:I would expect it to be very useful for most people but I almost always have Create Water prepared, that's what I was using to put out the fire.:

:Actually, do you mind if I write things down? I also want to ask you if you mind me archiving what I do write — I'm a collector for the Society for the Preservation of All that Exists. Less pompously known as the Archivists Society.

You're not obligated to agree and I won't stop interpreting for you if you refuse.:

:Please go right ahead on both counts.:

He takes out a fountain pen and a notebook and starts writing.

:Alright. You mentioned earlier that you were a cleric of Iomedae: transliterated as 'Ayomedei' :the Lawful Good goddess: 'powerful otherworldly entity' :of victory over evil or triage.:

:I'm familiar with triage, but I'm not familiar with evil. What do you mean by that?:

:...well, just like Iomedae is Good, some entities... are... evil? Do you not have the concept at all or just not in a form such that you'd expect 'victory over' to be a coherent concept?:

:Um. Telepathy is suggesting that the concept is related to badness...we do have the concept of something being bad and undesirable. So the former, I think.:

:...right. Uh. You know, if you've just managed to arrange that an entire planet not have any major Evil on it somehow I'm not sure I actually should explain.:

:I can talk about what I know of our world's history?:

:Please.:

:There are many stories about how the world was created, but none of them are very reliable and they're probably fictional or metaphorical. As for recorded history...broadly speaking there were many countries who each followed a subset of the six Ways. Practitioners are materially powerful, and so tended to also be politically powerful, and many ways that the Ways could express themselves were contrary to each other. So, countries tended to disenfranchise and marginalize the Ways that were inimical to the Ways that they followed.

This came to a head about 50 nanca ago, where the tensions between the countries of the Old Continent – the one we're on right now – boiled over and precipitated the Great War. Powerful workings also change the weather, see, and the resulting storms and earthquakes and crop failures were also terrible. Estimates say that about a fifth of all people died. The Federation came about from the ashes and unified all the peoples of the Old Continent and put in place various laws to try to balance the Ways to prevent any one from eclipsing the others, or starting another Great War.

It's worked so far! I haven't experienced war in my lifetime.

Contact still hasn't been recovered with the New Continent. Passing through the Antarctic requires braving freezing cold and monsters, and the water and winds of the Inner Ocean are still too turbulent to sail to it.:

:Okay, but, in - moderation, in peacetime, in balance - none of the Ways are themselves - awful to practice, to have one's neighbors practice...?:

:I guess? There are more and less upsetting paths or practices of each Way. Like, Fire is associated with slavery, but the Federation banned involuntary and heritable bondage and broke up the slaver societies. Flowers is associated with rape, Perfect with tyranny...my neighbors might find living with me awful because I'm very curious and nosy and one of my precepts is the gathering and preservation of knowledge.

Hm, maybe it would be more helpful if I asked what Iomedae does in your world? What her job is, described more concretely, or what she asks you to do? If you feel it's fine and safe to tell me:

:Slavery, rape, and tyranny are all evil but I don't know what exactly 'associated with' cashes out to. Uh, when she was a mortal woman hundreds of years ago, Iomedae did a lot of fighting monsters, including intelligent monsters who formed armies and magically enslaved new entrants and meant to go on until the entire world was under their thrall. Her followers today continue to fight monsters like those and also other kinds... honestly if you are generous enough with the definition of 'monster' you could just say that She's about fighting monsters, defeating them and making places that are safe from them and rescuing people from their enchantments and influences.:

:Huh! She became immortal? So, is she pleased if you kill monsters? Does she give you more power when you do that?: What a violent entity. Very Fire. Being against geasa is very True.

:So, each Way is tied to...concepts, and practitioners of a Way grow stronger by embodying those concepts more, or more of those concepts, and they tend to get powers associated with those concepts.

As an example, the Open Door is associated with communication, transmission; opening, removal of blockages and locks; travel, transportation. So, an Open practitioner could be like me, and work for the Archivist's Society. But they could also be like, a burglar, or an assassin — the Open Door is associated with hemophilia and nonhealing of wounds, as wound healing and blood clotting represent closure. The most common Open profession is mail transmission. I used to work as a mail transmitter.:

:I will get more powerful if I kill monsters but it's not Her doing that, that's how everyone works on Golarion even if they are empowered by relatively pacifist deities. She will mostly not give me more power under any circumstances where I haven't earned it by, centrally, killing monsters, except under the vanishingly unlikely circumstance of needing to communicate something with me with great urgency that she could get across that way and not in any other way.

It sounds like possibly the Ways are themselves neutral and have both Good potentials that they can be used towards and Evil failure modes that they encourage.:

That is so weird. :Practitioners can become stronger in their Way by killing monsters if their precepts are about, say, killing things, or protecting others, but not otherwise.

So Evil is acting in a way that has negative externalities? Is that what it means? Or, no, it's also about...coercion, or violence. And Good is about being opposed to that?:

:Coercion is a good short word for what Evil is about. Cruelty, destructive selfishness. 'Negative externalities' sound like the kind of thing an Abadaran would say and Abadar is Neutral, so I don't think it's probably a good summation, but that's a guess. And Good is about helping people, supporting their - growth and flourishing - and in areas like most of my planet where there are a lot of monsters at work, doing that involves killing the monsters if they can't be stopped in some other way as efficiently:

:I see! I think I still don't understand fully but for now I can work with that.: So, annoying your neighbors by being nosy does not seem to be Evil.

:I'm sad to hear your planet has a monster problem. We did too – the weather was caused by all of the energy being put out by the casting which also warped flora and fauna – but it's a lot better now.

There are other extraplanar deities aside from Iomedae, then. Is it possible to contact them? Or talk to them? Is it possible to send mail to them, or Telepathy talk? Or attract them to here?:

:Deities in general can be spoken to - this is called 'prayer' - but find it costly to respond. The most ordinary thing for them to do is make people clerics; that's potentially a lot of information if you note the timing and what was going on in the person's life around when they were clericed but it's not conversational.:

:I could try seeing if casting Telepathy in ritual form, Voice across the Void, would work to contact them, but I don't have the means to do it right now.: And it also seems inadvisable for several reasons but it's very tempting...

:I'm really tempted to try contacting your world's deities but it seems that some of them are not good to talk to. And that making them aware of this place might not be good for us. I'm still really tempted though.:

:Some of them are not good to talk to but I'm not planning to advertise the existence of those ones! There are plenty of Good and benign Neutral deities worth knowing about.:

Super valid. :That is wise of you. I'm getting kind of hungry, do you want to come along to buy food? I can have you come along, or stay here and I can transmit my senses to you — I have enough range and fidelity to transmit sight and smell qualia at once. You can also describe what you feel like eating and I can buy that.:

:If I don't use my spell that creates food it will be wasted, so I was planning to use that to eat and it makes far more than I can get through alone so I'd be happy to share, though I can turn the spell into more injury-healing if that would be a better use of it?:

On the one hand, the conjured magic food could be poisoned. Or poisonous. On the other hand, he gets to eat conjured magic food.

:I guess you could go to the doctor's offices and see if anyone needs healing? But um, I'm not sure if they would be trusting of you. Because your magic is unfamiliar and no one knows you.

What kind of food can the spell create? And...it's a spell, not a ritual?: Telepathy suggests that spells are instant and typically don't require foci or material components, and rituals are longer and have more trappings.