Not an Outer God, just a god you personally haven't heard of from a different part of Creation.

Right! Well, you know, it's good to check these things.

Hello, other god from a different part of Pharasma's Creation! What's up? 

The formerly human god does communicate in a way that the god of the shadows can mostly follow! 

Replying is harder! The other god is almost by definition not part of the same web of Foresight that the Shadowgod can push-and-pull within, and even the Shadow-Lover interface cannot really generate communications without any feedback mechanism to see the effects of them. 

The Shadow-Lover interface has a kind of memory, though. Heavily distorted from a mortal perspective, but there are relevant conversations that can be passed along, that a god who was once human might be able to translate.

The visitor said,

Can souls here make it to Golarion afterlives?

Iomedae doesn't so far as I'm aware manage soul destinations directly, that's Pharasma's department. If you can bypass that and hand off souls directly to Iomedae - or other gods - that might be very very important.

The reason it might be important if you can pass souls directly to specific gods is that Judgment often sends people to the Evil afterlives and even Evil people should not go there. Nirvana wants them. I don't know how much the other decent afterlives want people who don't sort there when judged, but Nirvana will take them all.

Aroden's balls. You guys have your own afterlife arrangement? What is it? is it basically okay

The actual conversation with the visitor was maybe not the most informative for that, but,

We know very little about how your world works. Why does Pharasma have first remit over all souls, even when they do not follow Her?

She's the Creator and also the goddess of death and Judgment. I'm actually very confused about why She's letting your soul-recycling program here function, I would have guessed She'd object, has She not commented at all?

She has never communicated anything to any gods of this world, that We know.

And, carefully rotating to the compressed-and-distorted record of a different conversation,

Are you and the other Velgarth gods against Leareth's plan because you have an arrangement with Pharasma about souls not going to their horrible afterlives?

The prophecies, we saw things happening and made different choices and - You, and all the other gods, probably couldn't see that either, or it would have already been taken into account and we'd have seen something else. Because it's a spell from another world. And if You knew about the other world, You wouldn't be confused about Pharasma. 

Nirvana would take them. 

All the Good afterlives would take some of them. But Nirvana is specialized for redemption in a way Elysium and Heaven aren't, and Elysium at least has a lot of important social structures running on the fact that the average person is basically benevolent. 

Probably they can't Plane Shift random souls into whatever afterlife, though. Pharasma would be upset. On the other hand, Cayden would kind of have thought that Pharasma would be upset by this reincarnation situation, and yet here they are. Maybe she thinks of Velgarth people as being a weird kind of immortal or something. But he feels more uncertain now than he did before that they can't just Plane Shift everyone to Nirvana.

The immortal would accept that, probably, if it were the only option. But it wouldn't substitute for the work he wants to do in the material world. And even knowing for sure that it's possible wouldn't untangle their current problem, with the Star-Eyed working against everything that would lead to mortal-level contact with the other world. 

Now how to communicate that...

The gods can't see right now. It's all happening at - the human level - and it doesn't make much sense either but at least we can talk to the man.

I don't know what you want. I don't know what the god you speak for wants. But I think You don't want ten million people dead. I'm also not sure You want anything as simple as Leareth permanently dead. There were forces at cross-purposes there, weren't there? I think maybe You were looking for a third way.

I think it's here and You can't see it. Maybe You can't even see that Leareth is already planning to call off the whole invasion! If that's what You wanted, it's done. Except there were plans already in motion, weren't there?

This is such a stupid pointless mess. Piles and piles of Foresight, steering for Leareth dead forever. 

Okay, so there's an... archmage named Leareth... that someone wants dead, but you don't want them dead, and Leareth is planning to... kill ten million people in an invasion??? Why don't you want him dead again??? That's a lot of dead people! Cayden kind of wants Leareth dead! 

Well, obviously They had never been intending to let Leareth succeed at the plan!

Communicating continues to be very hard, but maybe the next part of the Shadow-Lover's conversation with Vanyel will clarify things a bit? 

Was that the plan since Brightstar was born? The Star-Eyed killed his entire family, not even to drive Valdemar to war, just to hurt one boy enough that he would...

