Did he experience even a moment of - decision - about channeling negative, or is he just evil and possibly in need of the Hell Is Bad And You Can Still Channel Negative If You're An LN Abadaran lecture.

He thinks he did experience a moment of decision, but he's not totally sure; anyway, he was aiming for negative going in because it seemed like it had the most interesting research applications.

He can confirm either way with Detect Evil, right? Can he check himself in a mirror?

Yes, a mirror works fine, or just looking down at yourself, auras cover the whole body. This will only work if he's got enough levels in something to detect.

No reading from Detect Evil.

He's a Level 15-20 [Trader]. Would that read? (Other people can volunteer levels and calibrate readings; it looks like you start to produce an aura around Level 12-13, though dips in other classes confounds it a bit.)

So apparently he's Lawful Neutral. Blai is too, probably, unless he's nudged Gooder recently.

Well, that's good.

"Do people from our world actually go to Hell and Heaven and so on?" someone asks. "How would we know?"

"I don't know or have a good way to find out; Scrying is fifth circle and Sending fourth."

"Our kind of scrying can't find dead people, wherever if anywhere they go. Maybe your kind is different."

    "Is there a way to replicate your Scrying without a fifth-circle cleric? Temporary buffs, or something. This is important to clarify, I think," says the Abadaran.

"There's magic items that can let anyone scry but I do not have one and would need to be able to cast the spell to make one even if I otherwise knew how."

    "Can we import one from an, uh, inevitable?" says someone who is aware of how their texts were procured.

"A crystal ball? ... maybe, though they're pretty big and I'm having trouble imagining an arbiter carrying one, if nothing else, and Planar Inquiry can't summon anything too big. There's a spell that can repair broken magic items, so in principle we could buy it in pieces, but I think restoring a crystal ball would be beyond me, since it would have been created by someone substantially more powerful than I am."

"Could a skilled [Mage] study and repair a deconstructed crystal ball? Our scrying orbs are [Mage]-artificed; do yours require a [Cleric]?"

"Golarion wizards can also make them. I have no idea if [Mages] could repair a crystal ball taken to pieces. I'll see if I can price one at all the next time I talk to Shfan, it's bound to be grotesquely expensive but potentially very high value, and maybe Shfan can just get someone to cast Ant Haul on it, at this kind of price range."

Nod nod wait

"Can we get Golarion spellbooks?"

"Maybe? They're - well, smaller than a crystal ball, but in most situations less of a commodity item, they belong to wizards who are very attached to them. I can ask. - I can ask after first showing some people my one-page cantrip, the one I use to clean things sometimes." He got modestly better at this before he started spending every free minute praying.

Most of them are not actually of an arcane persuasion, but the concept is exciting in the abstract!

He can cast (but not use most of the functions of) Prestidigitation and he has a rolled-up worn-edged spellbook page to re-hang it whenever he drops it, though he can catch almost every time.

The person who asked about it can't even start to figure out the spell from a demo and a spellbook page they have no idea how to read.

"Probably a job better for the Aracanorium," they admit, chagrined.

"It was well thought of but almost no one is a wizard and a cleric both."

"Statistically, or are they oppositional? I'm a Level 4 [Mage]."

"Statistically. It can be done, most people just focus."

Nod.

Then book club can resume book clubbing.

Blai asks Shfan next time he calls it, but it doesn't seem to think they can get a crystal ball for love or money and is less but still very pessimistic about a spellbook.

Over the next week, the new candidates get onboarded. The gods aren't as aggressive on picking clerics after that first set, but they do pick up a cleric of Desna. More people pick up [Acolyte].

Some of the groups begin discussing—not a church, not yet, but events, performances or readings of the holy texts.

Translated books get distributed and are the talk of the town for a while. It doesn't escape the public's notice that there are a lot of gods in these books that Blai didn't talk about? Does Blai have any more details?

(The program manager reminds him that he's supposed to give two lectures a month. Repeating his last one to a new audience is fine but it may be useful marketing to feed public curiosity.)

There are lots of gods he didn't mention! Some of them are basically fine and just not useful in the right way (Shizuru, Cayden Cailean); others are often fine but not predictably fine because they can and will pick Evil clerics and aren't as straitlaced about them being positive-sum kinds of Evil like Abadar is; and some are just plain evil. It wasn't really possible to redact all information about the undesirable gods (you can't get through the Melodies without running into a lament for Zon-Kuthon, you can't understand the Acts without knowing who Urgathoa is, Sarenrae spends a lot of ink on Rovagug, etcetera), but he recommends against trying to establish churches for anyone else and advises everyone who's picked up [Prayer] to NOT point it in those directions.