Well, the assignment is to teach the people of Cheliax about Good, and if they'd already figured it out then there wouldn't be one. (The risk is that they will murder their advisors in a rage when they don't like the advice, but - you have to attempt cooperation, if you can afford to at all.) He comes up behind the little boys. "What was this man accused of?"

If someone is being lawfully tortured to death, what should you do about it? It's a puzzle Iomedae wrote about a lot, when she was twenty seven and serving in the armies of Taldor. He did not really understand what made it a puzzle - obviously you work cooperatively with the local authorities to do better without actually intervening in any of their actual existing judicial procedures, obviously you don't randomly start vigilante execution-interference which will torch a lot of your long-term avenues to improve things - until someone was actually being tortured to death in front of him.

"He's an orc!"

     "He killed his master, he did!"

          "I'm going to hit him in the eye."

     "Are not! You couldn't hit a raindrop in a storm."

          "Fucking watch me!"

You shouldn't throw stones at him, he wants to say, except perhaps it's actually a mercy. 

"I think we should - go talk to the Archduke as he requested," he says to Arn, though his feet aren't in fact doing that. If he were a real cleric he'd have healing.

"Yeah." He doesn't move either. 

Right, then. They'll head on up to the Archduke's villa where perhaps the man will still be alive when they clarify the matter, not that that's better.

They've been spotted in the town already; a servant comes out to greet them and invite them to enjoy the Archduke's hospitality. The Archduke himself is out front when they get there. He's in his fifties, and clearly a warrior, wearing fine armor in brown and gold.

They did not have time to do an enormous amount of studying Chelish feudal courtesies and the Asmodean ones are ludicrous but they'll make an attempt. They bow. "Your Highness. Lastwall expresses its gratitude for the skill and valor of the men of Menador who have come to our assistance at the Worldwound, and hopes that our cooperation will be long-lasting."

"As do I." He... will not say that he's wishing there were more of them, he's already received the information by letter and decided to try to be very understanding. Maybe they'll send more next time if he asks for more after his men have been of use. "Menador has always prided itself on its defensive capabilities. But I'm afraid we've misplaced many of our other ancient traditions, and shall need your help in recovering them. We thank you for any assistance you can offer us. But come inside, you must be hungry."

The inside of the house is - not comically heaven-themed. The redecorating is actually quite competent, and there are many places in the inner sea where it would look perfectly nice. But it's a bit of a ridiculous contrast to the square.

They are in fact hungry. He thinks Iomedae would find a way to gracefully bring up the execution right now but he cannot think of one at all. ("Did you know that torturing people to death is Evil?" He cannot say that to an archduke. It will not save tortured people. It will only cause problems.)

It's not yet dinnertime, but there's a spread of bread and cheese and fruit and several other kinds of relatively simple foods in the courtyard, where a handful of women are out reading and sewing. (Some noblewomen still sew, in Menador, at least when still in the process of replacing half their wardrobes.) Narikopolus completely inwardly winces a bit at who's present, but it isn't as if he can realistically hide the structure of his entire family; if they mean to advise him to turn half of it out, he can deal with that then. His wife is there, anyway, and she has enough proper ladies in waiting out with her that it would be unreasonable to expect him to introduce everyone. He'll introduce the most important people, and they can greet the Iomedans as the honored guests they are.

There are halflings scurrying around in the background, cleaning or carrying things. Most of them make some effort to remain out of sight, but one of them does appear to take Arn and Marit's bags up to their rooms. 

"I think we can be most useful to you if you tell us a little bit about - what you are hoping to get from this. I would not want to advise you on how to run a place like Lastwall if you are not persuaded it is a good idea to run places like Lastwall; it would not work. I can point out every Evil thing I see if the problem is that you do not know which ones they are but - Evil is usually more complicated than that. One key idea of Iomedaenism is that Good ought to be purchased where it is least expensive, like any other thing you'd buy. If I suggest random Good things to do I will be ignorant of how expensive they would be."

"I suppose I would most like to run the place like Menador of a hundred years ago. Very few people now remember what that would mean, though, and I'm not one of them. I do know that one large part of it was the worship of Iomedae. Much of the knowledge we had is lost, irrecoverable. But Iomedanism, I think, we can re-establish, if we first learn what it means. But beyond that, I - well, I had meant to build a temple, for Iomedae, one worthy of the county of her birth. But I was advised that this would be no great service to her, and to instead seek out better advice on what would be. I'm afraid you may find us quite a bit more ignorant than those who are evil solely out of convenience. Asmodeanism demands quite an inconvenient degree of evil, really, but we are still learning to live without it. We only recently obtained our first copy of the Acts, and some in the household are still working through them."

