"Ma'am?"

"I'm Lieutenant Sauer. I'm a lay priest of Iomedae and I'm assigned to return with you this morning to Westcrown and advise you during the convention, along with anyone else who seems to need advice, though my understanding is that the intent is to fill the rest of the Church's seats with Reclamation men who'll know what they're doing. Have you had a chance to look at the incident report for the events of 3 Sarenith?"

"Not yet, I've been filling my time as much as possible with catechism, though I was interviewed for the report."

"I recommend taking a look when you have a chance. It contains a lot of - our philosophy, and how we operate - as well as a great deal of information more directly applicable to your situation than catechism classes generally are. The recommendations for you, though, are very short. Take three hundred Absalom pounds, hire a staff, if they're being wildly useful to you write requesting more money to hire more of them. - it is not that money is not very badly needed for many things. It's that this convention is important to our allies and mistakes are much costlier than secretaries."

"- I expect hiring to be complicated for reasons other than budget but with a budget I can at least begin contemplating how to address those reasons. Thank you."

"The situation in Westcrown sounds very volatile. If you find no good uses of the money, so be it; but if there is something, you should have the resources to get it done. The only other recommendation from the Church was that, Worldwound mail being unreliable, important letters should be sent twice by different routes."

"Yes, that occurred to me during my interview, that I should have dropped off another copy at Taggun Hold. Though it's not actually obvious to me if anyone would have met me there had the letter arrived - it seems like the volatility was not obvious in advance, I didn't want personnel for avoiding riots because I didn't know they were in the offing, I just wanted to represent Iomedae's interests competently."

"It says, this recommendation likely would not have prevented the incident because a response with more reading material, advice, and additional people to correspond with was more likely than a response with additional personnel. And the reading material and advice would probably have been helpful to you but not to Person G, who can't read and seems not to have particularly sought advice."

"- she asked me to read her several things, and if the advice were sufficiently thorough I could probably have steered that, but it's a stretch."

"If you think the report's wrong in any particular, and it presumably is, you can write a supplemental that goes out with it, that says 'according to Blai Artigas if he'd been well-catechized he had decent odds of preventing this', or whatever else. I think the plan is for us to Teleport in the next half-hour, is there anything I should bring?"

"You're coming along? - I think there are still individual rooms open in the rectory but they have next to nothing in them, so if you prefer to avoid the women's barrack-style setup you will need your own sheets and suchlike and might rather bring them than shop in Westcrown. In addition to personal effects you'd bring on any trip. Other than sheets I haven't needed to make any unexpected purchases there, though."

"Yes, I am assigned to assist you and any other delegates who want advice from a lay priest. Hopefully with the new Reclamation delegates there will be many such sources of advice but they will have their own responsibilities as delegates. My understanding is that if I am on the staff of some delegate I can enter the hall, sit in on committees, and so on."

"That appears to be how it works for noble delegates; I don't think I've seen any religious delegates try it but it would be strikingly unRepublican of the archmage to have different rules de jure. ...I am planning to, as soon as I can find the fellow, buttonhole a particular pamphleteer and publish some personal disclosures that may attract volatility, though you're welcome to try to talk me out of it if you have reasons other than general concern that the pamphlet scene of Westcrown is cursed."

"I know almost nothing specific about the pamphlet scene in Westcrown other than that it will go down in all history as a spectacular example of why never to permit a free press."

"It has many drawbacks. I find it - encouraging, in some ways, though. Someone told them they had freedom of the pen and they believed it was so. The trust could have been spent on something better, probably, but to learn that the trust was there to find even by accident is in some ways better than if everyone were being cautious with it."

"Haven't dozens of them been put to death for it?"

"I don't mean to say that anything about its implementation is optimal."

It sounds like barbaric savagery from start to finish but all other countries are always barbaric savagery from start to finish. "Well, apparently among my duties is to write corrections to pamphlets, so I suppose I will learn more about it in the observation."

"Yes, people do keep volunteering their heresies. I think no one has been put to death for that so far."

"In Lastwall it is not illegal to write something probably heretical and definitely very stupid, presuming you aren't claiming to speak for the Church and it isn't - lies, or advocacy for some Evil power, or the sharing of military secrets. But you cannot make hundreds of copies of it and plaster it all over the city, you are expected to just...send it as a letter to someone. Who will politely set you straight, probably. Or to the Church, which definitely will."

