"Is there no way to get him any more memory capacity?" Blai asks the Shadow-Lover.

The Shadow-Lover looks at Leareth. “We are not sure if that is the problem. It should not be. We are spending much more on this than We would for most souls.”

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Leareth is doing something wrong and he has no idea what it could be or how he could be remembering things more efficiently - well, he does, if he stopped being SCARED, but none of the reflexes for “stop being scared” are working and that isn’t just a memory problem, it’s something else - he would strategize about it but he’s probably already lost track of half of the constraints and he’s definitely completely dropped everything that the Herald just helpfully tried to remind him of aaaaaaaaaaaa

The Shadow-Lover is still watching Leareth, faintly puzzled.

“The thing that goes wrong is going wrong again now,” She says to Blai. “He is using all of the mind-substrate but not interacting.”

"He's frightened. Of gods." This is not objectively a very kind thing to point out right in front of Leareth but the Shadow-Lover seems, well. Dense. And might be confused about this. "The thing you do to make emotions less immediate isn't working on that for some reason."

(No, it’s fine, to the extent he’s still following at all - no one is talking to him anymore but surely the Shadow-Lover would just not let him hear and understand it if he wasn’t supposed to - he’s grateful to Select Artigas for pointing out something obvious, that might not be obvious to the Shadow-Lover, and it would never have occurred to him to explain it but the reasons don’t really make sense. It can hardly make him any more vulnerable than he already is. Better to avoid the god being confused. Confused gods are ALSO scary.)

The Shadow-Lover…seems to find this surprisingly difficult to translate. There’s a long pause.

”There are several different things that We tried doing differently to see if it would go better,” She says eventually. “That must have been one of them. So it was not any better the other way.” A pause. “We did ask your advice as a mortal. Do you think it would go better if We changed that back?”

He doesn’t want the god to be randomly modifying which abilities-to-think-and-experience he can access as an experiment!!!! …Maybe none of the reasons are good reasons, though, he can’t actually manage to look at it directly through all the internal screaming. He will let the less-impaired people figure it out.

Does that imply that the Shadow-Lover LITERALLY CANNOT FORM MEMORIES. What the FUCK.

"You have not yet tried the combination of having us here and having the calm emotions effect on him. It might work."

(The Shadow-Lover is a specialized interface and does not normally have any need to vary the format like that! And has definitely never needed to have a meta-conversation, with an entirely different mortal in an entirely different mortal-interaction-thread, about the relevant-in-mortal-concepts setup details of an earlier and now-closed thread! There is a lot that needs to be translated, and having a single interaction 'space' with three mortal-interaction threads is already more of a strain than nearly all of what the Shadow-Lover does.) 

Seldan is absolutely getting the feeling that Leareth doesn't want this, but it's probably a manifestation of the underlying "Leareth doesn't want to be dead and housed by a god he has no memory of being allied with and having experiences at all only on that god's whim", and on a logical level Leareth, with his full faculties, probably wouldn't see this as a different and worse kind of invasiveness? And Leareth did tell them very explicitly that he was consenting in advance to whatever they thought was a reasonable plan. So...okay, good, Seldan doesn't think he has any ethical objection in context, though that's probably getting an entire chapter in the hypothetical treatise. 

Leareth is no longer finding it unpleasant to be terrified. Leareth can go on having all of his habitual reactions including being terrified of gods, it's just that he can no longer find any of them distressing or painful. 

That is incredibly weird. 

...Without finding any of the thoughts unpleasant, he thinks, slowly and calmly, that he can see why this would have done the opposite of help if he was starting from zero! He...did he know before that the Shadow-Lover had repeatedly tried conversations like this before but without his allies there? He doesn't remember, obviously, but they clearly knew, or weren't surprised by it. Maybe they told him earlier and he forgot it, like everything else. 

The main source of mental pressure-to-do-things is gone and he's...not particularly breaking himself out of the loop of 'trying to think about what he might have forgotten, failing to find any trace of it.' He does have the thought that this isn't making progress but the frustration has no power to move him. 

At least he no longer looks like this is the worst possible thing that could be happening to him. 

...Seldan tries repeating the Shadow-Lover's opening speech verbatim again. 

"You believed you would find no allies among the gods of this world," the Shadow-Lover says. "That was not unreasonable with the information you had. There are constraints on Us, and communication was limited, and it would have cost Us an advantage to make Ourselves legible, to you or to anyone, and so that was not the best path. We do not share all of the values you would share with Abadar, and there are things that matter greatly to you that We cannot see to interact with. You were not wrong, about that, or that it stood in the way of your goals."

