"I was explaining to Valia this morning," was it this morning, it feels so long ago, "that when the seminaries chose students to become clerics they looked for seriousness as a proxy for Wisdom and rule-following as a proxy for Law. They didn't have to sort for Evil. Instead they just invented ways to make people worse, in imitation of Hell, which can often make devils of even Maledicted moral paragons given time enough. I was made worse, and am now trying to be made better by Iomedae's guidance."

At the mention of Valia her chest twists up. Valia deserves better than being forced to listen to a former priest of Asmodeus explain himself, and certainly better than having to share a church with someone like him. (Gods, she misses Valia. It's only been a day and she already wishes she could ask her about — a lot of things, really.)

And — it's hard to get all her thoughts to line up right, the front of her head feels like it's burning and she can't stop imagining him carving Asmodeus's symbol into someone's shoulder or flogging a child half to death or any of the other things the priests did that aren't really torture but aren't okay either — but this feels like it might be important, if she can't do anything about the former Asmodean priest who's probably never going to face justice because of Iomedae's bizarre choices—

"I think there's probably bad things someone could get me to do if they were trying. Like, when I was a little kid I prayed to Asmodeus, I whipped the other students for doing badly in school — apparently that's an Asmodeus thing, not an everywhere thing — that sort of thing. But there's no one who could get me to torture and murder innocent people to help Asmodeus. If I got Maledicted to Hell they'd have to use me as a paving stone.

And I'm Chaotic now, but I haven't always been, I was plenty serious and plenty rules-following as a little kid. And then I stopped. So it doesn't — I don't think it's an excuse, that there were Asmodean priests trying to get you to be Eviler, that's still — you still chose to do it—"

"You evidently have the ability to be a cleric. It's fortunate for you that you weren't pulled as a candidate to be one of His. But I believe you, that you would have refused, and if you know how to cause other people to have this virtue I hope you will teach it."

"I'm not sure — I don't know how I'd explain it, if it's not already obvious that you should just... not do incredibly Evil things that you know are incredibly Evil, even if someone is ordering you to, and even if you'll die for refusing. I — it's not quite the same thing, but I—

—Two days ago I got arrested as part of the whole thing with Valia's speech. And I was sure if I let them take me they'd — spend a while torturing me, and let the guards do whatever they want, and then when they were done they'd have me executed. And I thought there was a decent chance I could escape, if I tried to, but I didn't see a way to get away without hurting and maybe killing a bunch of innocent people. So I didn't fight back, I let them arrest me, because killing innocent people is wrong even if you're not torturing them.

And there's a sense in which that's kind of the opposite thing, following orders because fighting would be Evil rather than the other way around. But there's a more important sense where — it's all the same thing, either way you can choose whether or not to do the obviously Evil thing that you know is Evil just to save yourself. I don't see why — if there'd been someone ordering me to hurt the innocent people so I could escape, I still wouldn't've done it, that doesn't make a difference, the part that matters isn't the orders."

She's not sure why she's trying to explain this to someone like him. She thinks maybe if she explains it he'll — understand, somehow, stop trying to act like becoming an Asmodean priest is something that just happened to him — and then what, she's not sure what's supposed to happen after that, it feels like there should be something but there's lots of somethings it could be.

She feels — not even angry anymore, not exactly, more like her body is all full of cold dark shadows where her blood is supposed to be. She doesn't really understand what people mean by "virtue," she's seen it used six different ways in the pamphlets, but she doesn't really think it takes very much of any of them to not murder innocents. She's Chaotic Neutral, she's not as brave as Valia, she really doesn't understand any of the people using virtue to talk about sex but that really doesn't seem relevant here. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing she could just teach someone to have, if they somehow didn't realize they were supposed to.

He nods. "I don't know if I could have avoided being killed if I was willing to hurt the people attacking me. Maybe I could have. But I knew they were probably coming after me because they thought I was still an Asmodean priest, and I didn't think it would be right to hurt someone for trying to kill an Asmodean priest. Is that what you mean?"

Oh.

It hadn't — it hadn't felt real that he could actually be trying. It would be easier if he weren't trying, easier if he were like the sort of nobleman who calls for Valia to hang because he's angry she told him to repent and give up his undeserved power, easier if he were still just as Evil as any other Asmodean priest—

—and that still leaves four innocent people who he tortured to death, four innocent people who will never see justice, four innocent people who deserved better—

"I'm glad you didn't kill them," she says softly. 