One of the girls silently holds up her book, which is indeed one of the household's several copies of the Acts (he ordered several of them made, as soon as they had a copy to work from). He nods at her.

"Acts is - a pretty good place to start but it's not exactly written for helping people escape Asmodeanism. I guess maybe once we have worked with you for a while we can try to write up something that is, for everywhere else that'll need it. I'm afraid I don't know very much about what Menador was like a hundred years ago, but - it's good you have in mind a thing to aim at."

"I think - it's not that grand temples are Evil. But they are not usually the cheapest Good you can purchase. And - another key idea of Iomedaenism is that it is often to Good's advantage to do things Evil cannot imitate. Evil can also build grand temples, so if the temple is grand that doesn't tell your people why Good is any better than Evil. The temple having channels does."

"We did hope for that. I understand supplies of them are unfortunately very limited, right now."

He's not trying to complain, but it's kind of rubbing salt in the wound. The Erastilians and Pharasmins still won't admit to existing, so at this precise moment, the town has less healing than it did before.

"- Kantaria doesn't have anyone? Supplies are limited but it's my hope that should be possible to change. I imagined there were other churches. Iomedae picks fewer clerics than most gods, and of course none at all this year, probably because She's busy with the war effort."

"Kantaria - the town, not the county - does not have any clerics of any kind operating openly. There may be someone in the town who's empowered, but they're not running public channels. We believe there are a handful of Erastilians operating in the outlying farmland, but they'll be new, and we're neglecting to collect any of them because the last ten times we did that it was to kill them.

Pharasmin midwives and Gozreh clerics have always existed, but only because we generally have no way of identifying them, and they're certainly not revealing themselves now."

So if someone set up a channel schedule in Kantaria it's possible that more people'd add themselves to it but for now they're all sensibly terrified. "That makes sense and I will communicate it to the Church in Vigil. I think most of the - advantages that Good has - are really advantages of being trusted to be Good, and for that reason will take some time to accrue, though they really do have very outsized benefits once they exist."

The really obvious and overriding benefit of Good is that if you're not Good - in the sense of vocally swearing allegiance to it, if not reading that way - the new regime kills you. He doesn't say that. He makes a thoughtful 'hm' sound.

"I'm not sure we need to be persuaded of the benefits of Good, but if you'd care to enlighten us, I'm sure there are many more we have not yet realized."

"People are more likely to report crimes to the government if they expect the government to respond fairly and proportionately. People are less likely to commit crimes in the first place if there are few laws and all of them are reasonable laws. People are more likely to end up doing something they're actually good at if they have the freedom to choose what they do. If husbands are loyal to their wives and wives to their husbands and both are concerned with the wellbeing of their family, their children are better fed and better cared for and will become stronger, healthier, better men. A state with a peaceful border does not have to devote as many men to protecting it and similarly a person with Good neighbors and business partners does not have to spend as much of his time on guard against their efforts to trick or rob him."

"Men fight better in the service of someone they trust who they believe will do right by them. And fight better when they trust that at home their families are safe, and that their courage defends them, instead of being wasted on some thing irrelevant to them. If people think the law is comprehensible and that they will not be harmed if they follow it, they will bother to learn it and follow it. If people are approached by someone offering them money or power to betray their country they are much less likely to accept if they like their country and expect reporting this incident will go well for them. If men are not pressured to give their word to unworthy causes they may guard it, and still be in possession of it when they need to give it to important ones worthy of them."

Most of those do not really obviously have to do with good. Maybe he's just really confused about what good is. Obviously men would much rather defend their families from marauding orcs than go fight at the worldwound, but this is selfishness; the wound matters more for the rest of the world.

The idea that fidelity makes children stronger seems... false... in that a man who is faithful to his wife will have maybe four or five sons, if he's lucky and not often away, and it really seems like the most important kind of strength is the one that comes from surviving battles that killed ten of your brothers. Narikopolus himself is legitimate, but his father was not.

He should probably agree with it anyway, the next time it comes up.

There is no actual discernible pause before he speaks. "Does Good typically lead to peaceful borders? I was under the impression that Lastwall didn't have them, either."

"It doesn't help any with orcs. It helps a great deal with civilized neighbors; Lastwall's almost never been at war with either of ours, and most countries are at war every few decades."

"Might be the Law, as much as the Good."