I guess if someone had to be a snail at least it's a pretty kind of snail with magic."

An owl is a person. Laia is the nicest human Feather has met in this city and may be the most likely to believe her about it, but she is also the person Feather least wants to offend or drive away by explaining what Good really requires.

"If you have to be someone you don't like or aren't prepared for, it's best to at least be someone pretty," she agrees instead. "I hope being beautiful helps that person learn to like their new body, and others to like them too."

"I hope so too. ...is flying as fun as it looks?"

"YES! It's incredible. You get to go everywhere and see so much of everything, and there are so many things that look really different from above. You see - whole new kinds of beauty, of the ways some things are arranged, the way they work. You can see really big things, like whole rivers and woods, all at once and appreciate them for what they are. And you can swoop and dive and you can float almost in one place, and you can dance and sing in the sky where everyone can see and hear you if you want, or you can fly stealthily at night as an owl and just enjoy looking at the world."

"And - this is one reason why a bird isn't just a human with a flight spell. Humans can barely climb trees, humans think the world is flat, when I'm human I know there's miles and miles of air above us but I can't really feel it, the way if you were deaf you'd still know sound exists but that's not the same experience as hearing. As a bird you understand that height really exists for the first time in your life. You can live in the sky and fly close to the sun and - it's like the whole world has become so much bigger, and so much more wonderful."