Ah yes there's the blazing envy again. Ugh. Pathetic. Has he seriously not learned the lesson about getting strength from elsewhere, come on. 

Deep internal breaths. Sound like an adult who is normal about this. 

"Understandable. I was... not really using the circles for anything Iomedae probably wants." She is supposedly the general of the armies of Heaven but for some reason this does not translate to any glorious bloody conquest of anything in real life. Theoretically cleric magic can do other things, he's heard, but probably not other thing's he's good at. "But She is still the one who deserves to set the rules right now, whether she gives me power about it or no. And if I ask a paladin what I should do with myself, I rather expect them to say I should politely turn myself in for execution for approximately every crime, but I thought you might have... more useful... advice." 

"- there was a general amnesty, and the paladins who are operating here are keeping that in mind as featuring in their mandate. I'm not sure they'd have anything to say that would - resonate - but unless you have been doing substantial crimes since then I don't think they would ask you to turn yourself in."

Fascinated blinking. "I haven't, no, but - huh, you really don't think they'd make an exception?" He would absolutely not believe anyone else who said this except maybe the literal Queen. "Kind of figured it'd be, you know, oh well obviously we just meant amnesty for normal crimes, like stabbing your neighbor over a goat, not--" it would probably be breathtakingly stupid to say an actual sentence like forty years of annually lighting a dozen kids on fire for blessings to be better at killing paladins fast enough for a Malediction to take in an open battlefield out loud in a temple-- "me." 

"If you would like I can ask one for confidentiality and inquire? Not while you're still here. I have certainly not been dissuaded from believing that it applies to me."

Confidentiality. Which Blai clearly sincerely expects them to stick to, in like, a normal non-Mephistophelean way that normal people who don't have archmage cunning could possibly not be immediately wildly inconvenienced by! What a concept! He loves it. 

Wait. Help. How do you reward people for doing you large favors when they are clerics of Iomedae. He has spent the last year carefully replacing the instinct to gift people the charred ashes of their enemies with buying them beer at dockside taverns and both of these strategies seem deeply inapplicable in this case. 

"...yes," he settles on after several seconds of looking wrongfooted and bewildered, and then, uncertainly, after rifling around in his brain for anything even slightly applicable and not obviously horrifying, "...... hadregashya?" 

That was not even slightly Taldane. Why. 

"Hadre...what?"

"I am not a linguist but literally 'Hadregash bless you', I think? Goblin god of tribal unity. ... Complimentary." 

It means thank you, idiomatically, but he'd generally only ever heard that used in deeply hurtful ways and so it got tossed in the linguistic garbage can along with many other Chelish phrases one is clearly not supposed to use anymore. 

"Oh. Thank you." Blai didn't get the memo. "If you want to try to be a cleric again it doesn't have to be Iomedae. Her church encourages relying on other gods where their interests overlap. I didn't even know it was Her right away, I tried a key first."

Snort. "I would be an astoundingly poor cleric of Abadar in particular but your point is in general taken. I'm not even sure I do want to be a cleric again, but- hm. Is there some way to get a list of gods Iomedae's interests overlap with?" 

"I would also be a terrible Abadaran but I think that two of the three circles must have been - free - so it might have been the kind of thing that moved Him, hypothetically. She has common cause with all of the Good gods, Her church banks with Abadar, and I would expect Iomedaeans in general to work with any Neutral god's cleric in the same way they'd work with an irreligious wizard, whenever the spells were aimed at the Good and not deployed in a way that violated Her commitments."

"Ah, I see. ... the problem is that the obvious choice is Gorum and I find the concept of war without purpose deeply distasteful." 

"What purpose would you like to have?"

is this what spiritual counseling is like when you're not allowed to hit each other. terrifying. 

"I found it very satisfying to - require people to defend their foolish opinions with force, and either change them or die. As I understand it this is not in principle opposed to Iomedae's purpose as it is what She would like to do to Hell and I would not mind going and joining Her army in Heaven but I am not sure how to apply it during a mortal life since this is apparently not what She is doing on Golarion." She didn't even actually conquer Cheliax! Her army just sort of showed up and politely stood around stopping fights after some unrelated archmages flattened it! This is unhinged conquest behavior!! 

"I don't think it's foolishness in particular that She objects to in Hell."

"No? ... Do you mean that you expect she doesn't think devils are wrong about everything or just that she has more concerns on top of that?" 

"She thinks they are wrong morally, not that they are necessarily incompetent."

Okay but that's the same thing though. 

"...I am not sure I understand the distinction you are drawing if it is not the self-evident fact that Hell is Evil and She is Good." 

"Hell is Evil and She is Good but those aren't - contentless opposites - there is detail and the detail mostly does not take the form of Hell being more likely mistaken on questions of fact or less able to take actions towards its strategic aims."

"I would say losing an entire country is being less able to achieve their strategic aims but I suppose you would know better than I. The detail in question is located in the Acts?" 

He has enough of the Disciplines memorized that he could probably compare across. This is admittedly mostly because it was so funny to quote their own scriptures at the Asmodeans every time they did something stupid the book specifically said not to, so it might not be an entirely representative sample, but probably still enough to be useful. 

"It comes up there but the Acts are not - maximally theologically dense, containing as they do accounts of various battles also. There are commentaries and I have some. One asymmetry between Good and Evil is that Evil is united by force if at all and Good can recruit volunteers to its side which in this case included a party of archmages. I don't know which strategy is broadly more effective and effectiveness is not the constraint driving either side's choice there but it worked out well for Good in this case."

Law has allies, good has friends. 

It's a common saying. When Chelish people say it they say it derisively. Friends, how pathetic, can you imagine thinking that's better. 

Rakek repeats sort of fascinatedly, quietly, "...effectiveness... is not... either..." 

Please hold while gitgud.exe reboots. 

"...so one of the great things about war, right, is the- all going the same direction, willing to die for your purpose rather than surrender it- but in all my experience the purpose is made. As you say, by force. You have to build it in people, the work of Moloch is never done because there will always be another rebellion." This is Asmodean heresy, of course, the party line is that the human spirit can totally be permanently crushed if you try hard enough, but dealing with the fact that it really cannot has been the work of much of Rakek's adult life. Conveniently, which facts Asmodeus does not want you to say is no longer something he is required to track. "But if people on the side of Good just... want the same things, already... you could win the war and still have them, it's just a way to get there. Purpose with war, instead of war with purpose. Is that what you mean?" 

"Yes, that's a good way to look at it, I think. - what I meant by 'effectiveness is not the constraint driving either side's choice' is that Evil couldn't have volunteers in numbers even if it wanted them, and in fact probably couldn't have them even if Evil were more inherently attractive than it is to unpropagandized people because Evil, in being Evil, runs on victims, and even if many wanted to volunteer to victimize far fewer will volunteer to suffer at their hands, so Evil must exert force over whatever swathe of subjects it controls and would still have to do that even if conditions changed in its favor. Meanwhile Good could not react to the information that force was more effective, if that were true, because slavery and coercion are not Good, so they would lose their essential nature in trying to deploy those tools. For all I know Gorum or Irori or someone chooses a mixed strategy to maximize what they can bring to bear on the battlefield but they can mix those strategies precisely because they are neither Good nor Evil."

"I see, I think. ... I am not sure yet what my new purpose should be but I will try to find a Good one, I do not much like the idea of a mixed strategy. When should I check back in with you about whether I am allowed to pick something that involves ever talking to paladins?" 

"If you come back at this time tomorrow I should have had a chance to ask one, they're very busy people but those of them who are delegates all sit more or less in the same area in the convention as me and there's quieter moments where ballots are collected."