Well yeah. You try surviving in the Abyss without an eye for opportunities and the balls to grab them. Nocticula's protection doesn't extend to the likes of us, you know.

That's the thing about powerful people's "protection", innit? It only covers the ones who don't really need it in the first place. If you're a street rat, or a fiendish rat... they don't want to hear about you.

That's why rats gotta stick together. 

"Yeah? What's your angle, what's your pitch?"

(Woljif's not gonna yaw anyone's head off, here; that's not how he rolls.)

"You might already be familiar with it."

"Cut to the chase, Horns. Is there gonna be regular food?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I can do that now. For friends and family, anyway."

"All right then. You got yourself a familiar. Long as the food's regular, anyway."

Cool. Abyss, Hell, Material, they're all the same: Everyone's against rats. But sometimes... the rats can make a place for themselves anyway. If they stick together.

And never, ever sell anyone out.

Alushinyrra is... awful, actually.

Oh, well yes, what they did to Trever is awful too. Sosiel hates it. But - it could be worse. Sosiel was terrified, when he heard that Trever had become a Hellknight, that the war in the Worldwound had killed his brother - not his body, if he died in battle they would meet again in Heaven. No, he was afraid that what he admired in his elder brother, the parts of his soul that would have made Pharasma judge him as part of Heaven, had died. And truthfully, a gladiatorial arena in an Abyssal city is not a place where he'd have expected to find those glimpses of Heaven. But he spent so much time thinking of that, and worrying about it, that he did all his grieving for Trever in advance. And then when he finally found him... his brother, his elder brother who showed him how to paint, who went to fight the demons at the Worldwound to keep them out of their homeland, the reluctant paladin... he rose out of the filth of the Abyss one more time, and defied every demon in the city so that Sosiel might be safe. If Sosiel does not meet that man again in Heaven it will be because Sosiel's besetting sins became too strong.

No, it's the buildings that bother him; they're... beautiful.

"Perhaps there's beauty in the Abyss," he said to the Queen, sarcastically; he was implying that there wasn't any where he was standing on Golarion - a deep insult, coming from a cleric of Shelyn who is instructed to find the beauty in all things. And truthfully the Queen wasn't actually very beautiful at that moment, for all the regularity of her fine features and golden mane of hair; not with rage and envy and immense tiredness in her clear blue eyes. 

He wouldn't have said it if he hadn't been exhausted, and wounded, and enraged at the Commander being stripped of his rank and sent to fetch the secret of the Nahyndrian crystals as though it were a paladin's first escort mission. But that's no excuse; he needs to do better, and he resolved to do so, and... well, he's found beauty in the Abyss, indeed. That's the problem.

The glittering buildings, in shades of purple from delicate nightshade to smoldering foxglove, that curve and shift and twist elegantly out of the way - no, he might as well admit it. The buildings' are not the curves that bother him. It's the succubi.

They are... so beautiful. And so toxic. When it's said that a man could "drown in her eyes" or "lose himself in her beauty" it's not usually meant literally! 

Beauty not for its own sake, not for the joy it brings, but weaponised, venomised, made a tool in the service of hurting people and making them into more beautiful, poisonous demons to hurt still more people with this, this... Sosiel is not much given to theology, but the Commander has the right word: This blasphemy. 

He looks a little askance at Arueshalae, after that. He believes sincerely in her repentance and her attempt at redemption, Desna is not his goddess but She is not known for half-assing Her miracles any more than Shelyn is. But - now he understands a little more, what it is she is repenting of, what she needs to be redeemed from. 

He thinks of all the times he's shouted "you are beyond redemption" at some hapless brimorak, and blushes for shame; he'd always known it was wrong, for a priest of Shelyn to say that, but it felt like a venial sin. How much did it hurt Arueshalae, to hear those stupid words? That shallow, ignorant curse? He was a child, shouting words he did not understand for the pleasure of seeing others react, knowing nothing of what he was talking about. 

He cannot do anything about it now, except to apologise, very sincerely, to Arueshalae; and to resolve to do better. He understands, now. Nobody is truly beyond redemption; not even these poisonous beauties of Alushinyrra. But some have more to repent of than others.

The Abyss is... awful, actually.

Yes yes, Daeran is aware that this is not a very original thing to say! He's not even the first in the party to say so, and he really dislikes that! But when you pride yourself on never letting social convention, good manners, or the convenience of the powerful get in the way of saying what you think, sometimes you end up saying the same thing as others just because what you think happens to be true. And nobody has an actual monopoly on truth, even though there's only one of it.

Anyway, yes, awfulness: Slave markets, performatively self-destructive sex sold for, well, very little compared to the wealth of anyone who can actually fight their way through the random street violence to get to the brothel, racially-motivated street violence... blah blah blah. That's just, like, what else are you going to do with a literal eternity to fill and so many prudish paladin-gods to annoy? Also he refuses to get upset about the high price aasimar slaves command here, or the reason for it, or the secret horribleness of that guy who makes it his business to "rescue" aasimar and only aasimar from the market. That's just the flip side of the nauseating assumption everyone on the Material Plane has that just because they've got the "blood of Heaven" in them they must be goody-two-shoes who'd never dream of shoving every pious hypocrisy down someone's mendacious throat. At least the Actual Literal Demons are honest about their racism.

No, oddly enough, it's the "court" that does it. Not the one in Nocticula's throne room with audiences and music and whatnot, his cousin would totally hold court like that if she could afford it and really, why not? If you have nice things you might as well show them off. No, he means the "court of law" in Shamira's mansion.

The one where they deliberately choose the verdicts to be whatever is least Lawful, to signal how much they despise law. 

Look, Daeran has said some pretty unkind things about Lawful people, in his time. Not going to stop, either. Lots of what gets called "Law" is just an excuse to hurt people, as far as he can make out. And even more is some kind of - he's not quite sure what it feels like from the inside, he really doesn't feel this way himself, but it looks like some people just kind of bend too easily at the knees? And then they follow whatever they happened to be in front of at the moment their knees gave out, and for some reason it's often the case that it's a book of some sort. Containing whatever laws someone happened to write down at some point, usually because it would mean the writer got something they wanted without having to use too much violence, because "it's the law, see? I'm not just making it up, it's written in the book". Never mind that the ink would run if you tilted the book a bit, if it's written down it must be the "rule of law", right?

But, um. Yeah that's all true. But nonetheless. When a human writes down a law that benefits themself, they... don't usually explicitly say so in the text? Like, as a general rule? And they don't make a law saying "all laws are stupid and anyone who expects us to follow them will be horribly killed" because what would be the point? You make a law because you expect it to benefit yourself, and it won't benefit you if literally nobody follows it, and... you can't bedazzle people into following your stupid law by writing down in the law itself that it is stupid! That's not how anything works!