He was the one in the Heartstone room. Who shielded me out in the vision. He was going to destroy Haven to kill Leareth. Because it doesn't matter how powerful or prepared the man is, that would do it, it only makes sense if Leareth is there. 

That's why the backup plan was to Final Strike. To power the god-ritual. It would work, if Leareth was there.

Is that what You wanted. A clever twist, right at the end. Forcing Leareth to finding a better way by sticking him with a baby god that would never agree to grow up by killing ten million Valdemarans.

Just so you're aware, that plan is also horrible.

If the Shadowgod were capable of communicating more clearly, They would perhaps be communicating embarrassment about that part.

It had genuinely seemed like a very efficient and clever plan! It would have worked fine if not for the unexpected visitor from another world! And it would have been quite inexpensive for the god of the shadows, and very expensive for the Star-Eyed Goddess even though She wouldn't have gotten anything She wanted out of it! 

Cayden traces back concepts until he feels, like, vaguely oriented. 

So, the status quo is that the archmage wants to make the Starstone (reasonable archmage behavior, to Cayden's mind) but has to kill ten million people to do it. So the Star-Eyed tried to get her cleric Brightstar to kill Leareth by arranging the death of his entire family (??? is the Star-Eyed Evil??? even most Neutral gods wouldn't use their clerics against their own purposes that hard). But then the Shadowgod rearranged things a different way so that Leareth accidentally ascends... some other person? Instead of himself? And that person doesn't want to be powered by ten million dead so Leareth has to come up with some other solution?

And now the Shadowgod is asking for some other way that doesn't involve nonconsensually making anyone a god? Does he want the plans for the Starstone? Cayden can probably get him the plans for the Starstone, some researchers in Elysium have been reverse-engineering it.

The Shadowgod rotates concepts until that response mostly makes sense.

- yes, the immortal mage would definitely want the plans to the stone-that-ascends-people-to-godhood! The Shadowgod is not sure how to use it Themselves and can't...talk...to the immortal mage, Their avatar can only talk to souls that pass close to death. 

(This comes across very blurrily to Cayden but 'yes, We want that' is not that complex a concept to convey.) 

The problem is that - 

Maybe, just, if You could see the resources you have on the gameboard now, You could steer a way out of this disaster instead of deeper into it. Your first plan isn't going to work now that we know, but - You got us into this, or at least helped, and I don't know that we, the mortals involved, can get out of this on our own.

- and the Shadowgod is trying, but it's almost impossible to see and the Star-Eyed Goddess is panicking and burning even more resources to try to regain control - more rotating concepts - 

The Star-Eyed Goddess paid a great deal for the events to arrange this meeting, and achieved little of Her own aims

The Star-Eyed Goddess keeps trying to kill everyone involved in this, probably because She can't see either -

- is this expensive for Iomedae, You mustn't do anything expensive for Iomedae -

See, this soul belongs to Iomedae, but She apparently overreached Her resources too far to intervene now, and the Star-Eyed Goddess keeps trying to kill this soul for being noisy in Foresight. And there would be more paths if the other world can be contacted but that is going to be difficult to achieve if the Star-Eyed Goddess keeps intervening, They can prevent her from killing anyone permanently but it would be too expensive to try to prevent Her from acting at all... 

Cayden Cailean is friends with Calistria. He genuinely likes her, has since before he ascended. What's the point of being one of the two thousand or so most powerful beings in Pharasma's Creation if you still have to put up with talking to people you don't like? 

But she is alien, alien on a level he didn't understand when he was human, didn't understand when he was newly ascended, only barely comprehends now. 'Vengeance' and 'lust' are mortal-concepts that only vaguely approximate the deeper thing, the thing mortals are too small to even begin to understand. Cayden had thought, for a long time, that mortals might struggle to understand godconcepts, but obviously gods understood mortals. Only through his friendship with Calistria did he begin to understand that that isn't true. Calistria is so old, and so big, and so alien, that mortal-concepts are as hard for her as god-concepts are for humans. 

