"I don't think the pressure is aimed at me in particular. Even the mob last night wasn't about me. But I do get terribly sick of the rhetoric. They keep equivocating, you see, between becoming a better person and being spared the fires of Hell, and with every word they speak I know perfectly well they'd just as soon throw me to the flames and get only happier about it the harder I might try to avoid it."

"Yes. That would be very aggravating. My condolences." She considers him; it seems like he... wants something from this conversation. Direction, maybe.

"So. The gods of Good have nothing to offer you, really, except maybe a flesh to stone and a promise to not forget you in a closet. Do you want to be a better person even so? Or hang the hypocrites and their cruelty cloaked in righteousness? Or something else?"

"I don't think I'm that bad. I was very much a rascal when I was younger, but I've settled down in the last several years. I can imagine repenting, if it seemed like it'd help to do it as - a discrete activity, rather than just going, hm, I suppose that generally speaking it is the case that if I want a thing I should pay for it instead of seizing it wherever I see it lying around, yes. It'd be in a very Abadaran way, though, like that."

"So? It'd be more honest than half of the fools crowding Good churches they don't believe in," she says, in this crowded church of a Good god.

"Maybe, but their insincerity can buy more of value than all my insight." Sigh.

"In the sense of your own personal fate... yes. In the sense of what you care about here in the material..." She shrugs. "Well. That's up to you, isn't it?"

"I'm mostly comfortable, except when people have been recently murdered around me. I suppose I could spring for the Raise for my servants if their remains weren't burned beyond recognizability but that's a couple of quality magic weapons right there to shoot monsters with. - we get the mountain kind, in Juncosa, not the forest kind."

“I’m not going to take offense if you tell me monsters wander out of the forest and kill people. It’s true, and they do. Anyway, I am by no means attempting to be your conscience. Do whatever you want, you’re the one that has to live with yourself. You just seem to me like you’re… attempting to find direction? Helping living things to grow is, as you might notice, kind of my whole profession.”

"I don't suppose there's an obscure forest beastie that would love it in Hell but tragically is destined for the Abyss or something."

“To trade in your place? Then it’d need to be sapient, that’s the sort of devil-logic I’d expect…” She stops her map copying and thinks. “… An ettercap might be amenable, if you can convince it that Hell’s a new place to spin clever webs. I doubt any goblins would want anything of the sort, but they vary enough you might find one that can be bribed anyway. One of the fey might be able to get you out of the deal, though there are no guarantees that you’d like the result…” she trails off. “I’ll think about it. If you end up looking for any woods solutions, avoid any deals with hags, that will go poorly regardless.”

"I have to admit I was not expecting you to have anything in mind. I would love to be introduced to an... ettercap... or amenable goblin, if one would like to be pitched on the idea, though I must also confess I've tried this sort of thing before and the contract devil was not too impressed."

Shrug. “I don’t know any personally, trying to find something appropriately Evil that would make such a deal would be dangerous, and I cannot say if a devil would accept the trade, but. Were you expecting me to tell you to repent and accept your fate? If only we could send that rhetoric to the Hells in your place.”

"It would crisp up so prettily in the flames of Avernus, wouldn't it?"

“And spare us all the drudgery! Alas.” Back to map copying. “It sounds more likely than ordinary men accepting such a trade, but, well. I think life extension is the better bet to buy time to find other options, frankly.”

"Do I look that old? I think I have a little while to look into sifting through goblins and orcs and such. Barbarian orcs, not Baron Ramirez et al, they've cleaned up very nicely."

“Elf,” she points out, dryly. “Humans often all seem as children to me, but forced to be adults despite that. I think more time would suit all of you, frankly.”

"You're probably right."

“Mhm,” she hums, and she’s back to map copying.

The banquet has been quite ravaged by now; it doesn’t look like anything of it will last the full hour, actually.