Leareth hadn't actually been sure. 

(He knows what his intentions are, and the shape of person he is, and that if Vanyel is willing to offer his cooperation then Leareth will do everything he can to make sure it wasn't a mistake. But it's hard to guess how the magic of another world would weight things, and what it would judge him for. He...hadn't been sure. If this way of trying to demonstrate his intentions would actually work, or - how it would go, if it didn't.) 

He relaxes infinitesimally. 

Vanyel has twenty years of practice trying to guess at what Leareth is thinking and feeling from the tiniest shifts in the tension around his eyes. He notices. 

Leareth is not Chelish but he might as well be and Blai has no individual familiarity with him. :This by itself guarantees almost nothing but I would be willing to trust sufficiently - solemn - and sufficiently broad so as to avoid exact-words-ing oaths, now.:

"I was also planning to cast a first-stage Truth Spell. Do you have a way to get around it?" 

"No." 

He could likely have figured out a way, if he wanted to put in some research. It...did not seem like it would be an ability he wanted to have, in the worlds where it was ever going to come up. 

He could also solemnly swear to that if Vanyel asks him, but Leareth is already very careful about the oaths he gives, and he does not actually like the feeling that maybe he has to be additionally careful because he doesn't know what the other world's magic is judging him on. 

Truth Spell. The vrondi do in fact appear to behave normally. 

Vanyel isn't going to ask him to solemnly swear about that specifically, mostly because it would be a little weird in any other situation in his life and it hasn't occurred to him. 

(Blai recasts Detect Magic.)

He can see the vrondi! They're very pretty. 

This might be one of the most important moments in the last thousand years and Leareth is - 

- terrified, actually, mostly because a god from another world who he knows barely anything about might be paying attention to him right now. He doesn't know if that's how it works but it could be. 

That doesn't matter though. 

"I swear to you on the stars that I have not lied to Vanyel to date, that I intend to tell the truth to best of my knowledge today, and that my intent is still to cooperate with Vanyel. I swear I did not arrange for the Changecreature attack in Haven - or any kind of offensive against k'Treva Vale - and had no knowledge of them until reports arrived after the fact, I did not authorize any operations against Valdemar at all, I did not form any contingency-plans that resembled either attack in any way, and I have verified to my satisfaction that they could not have been done by anyone affiliated with my organization without my knowledge. I - had made no firm commitments to Vanyel, but was not expecting or intending to begin a war in the next year, significantly because I placed - at least one in ten odds that Vanyel would end up willing to help find something better.

"I am not going to commit to a future course of action until I know more, but I think it is - at least nine in ten odds - that I will call off the current plan, however costly that is, and spend at least fifty years determining if the existence of another world means there are better alternatives, either a different power source or a different way of improving the equilibrium with Velgarth's gods. ...At least forty million people will die of other causes during that time, if my estimates are right, and - from what I know, it is significantly less likely that a god I end up creating would have remit over their spirits to get them back."

And he made a vow and it applies to them too, and he's fairly sure that talking to the priest of the god from another world is in expectation the best action he can take toward fulfilling that vow and this does not make it less terrifying. There's a chance the gods of another world are less limited than the gods of his. There's a chance that this priest's god will notice him, decide that he doesn't look steerable in convenient directions, and try to destroy him, and succeed. 

It's still worth it. He doesn't think it's a very big chance. 

"I would still choose to wait, if it means I can find something better. - I am definitely not willing to swear anything about what I might do after fifty years, but I swear I am not deliberately misrepresenting my intentions at this time." 

The vrondi think that Leareth is not lying about any of that. 

:I would like your oath that you will neither personally ascend while evil - I have no personally verified knowledge of you being evil, though I can check tomorrow - nor create a god likely to be evil. I can justify this request in more detail if it's not self-evident. My goddess is ascended and in life served a god who also ascended, and I have nothing against adding new gods to the world in principle. But not evil ones.:

This is in some sense one of the most sensible initial responses anyone has ever had to Leareth's plans! He wasn't planning to create an evil god, and is really very sure that using blood-magic to power the working will not directly impact the gods values, but it's on priors a reasonable worry for someone to have! 

He also has very little information on what the priest's goddess (or the mortal civilization in his world, but the goddess's values are the relevant ones, probably, if the spell comes from Her) would consider evil, and swearing an oath on a pointer to an ethical system he isn't familiar with sounds like a terrible idea! 

:...The request is self-evident but different people in Velgarth disagree widely on what they consider evil. I do expect that if you were to - check directly via the same mechanism you used to check if I am 'Lawful' - I would probably count as evil. I am willing to swear I do not intend to create a god who is evil and - if your world offers mechanisms for verifying whether a given design for a god is likely to be evil, I swear I will use those. ...I am not going to swear now to abide by them in all cases but I would be willing to once I know more about the ethical system involved. I was not intending to personally ascend and would need vastly more information on how the mechanism...works...to consider it at all, but - I swear I will not knowingly choose to ascend and become a god that I predict would act in ways that most Velgarth ethical systems agree are evil?: 

Being asked for this is probably a positive update! It seems like evidence that the goddess from another world cares about human welfare at all! It would not help to panic about the possibility that he has an irreconcilable values different with the priest's goddess and she will see that he's not willing to back down and choose to destroy him over it, and Leareth is not panicking about this, but it's taking some work. 