To Cayden's mind, part of his friendship with Calistria is trying to explain to her that if she clerics both sides of a feud, then they both kill each other, and she gets less of the freedompassiondecisiontheory godconcept she wants. It is working. Sort of. He's optimistic.

Anyway, he's put in his ten million hours on trying to explain human concepts to incomprehensible ancient deities bent on violent mayhem. 

--

He shoves all this at the Shadowgod as legibly as possible and accompanies it with "do you want me to go talk to her?"

Yes!!!

The Shadowgod is...the same kind of thing as the Star-Eyed Goddess, but in this case at least, that does not make it easier to communicate. Also the Star-Eyed Goddess knows that They are opposed to Her getting more of what She wants, which does not make it easier to obtain that trust. There's - a concept of a thing that the Star-Eyed Goddess wants for mortals living in the material plane - that isn't just being able to see in Foresight, that isn't the only reason She is opposed to the immortal mage - but it isn't the same as the concept of the thing that the Shadowgod wants for mortals in the material plane, and They...do not actually understand it or know how to communicate it to the other god. 

The Shadowgod can point out "where" to find the Star-Eyed Goddess, though. 

Hello, Star-Eyed Goddess! He is Cayden Cailean and he is here to talk to you about humans and how you can reach your goals in ways that involve less killing them!

The Star-Eyed Goddess is in some ways a little less alien than the Shadowgod, a little less distant from the linear-time world of mortals. She doesn't have much trouble understanding the message. 

She is very very confused for other reasons! 

What does this god want. What is this god doing here. She doesn't know Him. Why does He want to tell Her about humans, what's in it for Him. 

(This is, again, not communicated incredibly clearly.) 

Cayden shows her who he is, which for him involves a lot of illustrative cases. He cares about people being strong and happy and free; he cares about good times and good friends and not having to suck up to those with more power than you. And he really cares about people not being dead.

He's approaching the Star-Eyed in a spirit of friendship and helpfulness. He doesn't want to convince her of anything that goes against her own goals. (Maybe they would turn out, someday, to be enemies; he is conscious of this; but he never wants to assume someone is his enemy unless he's tried talking first.)

What an oddly friendly god. 

The Star-Eyed Goddess thinks it's just not that big a deal when humans die, if it's not too many of them at once? They make more. The humans do pray for Her help about the very new ones dying, so it's good if you nudge for them to have lots of the Gifts that make fewer of them die for unclear reasons. But they don't pray desperately to Her about the ones who've been in the world for a long time, usually, so it seems like it doesn't bother them? Anyway you can keep the souls and put them back somewhere else. 

He used to be a human before he was a god, and he died unexpectedly when he was, you know, reasonably old, and--

An old boyfriend he was planning to catch up with next week is kneeling and saying, "Cayden, you cock-breathed son of Geryon, you better have fucking ascended or I'll rip your balls off. You're the lucky drunk. You can't be dead. You're never dead. We were going to get dinner, I had a lead on this tomb in Osirion, and I miss you, you fucker, and being a god is bad enough but you can't just be gone. We all scraped together the money to pay for the scry and it can't find you anywhere and-- and--" And then instead of finishing his prayer he's sobbing--

He was going to teach his daughter to use a sword, she'd been begging him for years and she was finally sixteen. A friend had put on a play he was looking forward to. Thais and he were going to get a beer together and complain about old times in a nostalgic fashion. A tomb here, and some bandits to clear out there, and rumors of a lich over there. All his plans that he would never be able to finish. 

Mostly very old humans don't mind if they die because being old is painful and frustrating, and they aren't doing much anyway. But everyone she is trying to kill is doing things, has goals and projects and loves and good things they're looking forward to, and when they die they'll never get any of that ever again. 

....That is in fact not an angle the Star-Eyed Goddess has seen before - the humans don't communicate all of that in their prayers to Her, at least not in a way that She can parse - and She spends a while rotating it. 

- the humans that have - goals and projects - that also isn't the angle on it She is familiar with but She can translate it easily enough, the thing where some humans carve deeper and straighter paths in Foresight, their threads harder to shift - anyway, some of them have dangerous projects and goals, is the thing. Like this one. 

