In the morning she prays and then is handed a very long report she can't read and is told Blai and Ser Cansellarion will be leaving for Westcrown soon. She...doesn't exactly want to talk to Blai, but she said she would once she wasn't so tired, and she is less tired, so she ought to. She asks where to go and is directed down a hallway. It's quiet and orderly here. She feels rather on edge. 

"Blai?"

"- good morning, Valia."

"Good morning. - sorry. If you're busy it's not important. Just, I said maybe we could see if I could understand you once I was rested and now I'm rested, so."

"I don't know if we have long, but you can preempt Lieutenant Sauer, as she's coming to Westcrown and has less limited time."

"I need to go get my things in any event." She nods to them and heads off.

"So I think the thing that is confusing me is - I imagined that people became priests of Asmodeus because they wanted to be powerful and hurt people, or because they wanted something they could get by being powerful and hurting people. And - I think you were saying that ....isn't why people become priests of Asmodeus?"

"- I think that is more accurate as a description of priests of Asmodeus than about Chelish wizards but not by very much. I guess I don't know your opinion of Chelish wizards."

"I am generalizing from very few examples but I would have said people mostly become wizards because they think it'll make them - freer, if they follow all the rules and become valuable and they matter, and they're wrong about that but it's not obvious right away."

"I think in Infernal Cheliax people mostly became wizards because an existing wizard turned up at their school, read their mind, and determined they were intelligent enough to do so. There may technically have been points in the process after that where they could decide not to be a wizard but - not points marked and protected clearly enough that they often actually did that."

"Oh, if you get rather drunk the day they're scanning you they'll think you're stupid. And you can usually guess in advance because they threaten everyone terribly if you don't show up that particular day."

"I didn't know that. I don't know how many people knew that. Anyway, they didn't use a spell to find potential clerics, they went by teacher recommendations. They looked for people who were - already very religious - but those were a small minority and often not Wise enough - so they'd settle for students who were... serious, as a proxy for Wisdom, and well-behaved, as a proxy for Law. They didn't have to sort for Evil. It's usually possible to just make people worse."

"I'd expect a person who wasn't Evil to...want to kill themselves rather than become a priest of Asmodeus, just selfishly, so they don't go to Hell."

"I would have expected to go to Hell."

"Do people who aren't Evil go to Hell?" That would be the most important possible fact about the world if true. "Or do you just mean - you mistakenly thought so -"

"...people who aren't Evil don't go to Hell as far as I know unless they're Maledicted. With the caution that readings in life are not perfectly determinate of results at Judgment. But I didn't know myself not to be Evil. I may not have been non-Evil. There's not a way to find out from there. And if I wasn't Evil the suicide might have made me Evil. It usually is, or Infernal Cheliax would have gone to... any... lengths to prevent it."

That doesn't sound right but Valia doesn't know enough about anything to dispute it. "So your guess is that mostly people become priests of Asmodeus because - they got told to, and they were pretty sure if they killed themselves they'd go to Hell, and then you make them hurt a lot of people and that's just...enough to make Asmodeus choose them?"

"No, that's not enough to make Asmodeus choose them - well, occasionally it is, but no one in my class. But it's enough that - kept awake for days on end, fasting, praying ceaselessly, forming little factions based on who we thought would be the first to earn orisons and pay us back for our loyalty with a mouthful of water - enough that that closes the gap. After a few tries, usually."

"I see. And then - and then people figure they're stuck no matter what and don't try to be less Evil?"

"I imagine the exact motives - vary. In my case I don't remember ever thinking I was stuck exactly because that would have required - fantasizing about escape? I wasn't enjoying myself but I wasn't daydreaming about my circumstances being different. It seemed to me that - Asmodeus had some amount of ability and willingness to project power onto Golarion, and that was approximately fixed, and that it didn't matter whether or not some of it was me."

"Do you still think that is true?"

"...I mean, it obviously is not true that it's fixed, He withdrew a great deal of His projected power on Golarion including that of it which was me. I'm... not really sure, how to interpret anything that's happened since then in terms of - whether I was as interchangeable with the next best candidate as I thought."

"It seems like if it were true then there would be no reason for devoted servants of Iomedae to try to become her clerics but I think they do do that."

"It... makes sense under this model for devoted servants of Iomedae to try to make sure that Iomedae has access to as many suitable candidates as She can make use of. Sometimes that will take the form of presenting oneself, if one happens to find that oneself is Wise and suited to clerical work compared to most people."

"I think.I don't think about Iomedae that way but maybe I'm the one who is doing it wrong.

Did you - like being a cleric of Asmodeus? I think I wouldn't even if I knew for sure I wasn't really sending anyone to Hell because Asmodeus would just use someone else for that."

"No, but I was not commanded to like it - well, most of it, there were a couple of exceptions - so that didn't really matter."