...Leareth is scared. 

Vanyel has absolutely no idea what to do with that observation??????? 

:Iomedae was concerned with turning out the shape she intended on ascent and made extensive use of the spell Commune to check with her own god about it. He is no longer available, but She is. I can't cast Commune myself as it is fifth circle and I am third but there are clerics who can on my planet and probably on others though I have no special ability to locate additional planets with established churches. I do not know exactly what ethical philosophies might be prevalent on this planet nor whether my belief that the nature of Evil is mostly commonsense will hold under these circumstances. I... don't have my copy of the Acts of Iomedae, it's in Haven...:

Nod. 

:I am not sure if this actually solves anything from your point of view, and I would need to formulate a phrasing I would be comfortable swearing to, but - I do feel confident that I understand Vanyel's reasoning about ethics and will not be surprised by anything there, and - I would trust him to judge if the risk of creating an evil god was too high. I think - much of what is good or evil is commonsense, but common sense can break down around - tradeoffs, and situations where there is no good answer - and I trust Vanyel's thinking there.: 

Leareth trusts him with that??????!!!!!!!!!

:Would you also trust him to delegate this responsibility?:

He would actually really prefer not to have to swear to that but it’s better than the goddess from another world deciding he needs to be destroyed so

Also it is, in fact, hard to overstate how much caution is warranted when the thing one is doing is creating a god. 

:I think so. I am not sure I want to swear to it yet without considering it more, I have not already had reason to consider the question.:

:Is your primary motivation in creating a custom god here the afterlife situation?:

:That is part of it. Though I could have worked with a modification of the reincarnation system to let people retain memories across lives, if that were easy to implement, which I had reason to think it might be given the existence of the Companions. But...: 

He hesitates, clearly considering how to explain. But - 

:There was a kingdom called Tantara, once, and it was - better than anywhere that has existed in Velgarth since for the last two thousand years. It was not perfect, but - any child born in the entire Kingdom could earn a chance to study at Urtho's Tower, if they were Gifted or clever or simply determined enough. And children grow up cleverer when they never go hungry - in Tantara the harvests rarely failed, because there were enough mages trained in weather-working, and if one region was unlucky there were permanent Gates across the whole Kingdom to transport goods. They had around the same number of Healers, but the logistics for almost anyone in the Kingdom to access them. And they - 

- they were getting better. There were generations of students at Urtho's Tower who went on to invent and teach and build things, so that their children would have even more abundance to build on.:

A pause. 

:...And then the Cataclysm destroyed all of that. But - it should have been possible to rebuild, right, all you need to build a civilization is people and the people are the same as they were before. But there is one place on the planet right now that has permanent Gates and enough weather-mages to prevent famines, and it is an empire I built that ended up with its government build mostly on mind control, that bans all churches because when they were allowed their priests kept being given visions telling them to assassinate its leaders our inventors - to be clear, that started before the empire was run on mind control, so the gods cannot have been objecting to that - and they have abundance in food and magic and all of it goes into pointless political scheming and so nothing ever changes, not really.: 

:And almost everywhere else, children starve. I suppose it would be a little better, if they went to a pleasant afterlife, but - it would not actually address my objection, which is that it should be possible to have a civilization where that does not need to happen. I lived in one, once. And every time I tried to remake it, for a thousand years - every time anyone tried, I did go examine histories of places I had not been personally once I thought I saw a pattern - something went wrong. And eventually I had to conclude that our current gods prefer a world that never changes too much. Where most people are either too poor and desperate or too hemmed-in by other constraints to do anything interesting with their lives. My best guess is that it has to do with Foresight, that They can see more clearly if people are more predictable, and that They...do not actually have a sensory modality that lets Them perceive the suffering it causes.: 

:I did try talking to Them first. There was no indication that They were interested in listening, and maybe They were not capable of it. I have in my notes that Vkandis set me on fire for attempting it.: 

Another pause. 

:...I swear I have been telling the truth as best as I am aware of it.: 

The vrondi seem to agree with that. 

:Having Good gods around does not prevent famine, not when there are also Evil ones.:

:I think that is not the problem here and none of our gods prefer famine to not absent other considerations, but it sounds like an awful problem to have! And - it makes sense that the risk of accidentally creating an evil god is so salient to you.: 

:There are a number of evil gods active on Golarion. They are very bad. Dramatically worse than the ones you have here, so far as I'm presently aware. And - big. Gods can act across millennia and over many planets. But there are also many Good ones, and you could just attempt to invite one or more of those here, to establish churches and negotiate with the local pantheon.

There are nine afterlives, corresponding to alignments, and the Evil ones are much of what make the Evil gods so bad.:

Why are there nine afterlives. That sounds like so much extra work for Someone to have set up. 

:Understood. Thank you for explaining.: It seems like it could make things worse to come to the attention of "Pharasma" if it means getting dragged into the inexplicably elaborate afterlife system that includes multiple bad ones! :If your world has Good gods that can negotiate with our gods, that would at least help, though I have some concern that the word 'gods' applying to both is eliding a significant difference between the - kinds of entity they are. I have trouble imagining how alignment would apply to ours even if it applied to mortals.: