"And Iomedae, being both Lawful and Good, is concerned with doing things in orderly, honorable ways. But there are others who are, say, Good but not Lawful, or Lawful but not Good- Those would be the type who will break a law or promise to help, or those who follow honor but make no particular effort to aid others... Is it supposed to be difficult to tell what sort you are?"

"There are spells for it; you can just guess, without them, and you have to for anyone who isn't powerful enough."

"...Powerful? As in, a mayor, or community leader?"

"No, like an adventurer. Like, I can cast third circle spells, but a new cleric would generally only be able to cast zeroth and first circle spells; I got more powerful fighting demons." And then there was a certain irregular blip but he's forbidden to lie not forbidden to not tell everyone his tragic backstory.

"Demons. Right. We don't have magic that gets more powerful over time. You get more skilled- Or you die, or have a close scare and start taking it more cautiously, I suppose-"

"People who aren't spellcasters have this too, but without monsters it would be much harder to come by the kinds of adventuring that do it."

"It seems difficult to tell apart- That not being a thing, and that being a thing that doesn't happen very often. There's always tales of some unkillable warrior or a woman who can shoot the wings off a fly at a hundred paces or what have you. I'm strong and tough compared to my compatriots, or at least I like to think so- But a polar bear would rip me apart without having to try very hard. The limits of flesh are stark."

"Polar bears are a serious problem, I'd have trouble with one unless I prepared spells specifically intending to fight animals and probably even then. But someone who was... sixth circle, say, or a non-spellcaster of a comparable power, they'd make very short work of one."

"...Guns, stubborn skill with a bow that make her at least as threatening as a gunner," a nod at June, "and weight of numbers do a lot to make up for it. The healing, the Create Food, the Endure Elements... I suppose if you told me genius engineers had invented devices that do these things I wouldn't be quite so - uncomprehending-"

"When I hear that no magic was involved in making any of the things you have that seems at least as incomprehensible to me."

"I'm sure miss Nuts would be happy- Er, could explain to you at considerable length. I think it's all tools and knowledge building on tools and knowledge. The more you know, the more you can find out. The more you have, the more you can then build. Without monsters destroying things, perhaps we made steady progress here?"

"I don't think that's monsters so much as apocalypses. The cold here is a - slow apocalypse; Golarion had a very advanced civilization, maybe in this respect as well as magically, I wouldn't know, and then it was destroyed by a fast apocalypse and took time to rebuild."

"Well. With any luck, New London's not letting the frost keep them down. What is 'magic' anyway, but some property of the world like steam or light or metal that people have learned to manipulate..."

"I think wizards think about it that way; divine magic is different."

"Because Iomedae is doing it? Well, where does she get it?"

"She ascended to godhood by using a magical artifact her own patron from when she was mortal left behind, the Starstone, and he used wizardry for that, I believe - he was an archmage - but I don't know what powers gods in general. Maybe Pharasma, the Creator, but Her I definitely can't explain."

"How do I pray to Pharasma to protect and ferry up someone?" June interrupts suddenly. "All those graves out there..."

"- the most appropriate one I can remember goes - 'Lady of Graves, see to it that the soul who once resided here moves freely on to Your court and accepts his eternity there'."

June nods stiffly and heads outside into the cold wind.

"She has not had an easy life. Not that it's an excuse. None of us have, really. And - someone certainly has to tend to the dead, if they're being collected after all."

"I'm surprised you don't have more of a ghost problem."

"I wouldn't know about ghosts. Never seen one."

"Saw a zombie once," Nuts comments.

"-Wait, really?"

"Yeah. Dead guy wandering along the south cliff one day while I was cleaning the smokestack. Had some kind of machine grafted to him that was walking for him. I watched him through the telescope for an hour. Creepy. I'd swear he looked right at me."

"And you didn't tell anyone?"

Nuts snorts. "Nobody believed me."

"- do zombies around here not walk without machines?"

"Never seen a zombie that didn't have a machine."

Joseph says, "One hears stories... But I've never heard any credible stories. It's all- Vengeful woodsman angry enough to dig themselves out of their graves, or angry ghosts of the starved wiped out this or that isolated village, when what truly ended them was more likely the cold or hunger or scurvy than the vengeful dead."