"If you want to advertise that you are willing to receive and respond to drafts of writings like that I'm sure you'll have takers but Select Iustin hasn't remotely had the time to offer, let alone follow through. He can't show his face without ten people converging on him demanding his attention on their conversion or their confession or their incipient life plans. If it is possible to reach any meaningful number of people with accurate guidance that fits into a couple of pages and is as entertaining as epic poems of battles with manticores presumably were some centuries ago, it seems worth figuring out how."

"I guess I'll attempt to get a read on the situation when I get there. What are your objectives for the convention?"

"That's a good question. I have noticed many people have been able to identify objectives for themselves at it but they have the advantage of me in operating politically. For the time being my convention ambitions are restrained in scope to something like 'be oriented enough to the various proceedings that if there is a clear victory to be had I notice in time to develop an operational plan around it'. But I can't be on every committee so I don't know if, say, Judiciary is trying to reinstate Malediction or something obvious like that, and similarly don't know if there's anything with more moving parts to take steps about. For all the kerfuffle the convention itself has only spent two days in session."

And it's taken casualties in those two days like a fort under an extended and brutal siege. Well. "I hope it improves from here. I will go gather my belongings, then, and meet you back here for the Teleport."

Nod.

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."

"What do you mean when you say 'didn't really matter'."

"- it did not impinge on my ability to follow my instructions and perform my role, that I did not enjoy it. Asmodeus does not command that His clerics have fun once a month. But I was at one point told that punishing people was supposed to be fun so for a period of time I was running my Worldwound fort by making people play chess with me when they were drunk on duty and such."

"Why would any god command people to have fun once a month, that seems pointless and horrible... did you renounce Asmodeus, when the war started and it might actually matter how many third circle clerics He had to fight with -"

"Valia, Iomedae commands that we have fun at least once a month."

"...are you sure?

....even if we haven't sworn any oaths to the Church and don't have to do what the Church says?"

"- we can ask Crina when she comes back but I think so just like how we're also not supposed to lie." Otherwise you will Fall Over. He can't say that out loud with his face. "- anyway, no, He dropped me. I wasn't - looking for openings, I wasn't thinking about things being a different way than they were, I wasn't checking whenever something happened whether that would be a good time to renounce Asmodeus any more than I was checking if it would be a good time to kill myself or a good time to - turn into a dragon, it wasn't a thing I thought about doing, ever."

"I got a lot of people killed, and so I've been thinking about - what I should have been thinking about, to not get lots of people killed, like how if I could read it wouldn't be as hard to get what was happening, and how if something really confusing happens like an archduke saying that actually it's important not to kick unrepentent Norgorber cultists off your committee then probably a lot of other things are very different than you thought they were and you should - stop doing things entirely and just flee into the hills and watch until you understand - the metaphorical hills -"

"I've been doing - the corresponding thing, not exactly that. And my progress so far is the illegal orders thing, that I mentioned last night. The sense that - my instructions ought to contact any other part of the world beyond what my master willed."

"That continues to make a lot less sense to me than the things you said about - not seeing why it mattered who worked for Asmodeus or whether there was a way not to. It seems like - when you do things, they have the consequences they have, and of course you will inevitably notice whether you want those consequences or don't want those consequences. And I am having trouble imagining what it would mean to - you weren't noticing that, but you think you could have noticed it if someone said that - some things were wrong even if you were commanded to do them?"

"I don't inevitably notice whether I want or don't want consequences at all. I have to check for that on purpose and usually only do it if I have some specific reason to do so. - sometimes I notice partial reactions without looking deliberately but I don't, automatically, add them up into a clear wanting or not wanting."

"Do you think that's something they did to you in Asmodeanism school or did you have it before then too?"

"Oh, it was actually worse before."

"Do you...think to yourself 'I am hungry', and then go to the kitchens to get food because then you'll have food and that will solve being hungry? - I'm not trying to be dismissive, I just - you're describing not having something that is how I thought all actions got taken."

"- often I just eat because it's a mealtime and that's what I plan to do at mealtimes. At other times I notice I'm impaired at something because I'm hungry and trying to address the impairment takes the form of eating, if I have food, or ignoring it, if I don't."

"Do you think that's true of a lot of people or are you very unusual?"

"I think I'm probably unusual. The person who read my mind to check to see if I could be a wizard made an impolite remark about it and didn't say a word about anyone else in the room besides the ones she picked to be wizards. But I don't know what it's like to be anyone besides me."

"I think most people...want lots of things. And will risk lots of things the instant they realize that they weren't wrong, all along, to want things, that they were right and those things were worth fighting for. And then they are mostly opposed to Asmodeus. In my experience."

"I... think you are also unusual. Probably less unusual."