"I was later told by most of the people I asked that I had actually erred, there, but - I think it's the better mistake to make, if confused enough that one will be made."

"I think if you're listening to people telling you you should've killed innocent people that's — not as bad as torturing innocent people to death because an Asmodean priest told you to, but the same sort of thing. I'm not going to tell you 'listen to your conscience' because apparently your conscience thought it was fine to go be an Asmodean priest, but you've got to have something that's not just — doing what other people tell you."

"So - in that particular case 'innocent' is not straightforwardly true. They... committed murder. If I'd stopped them it would have been attempted murder."

"—The part that matters isn't the part about whether they technically did or didn't break the law. It's — it would still be wrong to kill someone for liking Pharasma too much even if we were still under Asmodeus and everyone was supposed to worship him the most, even though they broke the law. But — there's a difference between, between a mob getting together to murder — Liushna, or even just, just a devilspawn that hadn't actually done anything wrong, and — and someone who was a priest of Asmodeus—"

"I am reasonably confident that at least most of them based this belief on a pamphlet. The pamphlet also said that I was still Asmodeus's, and that is not true."

Frown.

It's very stupid to kill someone because of something you read in a pamphlet. Lots of the pamphlets say things that aren't true, everyone knows that. And normally you shouldn't kill people just because they're stupid, but if they're so stupid that they're trying to kill you because of something they read in a pamphlet — if Valia got attacked by people who read the pamphlet about how she was a Calistrian whore who'd murdered innocent people during the riots, it wouldn't be wrong for her to defend herself.

But Valia isn't an Asmodean priest. If someone reads in a pamphlet that an Asmodean priest is an Asmodean priest, and they go to try and kill them, then... they might be stupid, but they were still right? She's not sure if that makes sense. She wouldn't think they'd done anything wrong.

And Chosen Artigas wasn't an Asmodean priest anymore, but — her head feels a little like it's on fire — but it's still the same sort of thing, it's not like a bunch of people got together to murder an innocent and accidentally picked him, they were aiming to kill an Asmodean priest and were just a little late — when she killed her priest he was technically not a priest anymore—

—Chosen Artigas didn't fight back, a real priest of Asmodeus would've fought back—

If — it's hard to keep thinking about the Asmodean priest example without getting angry again — let's say it's not an Asmodean priest, let's say it's someone else Evil but not quite that Evil. If there was a slip who was secretly an Evil murderer, and someone went to try and murder it because it was a slip, like that delegate who got executed, then... both of them are Evil murderers? So probably it would be fine for the slip to try to kill the human, even though the slip also deserves to die?

That doesn't really feel like it's very relevant to Chosen Artigas. 

Probably the azata would say that Chosen Artigas stopped deserving to die when he stopped being a priest of Asmodeus who tortures innocent people. But probably the azata would also say that the people who killed him don't deserve to die for being stupid. That is relevant, sort of, but it feels like it's missing everything that actually matters here.

If someone is a total idiot, and kills someone innocent because they're a total idiot, you've still got to avenge that, you can't just say that actually it was fine for them to do that because they were just stupid, not trying to Evil. Maybe if they're a little child, too little to know any better, but not if they're an adult who just believes everything pamphlets tell them. But if someone is kind of an idiot, but still they manage to point themself at someone who deserves it — then it doesn't seem right for them to die for that. Probably it would be good for someone to tell them that the pamphlets say a lot of things that aren't true, so that they don't accidentally go kill someone who doesn't deserve it, but — it would be fine if it were something like Feliu telling her how burning down the school made it harder to catch the Asmodean cult. They don't need to be executed for it.

"...I'm still glad you didn't kill them, even though it sounds like they were kind of dumb."

"Ser de Luna said when I asked him that - mobs usually don't disperse on their own after they've killed their target, so I might have just allowed them to go find someone else, maybe someone from the same denouncement list whose charge was completely false or much less bad or both. And that there are steps between refusing to use lethal force and actually trying to kill someone. If I'd been armed and prepared spells that would have damaged them a little bit, I could possibly have stopped the mob, healed the injured once they were calm, and sent them all home, without taking up one of Archmage Naima's resurrections for myself."

That sounds like it depends a lot on who they actually went after next. Victòria is still pretty confused about the thing where apparently mobs here just go after random people that aren't the ones you said to go after but maybe that's more of a risk in a city where not everyone knows each other?

