"They'll be very embarrassed about it when they've had a few hundred years to grow up in."

(To Xavier:)

"—but — if imagining the person who burned down the house full of kids you don't know isn't enough — do you not want to hurt people who hurt you???"

"Yes," he says. "That desire is Evil, and I hope that if I reach Heaven I will be cured of it."

???????

She's making a face rather like someone just told her in perfect seriousness that giving food to a starving person is Evil.

“I would want good neighbors in the summerlands, wouldn’t be much of a paradise if I’m living next to murderers and torturers. You’re right on that. But—“

“I’ve heard it said that keeping a soul out of hell is pulling a stone out from their castle, do it enough and it all collapses. The priest at school said hell would turn me into a stone too, so I think the saying is right. That one is just about trying to set people on the road to good instead of evil before they die, though. Don’t know about final blades.”

"If you want, I can summon a lantern archon who can say the same to you I have," Xavier says gently to Victoria. "I suspect the azata will say the same."

Wow this is a lot of moral philosophy. Korva was just thinking out loud about the state of the art in non-torturous executions.

"I already said I'd talk to the azata — are you saying you think Delegate Ibarra should just get away with everything forever, he — he was smiling about it, it was like a joke to him, he burned down a house full of children who'd done nothing wrong and he thought it was funny—"

Enric wishes he could just summon angels to back him up in arguments. 

It's one of the real perks of being third circle.

"I think that he should learn that what he did was wrong, and make amends. I understand that Nirvana causes the wicked in it to regret their evil actions and become better people. But we punish the wicked to protect society, not because it is Good in its own sake. There is tremendous suffering in the Evil afterlives, and some in the Neutral afterlives, and none in the Good, because hurting people is always an evil, even if it is often necessary."

"Nirvana is for everyone," she quotes at a whisper, and nods.

"He knows what he did was wrong! He said it was Evil! That's not — that doesn't — even if he decided today that he was never going to do anything Evil ever again that wouldn't make things right—"

"And would torturing him make things right? What would it take to make right the evil that he was tortured?"

"It would make things right if you did it right!!! Obviously you shouldn't, you shouldn't say that since he's Evil you can — kidnap his family and torture them too, if he has a family — that's the same kind of thing he did and it's not okay — but he shouldn't get to just be okay after doing something like that!"

"Would burning in the fires of Hell for a thousand years make things right?" It doesn't sound like a trick question, though of course it is.

... He thinks that this isn't working because clerics of Calistria are, usually, Evil, and practically never Good, and she's a cleric of Calistria and therefore probably Evil. He suspects an azata would have better odds but is not an azata, and is, indeed, about as far from being an azata as is possible. Maybe if more people join their voices to his again that will make this happen less?

So, we're all aware the Archmage Cottonnet has burned a thousand children in their homes, right? Yes? No? Talking about this wouldn't fix anything but it's honestly very distracting that people keep talking about children burning to death in their homes as the go-to example of something beyond the pale when they have, actually, all been kidnapped here by somebody who burned a thousand children to death in their homes.

Oh hey what if, when we’re summoning an angel to ask about good and evil, we see what it thinks about undead skeletons in the mines.

Not going to interrupt with that. If Xavier wants to switch teams and argue for less torture, that’s not the time to bring up a disagreement.

"—well, it would be better than him just going to the Good afterlives and having a great time? I guess — I guess a thousand years might be a little long but that's better than nothing and it's not like there's a secret afterlife that only punishes people the exact amount they deserve. I think." 

"If it is just for him to get a thousand years and you chose to give him a thousand and five, that choice is Evil. If he deserves a thousand years and you chose to give him nine hundred and ninety five, that choice, sparing him those five years, is Good. Because harming people is Evil, and saving people from harm is Good, even if they're awful people. They're still people. That's the point, of Nirvana. It's all people, in every plane. They would heal Asmodeus Himself, if they could, because it's the Good thing - the right thing - to do. There's a place for Calistria, I would be afraid of what happened to a society without her at all, but she's not Good."

"—she's not Evil either!! I think — Delegate Ibarra said he was a Calistrian, but it turned out what he meant was that he was willing to burn down houses full of children to get at their parents. And I think that's obviously Evil, the children didn't do anything wrong. But it's not wrong to give people what they deserve. —is this why you were saying Pezzack shouldn't have rebelled? Because you thought it was Evil to hurt Asmodean priests?? And instead you think people should... help them... even though they're Asmodean priests... or something??" She is not hiding her feelings particularly well; she clearly intends this as a serious question.

"No, sometimes we have to do lesser evils to prevent greater ones. None of those Asmodeans deserve what they'll get, but I won't weep for them anyway, not this side of death. Anyone who burned innocents, he should stand trial, and be executed, and if he got an amnesty, that's wrong, though a common wrong; many murderers and rapists got spared by the Queen's amnesty, who might have been caught, because the alternative was to keep all the Asmodean crimes not explicitly pardoned, and I have had to enforce some of those judgments and that would be much worse. Ibarra almost certainly deserves death. But he deserves no more than death; stasis in a Blade protects the world from him, and that's enough. It's not satisfying, because we are not Good by instinct, but it's enough."

"...the Queen's what?"

"After executing the majority of the Asmodean nobility and the worst of their supporters Her Majesty the Queen passed a general amnesty to forgive all crimes committed before the passing of the amnesty."

"Isn't the Queen supposed to be Good??" 

She was already pretty skeptical but she'd thought the Queen was trying harder to pretend than that.