"And you spent some time thinking about the cost of the god making Themselves legible," he adds. "You said, verbatim, 'if You had done anything to communicate to me that You were not my enemy, then other gods that You wanted to trick would have seen it coming?' and asked if that was what the Shadow-Lover meant, which She didn't object to, and then you asked to hear the rest again." Maybe that was too much information and he should repeat just the rest, again, too...

Okay. This is an important conversation to have and he remembers that phrase without...actually...being able to really figure out what that means, but he can do that.

"The claim is that Abadar shares more of my values than You do," he says, and then - stops, and seems to think this over, though it's not entirely clear if he's focused on that or just...drifting. 

He was apparently doing something, though, because after a long pause he goes on, haltingly. "The implication - is that - Abadar shares many of my values. And - that You still share - some." 

"We believe that is the case and it was information that We thought you should have," the Shadow-Lover says agreeably. 

Next bit? 'You were not wrong, about that, or that it stood in the way of your goals?'

He stares at that for a while. 

"I cannot figure out why that is information You wanted to tell me," he says finally. "I know that." 

Does the Shadow-Lover's religion encourage prayer. It really should. She's so so dense. Is She reading his mind, should he be schooling his thoughts more.

Seldan has never heard of anyone praying to the Shadow-Lover while alive! If he asks himself the question he gets "why would that work, She isn't listening yet". The Shadow-Lover...component, or whatever She is...of the larger god, seems to do exactly one very specific thing. (Not completely terribly! He never heard that Vanyel came back from his long chats with a godheadache.) 

Seldan isn't really sure what the point is, from the god's perspective, of the conversations with actually-dead souls rather than ones "passing through the shadows" who She intends to toss right back after giving them some cryptic hints that - judging by Blai's confusing earlier conversation - seem to usually be crafted entirely out of scripts and the resulting Foresight footprint.

It could be trying to get visibility on mortals, or it could just be categorizing Her favorites for future Companion stock. It seems like a bigger problem is the translation between the Shadow-Lover piece and the entire rest of the god. He gets the impression that some genuine effort is happening in that direction right now! It's clearly not automation. Maybe before all of this recent eventfulness, the Shadow-Lover was tasked with reviewing all the dead people's souls and taking notes on future reincarnation, and just...did this independently? He's theorizing wildly here, to be clear, this is definitely not known religious doctrine or anything. But it makes some sense of why it might be convenient for the Valdemargod to have the songs and mythology about how the Shadow-Lover is nice and will hug you, without having much in the way of a structured temple order or standard religious doctrine like Vkandis has. 

...Anyway, he had interpreted the bit that Leareth is confused about as an...awkward attempt at an apology? It's a terrible apology, though, so it's no wonder Leareth didn't catch that. 

Blai is not confident of that interpretation at all and if Seldan thinks it's likely he should be the one to advance it aloud.

'Apology' might be putting too human a cast on it, but he'll try advancing his theory in more carefully chosen terms, now that Leareth is less capable of being spooked by more people talking at him. 

"Leareth, my interpretation is that She wants you to know that She understands that you have specific values and goals, some of which the god doesn't share and some of which They mostly don't understand or can't see well enough to engage with, and - to acknowledge that Her decision or the larger god's decision to be mysterious rather than communicating with you is something that caused you problems." 

He turns to look at the Shadow-Lover. "This part wasn't included, but - is it also true that You intend to do better in the future, now that you have all these lovely Golarion gods who understand Law and Good and things like that to be your advisors? Just so you know, if that is true, it's very relevant information to include for Leareth's clarity on the situation." 

The Shadowgod is getting advice from - is that new information or did he hear it and forget it? It's important, if it's in fact true. Leareth stares in bemusement at the mental motion of 'noticing that he might have forgotten something important' running without any accompanying jolt of panic. 

Translating translating translating.... 

"This is - significantly true," the Shadow-Lover says finally. "We intend to plan and act differently, now that Our resources and constraints are very different. Vkandis will no longer be relevant. That is a constraint removed. Shelyn and Sarenrae and Abadar will provide Us with more ability-to-steer to the extent that We act in ways compatible with Their aims. That is a new constraint. We will choose paths when they are best for Us, not because they are best for you, but We think that more of the paths open to us will be ones that you approve of. We are pleased with this result, because you are a powerful steering-force in your own right, and it will cost less for both of us if we cooperate openly in those cases where We desire the same path as you." 

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