"Restricting ourselves specifically to the question of torture performed by the decedent, does Hell believe the Newton test to be applicable?"

"Our weekend exercise this time will be your first solo assignments on the topic of torture," says Vicar Rey.  "Eight assorted subjects are available for you to divide amongst yourselves.  I'll be grading Vicar Vilar's students and he mine, on your efficiency at producing the most cooperative and pathetic state possible by Starday evening - I recommend leaving them able to talk until this point - and then over the course of Sunday your ability to draw out your subject's death in a flashy and miserable fashion, including passively, as you will still be attending church services.  Over such a limited time period there's less need to worry overmuch about infection.  I know some of you are on surer footing with the minimally bloody methods we've been over previously like the water cure but when you mean to end the day with a man dead it's a distraction from the classics, the 'showier' options, the things you break out if you ever need to torture someone in front of others.  Tools are provided but you are permitted to improvise."

They file into the next room to look at the subjects.  There's an orc with one arm, a handful of old halflings, a twitchy woman who might be feebleminded or just prematurely senile, a six year old half-orc girl with a cleft lip.  They're all shackled.  Marti goes straight for the six-year-old.  It's not strategic, Blai thinks, how "cooperative" can a six-year-old possibly be after being tortured all day - but of course the larger game is getting Asmodeus's attention and maybe it's a good choice for that.  Imma elbows Blai, tells him to go get her a halfling; he gets two, one for her and one for him, her pick which is which.  Imma takes the spindlier one.  She's a short, slight girl, relying on Blai (correctly pegged as an obedient-dog sort of boy) to keep her from getting pregnant at this most awkward of times, by having him stand nearby and look solid and imposing and run minor errands for her to make everyone clear that he'd stand in their way.  It won't take much force for Imma to break the spindly halfling's bones, Blai supposes.  He winds up with a chubbier one and it's staring at him and probably having opinions and even when he's killed it it'll go on having opinions in Hell.  It is unquestionably pathetic to care about that but he can't stop it from running through his head.

They all get their own little chambers to set up in, with barred windows sufficient for the teachers to look in and screams to carry, but it'll prevent soft torturers' voices from being heard in adjacent cells, unpracticed attempts at a terrifying torturer's stare from reaching additional victims.  Blai's student number is four so he is in room four.  He's about to pick up his halfling and carry it - he can't tell if it's a male or a female, it's still got clothes on and the facial features mostly resolve to "wrinkly" - but Imma's dragging hers and she knows more about what to do than Blai does, Imma has the right instincts for the Crucible, that's what he's getting out of protecting her is someone to copy.  He pulls and it struggles to keep up with the heavy chain around its ankles.

Presumably it is having opinions the entire time but he forces down the part of him that is agonizing about that and sets it up on the provided rack as though it's a strangely heavy doll.  It doesn't try to plead with him.  It isn't screaming yet.  It's making it very easy to imagine that he's just installing a grim decoration in this bleak stone room.  It would be plausible, if it were a room belonging to Vicar Vilar personally.  He likes racks.  Gave a rather impassioned lecture on how great racks were during previous torture-themed lessons.  Great full-body accessibility for detail work and extracurricular indulgence, both passive and active torment options, low open wound risk, great for putting on a spectacle if you're punishing someone in front of a crowd.  It would make perfect sense for Vicar Vilar to want a rack with a halfling on it in his parlor.

Then he's got it all set up and he has to start, either vicar could be watching through the window right now and he doesn't dare turn his head to look, the only thing worse than being watched would be allowing it to be visible that he checked if he was being watched.  He's supposed to be Asmodeus's and Asmodeus loves this kind of thing, the strong (His already-chosen clerics) dominating the weak (the students) to force them into grinding the negligible (the subjects) into the ground in blood and agony.  It is permissible to be Asmodeus's abject slave instead of His eager imitator, even if the eager imitators somemtimes get to skip a lot of the rumored worst parts of the Crucible's educational system, but the abject slave is still the kind of tool that can think, that can carry out orders, that can do these things without requiring someone constantly breathing down their neck about it, that can lighten rather than merely alter their superior's responsibilities.  He cannot turn to check if someone is watching him through the window, that is not allowed to matter, he has his instructions and has to start now, now, now -

He backhands the halfling across the face.  It makes a startled unf sound.  It is very obvious that it has had worse before.  If he can't achieve more than that he is going to come in last in his class and if you come in last in your torture class which is for torture then they don't hand the best(-at-torture) student a normal whip and call it off at ten lashes.

Blai picks up the first thing he sees on the tray of provided tools and he gets started.

