"I see. May I ask if that is a moral position, or merely a piece of practical advice?"

"- somewhere in between? It is not a matter the church or the law would intervene on even in Lastwall, parents know their children best and you are clearly acting out of desiring good lives for yours, and I trust the matter to your judgment and won't raise it again. But I do suspect that Asmodean wizard education was not just trying to create wizards but trying to injure people in the course of making them wizards, and so did a bunch of things that are not done anywhere else and are not good practice for training men."

"Mmm. 

I do not know whether you have been given the full structure of his Highness's family. Do you know how many of his sons have made it to the age of twenty?"

" - no." 

"Thirteen. Of those, three still live. An adventurer in the north who does not speak to him, a half-blood, and my son Alfonso-Ignasi, who is out at the moment. All others have failed him, in this matter. Valeria may be different, and I hope for the Archduke's sake she is. But I have given him a living one, for now, and I will see his brothers brought up to live, if they can. 

The boy is lazy. Not incurably so. But left to his own devices, he does not study, and if he does not study, he will die. So if you suspect only that the practice does not help him, I will keep my own counsel here."

"That's - itself not a way things go, in other places," he says, after a moment boggling at it. "Of course men must risk their lives to become stronger anywhere. But - an army that is careful and plans well and is concerned with the survival of its soldiers can hold a border and handle monsters nearby - hold a Worldwound fort, even - and lose only one man in twenty each year, one in ten if things are very hard. They get stronger a little slower, but they do get stronger. It seems to me that it would do enormous damage to a society, to lose its sons like that. I see why, facing those odds, it would not seem to you that you had the option of - having a son who will mature of his own accord."

"The Archduke keeps the peace from here to Isger, against the mountains and against the whole southern border of Nidal. House Narikopolus has done this for a thousand years, and done it so well that neither the Thrunes nor the new Queen has removed them, even when all others fell. It cannot do this without a strong leader, and it does not do this without sacrifice. But whatever you see that lives and grows here does so behind those dead.

I liked the Acts. I thought that Iomedae was very much of Menador. She did very many things that a lesser warrior would not have tried, for they were very likely to get her killed. Yet she did them, and she lived. So it must be with those who survive in this place."

"I cannot argue with anyone who knows the price of becoming that strong and is willing to pay it." Though he still suspects that you get something horrendously fucked up if you make everybody try.

Not being horrendously fucked up is for commoners.

All right, here goes with the Acts lecture series, plus some historical context for people who have lived in Asmodean Cheliax and are banned from history books.

900 years ago the Taldane Empire included what is now Taldor, Galt, Andoran, Druma, Isger, Cheliax, the northern tip of Rahadoum, Molthune, and Lastwall. The Emperor ruled from Oppara; Menador was a distant frontier, bothered little by politics in Oppara, ruled by House Narikopolus. They were devoutly Arodenite. Aroden was the god of humanity, of men by their strength and tools and creativity and invention and magic making the world subject to their will, and ultimately rising to contest with the gods themselves. 

Acts doesn't emphasize it, because Acts had to be allowed past the censors in Taldor, but the accounts of her childhood Iomedae left with her church in Lastwall make it clear she was a bit of a heretical Arodenite, and he is going to go into that in the sermons more than he would in Lastwall because 'being morally good is not the same as agreeing with everything the church says' seems like a lesson these people could maybe stand to be exposed to. Iomedae was angry about Hell from the moment she learned of it, at a young age, and demanded to know what was being done about it, whether the Empire was invading to rescue everybody from eternal torture, whether Aroden was doing it.  She was upset that her father's serfs could not leave their land, because if they felt called to fight Hell they would have to disobey either their lord or their conscience. She knew Aroden's holy books from memory and drew a great many unusual conclusions from them. When the Archduke came to visit her family her father in fact forbade her from speaking at all until he'd departed, in fear of what she would say. (That part is in Acts, as is her solution, which was to secure permission to speak as long as she spoke only in holy writ.)

Iomedae's family was devout, and supportive of her ambitions in a sense; they agreed that it was the destiny of man to surpass the gods, and that the Empire must ultimately become a power that could destroy the Evil gods that were the enemy of mankind. They just thought that Iomedae could serve this noble cause by having a great many strong sons who could fight for the Empire, and were skeptical she could serve it any other way. They let her train with her brothers, but only because she was very stubborn and very evidently had a knack for it, and they fretted over whether her training would damage her prospects of marriage.

The war with Tar-Baphon, King of Ustalav, had begun by then, but it was distant; Ustalav had been unified, Belkzen had been conquered, one of the Empire's armies sent north to defend the province today called Lastwall. The war reached Menador only by vague rumor; most people disbelieved that the necromancer calling himself Tar-Baphon was the same one Aroden had fought and killed in ages long past.

And then when Iomedae was fifteen, Aroden chose her; and her family acknowledged the will of their god, and spent all they had to equip her and send her off to the religious orders that took women, segregated in that time from the ones that took men. 

As before he would be very glad of questions. 

Why would the serfs want to do anything about hell?

"Well, in places where people were not taught to think it is all right that people are in Hell, many people do not think it's all right, and want to stop it. Iomedae herself had this tendency to a deeply extraordinary degree and wanted other people who felt as strongly as her to be able to help the cause no matter their birth. I don't...actually think that very many of the serfs were yearning to fight Hell. But some of them would probably have chosen different lives that let them do more for their families and the world and the Church and the damned, if they'd had the choice."

"You can do stuff for people who are damned?"

"Heaven does raids on Hell to rescue people. And powerful wizards can do it too. It is hard to rescue a specific person, and of course very dangerous, but it's easier to help some large number of people, and just because it's dangerous doesn't mean it's never worth doing. And Iomedae's ultimate goal has always been to destroy the Evil gods that rule Hell and fix it."

Whooooa. You'd absolutely die but what a way to go.

That's the spirit. He smiles at him.

She can't think of a good one but she's trying to ask one every sermon. "If Aroden was a god, why would he want humans to be strong enough to fight the gods?"

"Well, Aroden was a human before he was a god. And he thought there ought to be more like him, more gods that were once humans. There's a phenomenon where - so, Iomedae is from Menador. She is her own person, she is not like the average person from Menador, but she understood the people of Menador, right? She had the virtues that Menador taught her. She was brave and strong in the ways Menador taught her to be brave and strong. People are much changed, in becoming a god, but they try not to change what they care about. Aroden thought that formerly human gods would care about human things, and that it is better for people to follow a god like that, who cares about things they care about, who once led a life they can recognize their own lives in - than a god who does not really understand humans." He has not given much thought to Arodenite theology because Aroden was dead before he was born but Iomedae wrote plenty on the logic of godhood.

....how many gods are there who used to be people. 

Oh boy. Important clarification. Aroden was once human. Iomedae was once human. Cayden Cailean was once human. Irori was once human. Norgorber was once human but is probably banned here, don't start worshipping Norgorber. Nethys is sometimes said to have been once human. And there are lots of minor gods, too, that were once human. Aroden left the Starstone in Absalom so people could follow him to godhood and it is not even the only route.

What is the "Starstone".

It is a magical means of attaining godhood that Aroden left in Absalom so that people could follow him to godhood. They almost always die trying, of course. Does Narikopolus have any wizards who have been there and can speak to this. It is one of those things that millions of people have seen and can speak to, but he isn't one of them. He's seen pictures. It's set behind magical traps on an island surrounded by void.

.....probably. Not in the house at this second. He hasn't been there personally.

"Iomedae ascended by the Starstone, once she was ready. Most people who have tried it have died but she knew many of the secrets of the gods, by the time she ascended, and was very sure it would work in her case. She left the church her armor and her notes and her holy book, and then she went to Absalom and ascended to godhood. ...we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, in the Acts, but that was her final act on the Material."

Oh shit, now they know he hasn't finished it yet.