"Hmmm. I keep thinking that I was - wrong, obviously, in a really important way, but - not about the fact that people would rebel against Evil even in Westcrown, if they believed it was worth it, if they believed Iomedae was with them. The thing I was most importantly wrong about was - whether they'd spent a lot of time thinking about how you'd have to do it if you ever got the chance and so whether they'd do incredibly stupid things, and of course whether the targets were worth killing. But - not about people being willing to fight.

Most people even in Pezzack aren't me but they - wanted things. They wanted Asmodeus gone and everyone who had killed their families dead and they wanted to be free. That wasn't just me. It wouldn't have worked, if most people didn't want those things very badly themselves."

"I specifically think you are unusual in that you are inspiring, and - everyone you talk to is talking to you when you talk to them.

"Which might be another argument in favor of prioritizing reading."

" - oh. Yes, that seems true. 

Her Majesty's interrogators figured out why I can't read, it's that I have weak eyes."

"- I think Remove Blindness works on that. I don't have it today but I could have it next time I am here."

"- that would be very good. If it weren't too inconvenient. I - I spent a lot of time confused about why I was so stupid and most people didn't have so much trouble."

"It's third circle but I usually put something in the slot that I don't wind up using as a contingency for surprises, so I can spend it on this without it likely having any side effects."

Valia feels very strange. She spends a minute trying to identify it. 

"I was fairly sure I was going to die. It feels very absurd, to just - keep going. Like it felt right when the war ended, except then there was something to do."

"The day Asmodeus dropped me I expected the men at the fort to tear me to pieces. They instead left me in command of the fort even though I had - nothing - and it was surreal."

Valia would certainly have been considering how to kill the fort's priest of Asmodeus but she sure wouldn't have put those plans into action specifically in response to the news he had stopped being a priest of Asmodeus! She probably shouldn't say that. "I kind of resent the whole constitutional convention immensely but - I hope that you are able to do some useful things at it and it was worth leaving your fort."

"I don't currently feel useful as a delegate at all but I think the surrounding - environment - is in enough flux that there are probably useful things to be done there."

"Well. Goddess go with you." The woman in uniform is back and - not hovering, but deliberately not hovering.

"Lieutenant, are Selects not yet sworn to the Church still obliged to have fun at least once a month?"

" - Iomedae choosing you doesn't itself impose any obligations, though representing yourself as Hers does, but the obligations associated with representing yourself as Hers are all - not lying, not betraying a parley or offering a surrender falsely or breaking your word. The having fun at least once a month is just advice because everything else you do will go much much worse if you don't listen. It's more like Iomedae saying you shouldn't avoid thinking about what you're really hoping to accomplish or Iomedae saying that you should try to adopt policies that predictably get results you like. They're things Iomedae said because people who listen to them will be better at doing things."

"I just don't think She has any business telling me what to do with my time while She hasn't even fixed the Evil afterlives yet."

"Are you imagining that when She's fixed the Evil afterlives She'll hang around to obsessively manage our lives? It is generally understood that She'll - reallocate, or maybe dissolve, pretty substantially, once we win, because She won't be a particularly useful shape for the work that remains. The habits of a people in a state of emergency aren't the habits of people when everything important will be all right forever. 

She is managing our lives now because She would like us to do more with them, rather than less with them. The only penalty for not following the advice is that you will probably be worse at things."

"Well, I don't want to be worse at things," says Valia, very grudgingly. "But I don't think I need to pretend to be a noble once a month to be good at things. It really seems like working on being good at things would be a better way to be good at things."

DISSOLVE? Oh no does that mean that if they win any time soon he will be dropped as a cleric TWICE. What is he supposed to DO after that.

"Oh, you don't have to - go to fancy parties or anything like that. Just - something that makes you feel - connected with the world. Like there are things worth fighting for. Like you can imagine Heaven. Or if you'd rather, like you can imagine the world where we've won and are all right."

"Oh. The thing where Good isn't only different from Evil because Heaven is different from Hell, where a free people in everything they do are better than a tyrannized people, the thing where if you don't have a wanting-things impediment it isn't hard to tell, which part of the battlefield you're on, because Good is good for people -"

"That sounds like a closer approximation than 'the things rich people locked in vicious status competitions do', yeah."

"In that case I think I have fun all the time."

"That unfortunately is also classically a thing people say when in fact they are not meeting the mandatory fun requirements. But you will have to work that out with your confessor. I was sent to get Select Artigas for our teleport."

"Right. Good luck. With the convention. ...everyone there's terrible but some of them are trying."

"I read the report." And off with Blai she'll go.

And back in Westcrown he will proceed to do something that hopefully isn't catastrophically stupid.