"I'm sorry to hear that." It is probably not productive to observe that men shouldn't have bastards to - well, definitely not to anyone other than Narikopolus and it's a hard thing to imagine it being productive to tell him either.

"You really shouldn't be, she was awful. He had to execute her for murdering one of his other sons."

"Oh." He should probably say more than that but can't for the life of him think what.

"When is a good time to do a sermon where we won't be interrupting much else?"

"Here, or in the town? Oh, but I suppose we have to fix the temple before you can give sermons there. I'm sure if you gave one after dinner tonight you'd pretty well fill the chapel, but if you needed more time - well, I think they'll show up whenever's convenient for you, really."

"I expect they will but don't want to interrupt a lot of valuable work thereby. Tonight after dinner should work all right, though."

"Lots of us aren't doing much. The men will go out and do things, but they'll be at it for days at a time, you shouldn't wait on them. What age do you want, should all the children come to services?"

"I think so? Of course the very little ones don't get much out of it but otherwise someone'll have to stay out to watch them, right?"

"Well, the slaves could watch them, but if you don't mind we can all come. Carles, when are lessons tomorrow?"

     "Archery's all afternoon, with different sets. In the morning they read, or something."

"All right, then if you do it in the morning you can have them when they're not practicing, but they can really move it around to whenever works best."

"...the slaves should probably also come. Ideally."

"Oh. Well, I suppose we can tell everyone, then, and if the babies are there too it won't matter."

"Thank you. I suppose we'll start preparing, if we are going to give the first sermon tonight."

They return to the chapel that evening for their first sermon to Asmodeans about Good! And technically about Iomedae but they're going to start with the very basics here.

He feels quite apprehensive. Probably this is going to be horribly misinterpreted but he doesn't know which parts will, or how he'd find out other than by giving it. 

"Pharasma when She made the world made Law and Chaos, Good and Evil, the dimensions by which men's souls are sorted when they depart this world. Good acts are those that benefit other people. Keeping other people safe from harm. Feeding them, or tending to their injuries, or teaching them, or telling them stories. Making their lives safer or freer or happier. Every time you are kind to another person, that is a Good act, and the Good gods smile on it. When you teach a child so that they will grow up wiser and stronger, that's a Good act. When you work hard to grow a good harvest so your family will not be hungry, that's a Good act. Every person matters to the gods of Good; every happy life is a joy unto them, and every cruelty disturbs them. 

Evil acts are those that harm other people. Robbing people is Evil. Terrorizing people is Evil. Torturing people is Evil. Killing people is Evil, except in those cases where it is necessary to protect other people. Enslaving people is Evil, again except in those cases where it is necessary to protect other people. 

People who have done mostly Good in their lives go to the Good afterlives, Heaven and Elysium and Nirvana, all of which are places of comfort and beauty, of rest when you want to rest and interesting work when you want to work, of delights and inventions, of happiness and safety. No one in the Good afterlives forces anyone to do anything. No one is afraid and no one suffers. People who have done mostly Evil in their lives go to the Evil afterlives, all of which are places of torment and suffering and destruction. The Church believes that almost no one would choose the Evil afterlives, having witnessed them.

The Neutral afterlives are fine places and lots of people like them, and many people would with full information prefer Axis to Heaven, but both are places where almost any person can find joy and comfort. The Church of Iomedae, and most other Good churches, do not try to insist that everybody should be Good, though they feel very strongly that nobody should be Evil.

But the reasons to be Good and not be Evil are not just witnessed in the next world. Good places are safer than Evil places, because there are many people who will defend you at need and few who'd do you harm for their own benefit. Good merchants are better to buy from than Evil merchants, because they will not try to sell bread cut with sawdust, or potions that will poison you. When Cheliax was not ruled by Hell it was more prosperous, and stronger, and the greatest armies ever to walk Avistan were the Lawful Good armies of Taldor under Iomedae. People hurting and wronging each other is not a good foundation for a society, and people who can rely on goodwill and generosity can do more ambitious things that leave them and others better off. 

Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of the war on Evil. She was born a human woman here in Menador, to a family that was faithful followers of Aroden. In those days women were very rarely trained to fight, but Iomedae was determined to be a paladin, and won her parents' reluctant agreement that they would let her train and see if Aroden chose her. He did, when she was only fifteen, and she rode off to join an Arodenite paladin order and fight the great evils of the world in her day, of which the greatest was Tar-Baphon, a necromancer-lich who had conquered his way nearly to Menador and plainly meant to overrun the whole world. Iomedae was a good fighter, and a spectacularly good commander of men, and she was particularly concerned with the gods and questions around how to communicate with them and how to steward their resources wisely. After the war ended and Tar-Baphon was sealed away, she founded Lastwall, a province of Taldor governed in accordance with her principles.

The first of the principles Iomedae taught is that gods, and certainly men, have limited resources, and that a great virtue is doing the most important things first. Lots of things are Good, but some are lots more Good than others, and Good like anything else that matters should be first sought out where it can be obtained most easily, and Evil first destroyed where it can be at little cost. The second of the principles that Iomedae taught is that governments and armies can be Good, and are indeed stronger when they are Good. It was previously believed that men must do Evil to rule, and that such Evils as were involved in rule were inevitable; she concluded that they were not, and that countries can do the right thing and be stronger by it just like people can. The third of the principles Iomedae taught was that the greatest Evils of the world could and should be fought, ultimately including even the Evil gods. She ascended a great enemy of Asmodeus and all the other Evil gods, and we believe She is very busy, right now, fighting Asmodeus, and presently winning."

Narikopolus would not have thought of most of those things as good. He's not entirely sure what he thought good was, other than insistently never doing evil, but most of those are normal activities, and he isn't particularly used to thinking of himself as a person who regularly does good things. Other than that there's not a lot of new information besides the principles of Iomedae, but those are not what he would have guessed were the primary teachings of Iomedae. The second one is a little bit concerning, but at least now they have a bit of an idea what their instructions are. And the first principle seems protective; they can look for the least disastrous kinds of good first, and say that that's what Iomedae would want from them.

It seems kind of unbelievable that Cheliax was more prosperous before it was Asmodean, if the present day is anything to judge by, but he supposes that thirty years of civil war are probably not particularly good for prosperity.

How does it work to be a lawful good goddess of war if killing people is evil?

"The ordinary introductory set of sermons about Iomedae follow the Acts, which are the story of her life, and talk about the moral questions that she spent her life trying to answer, and how they relate to the questions that we face today. I am planning to do that set of sermons, but I am worried that - they are written for the people of Lastwall, and the people of old Cheliax, and they might misunderstand the people of modern Cheliax and what they need to hear the most. So I want you to ask lots of questions. To think of something confusing to ask about every single sermon, and ideally to ask in front of everybody, but, if you are unwilling to do that and can write, to write it down if you can write it and pass it forwards so that I can read it. I do not think I can teach you well if I do not know what parts of this are confusing."

Queralt doesn't actually look around, such that it's visible, but she glances, out of the corner of her eye, for a moment, and feels the half-second of hesitation, and realizes that in another awkward moment it will end, and someone will say something, even if it's very stupid.

She wants the Iomedans to like her. She isn't good and isn't smart and isn't talented and isn't a proper member of the house and isn't even especially pretty, not compared to lots of other women, and the only thing in the world that can save someone with no actual positive qualities is being brave. You can always be brave. It usually kills you, eventually, but it wouldn't be bravery if it didn't.

She raises her hand.

He beams at her. "Yes?"

She does not take a moment to swallow. She is calm, and cool, and going to ask her extremely stupid question.

"How can Iomedae be the lawful good goddess of the war on evil if killing people is evil?"

"That is a great question. There is a simple answer I will give for the children, and then a more complicated answer for the adults. The simple answer is that killing people is wrong, except to defend other people. If a murderer comes to your home to kill your children, it is Good to stop him, and you will probably have to kill him to stop him, but that's no Evil. Most wars are not fought in the defense of innocent people. They are fought over men's pride, or over taxes, or over wanting to control more land. But to fight a war to protect people is not Evil, and the war against Tar-Baphon was to protect the world.

Also Tar-Baphon's armies were mostly undead, and destroying undead is a mercy to them in addition to keeping other people safe from them.

Likewise it is not Evil to fight at the Worldwound, defending against demons who come to destroy us all. 

The more complicated answer goes like this: say that a man in a place that has no rules at all, who is strong enough to fight most of the other men if he needs to, wants to have as few killings as possible. He can stop some killings by not, himself, killing anybody. But he can probably stop more killings if he makes a rule, which is that killing is not allowed, and then kills anyone who breaks the rule. Killing is evil, so why would he kill people? Well, because the rule means there is less killing, on the whole.

In the same way, Iomedae wrote that war is a great tragedy and a great evil. But sometimes it is necessary. Sometimes an evil necromancer is trying to kill all life on the planet. Sometimes you are invaded and should defend yourself, or you aren't invaded but only because everyone knows that you would defend yourself. And sometimes things are so bad than invading would actually improve them even though it involves killing people. Right now uncountable trillions of souls are condemned to the lower planes, where they are tortured and ultimately where they are destroyed. And on the Material, the Evil gods do things like - well, like what they did to Cheliax. Asmodeus caused Cheliax to be torn apart and destroyed utterly by thirty years of war. Every time Cheliax united around a person who could bring peace, Asmodeus had them killed. Every time they tried to negotiate a treaty, Asmodeus arranged for it to be betrayed. He brought war to Cheliax so He could rule it, but then His rule was full of war, too, because people do not like being ruled by Asmodeans and will resist.

Most wars are Evil. But a few wars are necessary and those are the ones Iomedae fights."

Absolute bitch thinks she deserves to speak first.

"If Iomedae is winning now, why was Asmodeus able to win the civil war a hundred years ago?"

"It's hard to guess all the details of power among the gods. Aroden had just been killed so most people figure that Iomedae was very busy picking up the pieces of his church on a hundred worlds, and the Worldwound had just opened. And ....Asmodeus expended some fairly extraordinary resources, trying to hold on to Cheliax. It's possible that the forces of Good could see that they'd need three archmages, and they didn't have them, then.

But it is possible the true explanation is far stranger than that. We have only a very small window into all of the bets the gods are placing."

A boy, this time. The young people can get away with asking stupid questions, he thinks; the older people possibly can't.

"Is it evil to kill mountain orcs?"

"Another good question. The right thing to do, with neighbors, is to make agreements with them, that you won't go past the border and neither will they, and then keep the peace so long as they keep it. But - Lastwall also has a border with orcs. They don't make agreements like that, and they haven't usually got a king or lord or anybody on their end who could keep it. Is there any orc among the mountain orcs you could negotiate with for peace, and then he'd keep the other orcs from bothering you?"

The half-orc not quite in the back, sitting with his sons and a human woman and a younger human teenage girl. "No."