"If you had to injure some people who were attacking you, and you were doing it to stop them from going after an innocent person later, that would probably be okay? But I don't think it'd be okay for you to kill them just because they might go kill someone innocent afterwards. ...Also I think if I were attacking someone in a mob and they started trying to attack me, but only a little bit, it wouldn't make me want to stop attacking them, but I guess maybe you have a spell for that that I just don't know about."

"There's a second circle one that temporarily blinds or dazzles people for a ways around, and it's not as damaging as my negative channel used to be and it only hurts Evil people, but it could still kill someone if they were unlucky. A lot of people in Cheliax are evil and too weak to detect and that's exactly who it would be able to kill and then they'd go to Hell. But murdering me wasn't very good for their alignments either, it would take strikingly bad luck to get a person too burned to stabilize, and if I were alive I would have been right there to do the stabilizing."

Wow, that spell sounds like it would've been super useful for the Diabolism Committee. ...Probably former priests of Asmodeus have an obvious reason not to help the Diabolism Committee track down all the secret Evil people. Probably if you tried to use it to catch out the Evil nobles they'd have you punished for attacking them.

"...Assuming you're telling the truth about how that works it probably would've been fine to use that, if you'd asked for it? But there's lots I don't know about magic so I can't say for sure."

You definitely wouldn't get anyone who was all the way innocent that way, anyways, which seems like a huge upside. It would suck if you accidentally hit someone who's Evil-like-Lluïsa, but if you don't kill them it's probably fine to hurt someone to stop them from maybe hurting someone else later.

"Mostly I wish I'd had my Calm Emotions but I'd only prepared one and used it earlier that day breaking up something unrelated, but I am preparing spells that could if I were unlucky kill someone now, yes. Even though - I'm now in the business of denying Hell soldiers and it would in fact be very bad to send them one, in most situations it is in practice not worth more than five thousand gold, and that's what a resurrection tends to run."

Blink blink blink. That's also very confusing but it feels like a different kind of confusing than most of the conversation.

"...Money is less important than not killing innocent people, even if it's a lot of money."

"- well, it would be, except that you can turn a lot of money into a lot of not killing innocent people. It costs a hundred paper dollars to get a soul out of Hell. Less than that to buy a reincarnation or a healing from the same archmage who resurrected me. It would be easily possible to take this line of reasoning too far but it does weigh on my mind how much it cost to resurrect me and whether it kept Archmage Naima from saving ten or a hundred people who just didn't happen to be delegates."

That sounds like a very weird way to think about people's lives but she can't actually see a problem with it. Well, apart from the part about getting souls out of Hell, that part could easily be a trick, if he's getting souls like other Asmodean priests' rather than souls like Lluïsa's. She didn't actually know you could get souls out of Hell, let alone that Hell was just selling them for regular Golarion money for some reason instead of keeping them all to turn into paving stones.

It would be stupid to assume there isn't some kind of trick there just because she can't see it, especially when he used to be an Asmodean priest, but maybe she can ask Alicia about it when she tells her about the pamphlet that wants them both executed, it seems like the part about people people not getting healed might be important for deciding whether they should take the free guards from the archmage. She's not really sure why the archmage Naima having to resurrect someone would mean fewer people get healed, she's pretty sure she charges money to everyone whether or not she just had to resurrect someone, but she's not sure if that's the trick or if she's just not understanding something. Either way it probably won't hurt to check whether she'd be getting innocent people killed if someone murdered her in the streets, even if he is trying to trick her.

"She could've left you dead and spent the money on not killing innocent people instead," she says, instead of any of that. She'd've been upset if the archmages had left people like Liushna dead but if they'd left Delegate Artigas and the Evil nobles dead that really seems like it would've been better.

"Yes. She didn't consult me while I was dead, except that I could have refused the raise, which would have wasted it. I believe her party feels obligated to the delegates endangered by our presence in Westcrown and that's why they're now funding bodyguards for delegates who believe ourselves at risk." His is being very quiet.

"The archmages make a lot of decisions that I don't really understand."

"Me too."

"I — had assumed, when I heard that a bunch of adventurers had kicked out Asmodeus from being in charge of the country, that they'd go track down all the Asmodean priests and deal with them. And not just — let them stay around being Asmodean priests."

"I don't know if they did any of that within the country. Probably some at the higher levels of the church; I doubt they considered first-circle village priests a top priority. At the Worldwound any systematic purge would have cost the border. The expectation that it might happen spread us very thin and when we woke up without spells the margins were thinner still."