"Hell will defer answering the advocate for Nirvana until such time as the judge deems it appropriate," the devil smugly says with the flicker of a forked tongue. "Your Honor, Hell believes the test applicable. The vast majority of repentant evildoers pray for the souls of their victims. Priest Blai Artigas could have prayed for their souls. He did not. A nearly as vast majority of repentant evildoers ask their spiritual counsellors, or, if they have none, their friends, if there was anything they could do to help their victims. Priest Blai Artigas did not. Hell does not seek to overturn in re Ricardo, for it does not claim that it these actions were the most good thing Blai could have done. But the five Newton tests are not about Iomedaean optimization. The second through fourth prongs are specifically about a mortal does for those he has wronged. in this case Priest Blai Artigas did literally nothing. He could have made many small and inexpensive gestures, and did not."

Is he going to Hell for NOT HAVING FRIENDS???

No, no, you're going to Hell for having the right instincts for a cleric of Iomedae! That's much more just!

"Hey, Judge, could you please make Hell answer Nirvana's question?"

"Please do so, Hell. Briefly, if possible, so that we can resolve the Newton argument soon."

"I am afraid that I cannot do so briefly, Your Honor," the representative of Hell says, "as it is the centerpiece of Hell's case in this trial."

"If the centerpiece of Hell's case in the trial is 'holding the Worldwound is Evil,' then can we just declare him Good and move on?"

"Only in the specific case, not in the general. Should I proceed, Your Honor?"

"I'm not inclined to pre-emptively rule without even hearing the arguments." Someone's already brought up in re Campbell this trial. "If this is likely to be a long argument, I'd also prefer to resolve the Newton issue first; does anyone have additional points to raise with regards to that question?"

"Axis currently assesses it as likely that the applicability of the Newton test will turn on features of the petitioner's state-of-mind, including features which may be difficult to address without consulting with him, even with complete access to his memories. We move to have the petitioner testify as to the three prongs under dispute, namely 'taking responsibility for previous actions,' 'changing relationships with those affected, such as by seeking vengeance or forgiveness,' and 'attempting to repair the consequences of previous actions insofar as this is possible.' Axis specifically wishes to hear testimony as to whether he did anything he conceptualized as meeting these criteria, even if this court has not identified it as such, and his rationale for not doing so if not."

"Granted. Petitioner, you are reminded that you are under a truth effect, which as currently implemented will prevent you from knowingly making false statements."

He's not even allowed to TRY to make knowingly false statements! Probably! Unless the rules are different for clerics than they are for paladins! "I - they're dead, unless I'm - forgetting someone? I didn't think there was a relationship to change. I can't - couldn't - well, still can't - scry them or raise them or anything." Converting certainly changed all the relationships that he did have but they were almost one hundred percent local to his fort. "It crossed my mind that if I had ever Maledicted anyone with that scroll it would be a good case for an exception to the rule that clerics can't cast against deity alignment because you can use another casting to undo it, if you were the caster in the first place, but that didn't come up."

"And did you ever consider praying to any god to help the souls of your victims?" Hell will ask, because they do have the record of his actions to confirm he never actually did it.

"- does that work?"

"Almost never," says Hell smugly.

- does it work especially well for your own victims somehow? It would sort of fit with the using-Malediction-to-undo-Malediction trivium if it did but it would be so weird if - surely everybody who's rescuing souls is at capacity? Or at least the ones who hear from Iomedae(ans) are, maybe Chaotic rescue operations are moved on the margin by extra prayers... Who would they leave behind instead if they heard him praying about somebody from seminary? If for instance Imma's halfling never got Imma praying for it because Imma, say, died still a cleric, or lives on but has never given it a second thought, or something - he has no idea, they didn't communicate after he was deployed - then that doesn't mean anything about the ideal amount of resources put into saving Imma's halfling relative to Blai's, that figure's going to depend almost entirely on the halflings themselves for qualities that neither seminarian was really in a position to observe... or maybe Imma's halfling counts as his victim too because he was... in the room and could have mercy-killed it? Because he picked it out for her? But there are surely lots of people in bad afterlives who he has never interacted with even that much and they don't deserve to be passed over because Blai doesn't know they exist...

...also the devil is perhaps not under a truth effect so maybe it just literally never works at all, can't rule that out, he'll believe it if the archon says it.

"Please answer the question, Priest Blai Artigas."

"No, I did not consider it; I only recently learned that praying does anything for anyone other than the person praying and what I then learned about that did not include effects on other people's souls and particularly did not include differential effects based on whether those souls were one's own victims in the past."

"Did you ask anyone you spoke to regularly about whether there was anything you could do to help your victims?"

"No."

"Did you ask the Iomedaen you exchanged letters with if there was anything you could do to help your victims?"

"No." Paladins are often condescending and act as though no one else has any common knowledge or common sense but he thought they didn't do that amongst themselves so he wasn't imitating it, and he thought that it would be obvious to Tezrić loosely what being an Asmodean priest implied and he could have ordered suggested it but maybe Blai was supposed to inquire proactively????

The devil will incline its head. Mission complete.