She shows Cayden Cailean a god-memory in Foresight of what the Cataclysm looked like. She and Vkandis and several of the other gods - not all of the gods, there was no consensus then - had wanted the humans to stop being noisy, but - what ended up happening was so much worse, and it could only have happened because of this human. (Also another human, but that human is dead now and They know better than to put the soul back in the world now.) But this human keeps coming back and being noisy, and - 

- trying to convey the thing that She wants, that this human is pushing away from, that he would destroy without caring about what he's breaking - the humans are meant to live in a world that feels small and understandable to them, that's what they're shaped for, a Vale of a few hundred people where everyone can know everyone else's name (this is not exactly the terms in which the Star-Eyed Goddess thinks of it but Cayden can infer) - a world where they know what to expect for their children and their children's children, where there's a path for them to follow that makes sense to them - 

Like this?

And Cayden sends over the Summerlands, Erastil's realm, land of farmers and hunters and herders, where the fields are always rich with wheat and rain never falls out of season, where there is no hunger or fear or disease. Where they hold festivals, as they have held them for time immemorial, and where tinkers and merchants come through with strange toys that delight the children, and where people form strong marriages and strong friendships and strong communities. Everyone takes care of each other, there. 

Some parts of that are more - recognizable, resonant with the Star-Eyed Goddess - than others. (Some parts don't parse very well at all, or correspond to aspects of the material plane and mortal lives that She can only see indirectly in their Foresight shadow.) 

But...it's good. It's good and right and human souls will grow into a shape they should be, in that place. 

The immortal one does not want that. Where the immortal one acts, the world is - well, in some ways more similar to that vision, but not in the ways that the Star-Eyed Goddess can see and care about. 

Cayden twists the view of the Summerlands and shows--

--the army of Heaven mustering in preparation for an incomprehensible battle for extraordinary stakes--

--a man and his wife kissing their families goodbye as they prepare to go to the Boneyard to raise the lost children there and teach them Good--

--two philosophers debating a subtle point of infinite ethics with extraordinary implications for how to handle the Abyss--

--the study of magic and science, brought to the point that they're the same, curiosity and the thirst for knowledge--

--art it would take many millennia to fully comprehend, and even more millennia to create--

--the Summerlands as a place of healing and rest and recovery and growth. A home for some people for all eternity, yes. But for others, somewhere to begin, somewhere from which they can become something strange and grand and glorious and as beautiful as the gods themselves--

The Star-Eyed Goddess only follows some of that, but - it's vaguely alarming, no?

It seems like all of that would be so noisy in Foresight. She is confused why this other god doesn't seem bothered about that?

It's not just that noise-in-Foresight makes it difficult to manage Your resources. Sometimes noise in Foresight is hiding a Cataclysm. It's very very very important that the humans be predictable enough to steer away from more Cataclysms. The immortal one apparently does not understand this!!!! 

The Star-Eyed seems very scared. 

It makes sense to Cayden Cailean to be scared. The Cataclysm is really scary. Things like the Cataclysm happened recently on the planet Cayden Cailean grew up on, too. (And here he shares a bit about the death of Aroden and the near-release of Rovagug.) When you're scared, it makes sense to want to cling to control as hard as you can. If you control everything about the world, then you can make it so nothing bad can happen. Lots of people-- gods and humans and maybe even the immortal one-- feel that way.

But-- when you're scared, when you're trying to keep everything that strongly in your control, it can cost you a lot. It has cost the Star-Eyed a lot. Cayden can see that. All the work she's done on k'Treva Vale, destroyed, so she has half a hope of killing the immortal one. 

Cayden has seen many people destroy themselves that way. Clinging so hard to control, to try to keep the bad things from happening, that they don't dare let anything good happen either. 

The only way out is to be brave. It is very hard to be brave, especially when the thing you're scared of is actually really bad, especially when you've been scared for a long long time. The Star-Eyed probably doesn't know how to stop being scared, anymore.

But it's hurting the humans and it's hurting her.

Cayden wants, very much, for her to try.