The spell expectedly runs out before they get through too many people. Desnia's glad that she has the faces, even if Victoria is going to give her a list of names from her other try later. Easier for her to keep track of this way. 

She would've probably thought to use up the rest of the spell this way on her own but it seems especially useful to know who has changed. She appreciates Victoria even if she's still internally flustered from the earlier conversation. 

" - newly Evil seems worse than still Evil, why are so many people still doing Evil now," she says about Dolor. 

"I don't know. I think — a lot of the nobles are trying to say they're not being Evil anymore but what they actually mean is that they're still being Evil but they'll get mad if you don't pretend they've stopped, maybe she's the same way."

“I’m sure you’re right about lots of nobles still doing Evil, some of them definitely are, it’s just that the alignment isn’t enough to know that, you need to actually check what they’re doing now. But if someone just turned Evil, that means they - did a bunch of Evil just now, doesn’t it?” 

Nod. "I guess maybe she was using a spell to hide last week, and this week she didn't bother. But it's still not — if she was killing innocent people during the riots — I don't know why someone like that wouldn't have been Evil before too, but—"

It feels like there are rocks settling in in the middle of her chest. No one would've — should've — would've taken advantage of Valia's speech to go kill innocent people unless they were already Evil. Except last week — maybe she was Evil in her heart but she hadn't done anything really bad yet so the spell didn't know. Or maybe it was unrelated and she did some other Evil thing that's not actually as bad as murder, she shouldn't assume it was murder. But it really seems like that's the obvious guess, that she joined up with one of the mobs stringing up every devilspawn they could find or cutting down servants and children instead of Evil nobles or murdering Liushna or Enric or — or — well, Enric wasn't actually dead — that's not really the point, the point is that she doesn't know for sure she's a murderer.

She shrugs. 

“I don’t know why either, but - I’m often very confused about why people do Evil things the way they do. I don’t - think we should do anything about it right now, except looking and seeing whether we catch people at Evil things directly, but it’s - good to know who to keep eyes on.”

"I think mostly people do Evil things — very Evil things, I mean, not the kind of thing everyone did under Asmodeus — because they think it's their right to hurt anyone who's weaker than them. And Asmodeus lost but there's still a lot of powerful Evil people running around who no one has put a stop to yet, and as long as they can get away with hurting people they're not going to stop. ...And she looks like a soldier, so."

"I think - that's a thing that Asmodeus taught them, that it's their right to do that, to hurt anyone weaker than them. And - they shouldn't have learned it, they shouldn't have listened - but - if they go on believing that until they die, that's Asmodeus winning. And - sometimes people do stop. Apparently even priests of Asmodeus sometimes stop. Kind of." 

She wants to hug her baby and reassure herself that he's still there but he's not actually. This is... not fine but she's... still kind of able to engage with this so she's going to keep going a little longer and then she will take a few minutes to try to reorient herself before the convention gets started. 

"And of course - if we could just stop the people that are hurting people from hurting anyone else we should do that but it's somehow horribly complicated even if it feels like it shouldn't be complicated." 

"I know people sometimes stop, and — that doesn't make what they did okay but — I agree that it's more important to focus on the people who are still hurting people."

She's thinking about Chosen Artigas again. She still doesn't understand how Iomedae could choose someone like him but she's pretty sure she wouldn't have if he were still going around torturing innocent people to death. And — that's still four innocent people—

—If she kills him she'll die for it. That is not, actually, stopping her from picturing herself torturing him to the brink of death three times over, healing him up, and doing it properly a fourth time. Hurting him until — until he's gotten what he deserved, until she's made things right, until he's started desperately pleading that he was wrong wrong wrong to serve Asmodeus and then quite a bit after that — bringing his victims back to life somehow and handing them flaying knives and telling them to do what they wanted—

Imagining all the ways she'd hurt someone if she could was a lot nicer when it was — a plan, for something she'd do someday, even if she couldn't do it yet.

"But people also keep telling me some person or another has stopped, and is trying not to be Evil anymore, and then they go try and get an innocent person killed for no good reason or something. Saying you've stopped doesn't mean anything if you keep being Evil."

She nods in agreement. "Yes, actually stopping is what matters, not saying that you've stopped." 

"If you know which people say that they've stopped but haven't - I'd like to know about that, if what they're doing is against the law maybe we report it to the paladins, and if it's not against the law but still Evil - well, that's what I meant about things being confusing but maybe I'll be less confused if I have someone to talk about it with?" 

"Most of the ones I know about are the leftover Evil nobles, they say they've stopped and they keep giving speeches about how people shouldn't be allowed to call them Evil, but then they go around lying to get innocent people killed or trying to get everyone to vote for Evil laws or — there was one last week who chased another delegate around the convention hall with a sword just for insulting him. And then also Delegate Ibarra, but apart from using magic to avoid Detect Evil he wasn't really trying to pretend he's stopped."

"All of that seems like the kind of confusing Evil that I keep being unsure what to do about. Lying wasn't illegal before and now it might be incitement or slander but I don't remember exactly what makes things incitement or slander. Is threatening people illegal yet? Maybe a committee should make threatening people with weapons illegal if it isn't yet - unless... maybe that counts as incitement of oneself somehow? Did Ibarra say he did anything specific that he did since the amnesty or did he just say that he still didn't care about not being Evil?" 

She sighs. 

"All this about trying to figure out what law does or doesn't say is annoying because - I care about being Good and not about Lawful and even if laws aren't evil they feel kind of... missing the point? But also I just keep feeling confused about what to do and if I'm not sure what to do than maybe following the law makes sense in those cases and - there's things that I can do more easily if I'm not on the run for breaking the law and so I should probably only break it if it's really important. And also the Queen and the archmages are Good and saved so many people from Hell and made everything better so I want to do nice things for them and - following the law is kind of like doing a nice thing for the Queen?" 

Even if it didn't make everything as much better as she would have thought, before. 

"If I started chasing someone down with a sword I'd expect to be prosecuted for attempted murder. I talked to a paladin the other day who thought maybe if someone pointed that out to the archmage he'd agree, but he's really busy, I haven't managed to actually talk to him." She frowns. "I think it'd be hard to make a law against all threats or even just all weapon threats without banning lots of things that are fine, but maybe there's a way I'm not thinking of.

And I don't know exactly which Evil things Delegate Ibarra did when but I heard he was Fireballing crowds of innocent people during the riots. —Though actually I heard that about some of the nobles too and it turned out to be that they had Evil people working for them who were doing that, so I guess that could be what happened with him as well."

She's somehow so bad at law that she forgot that attempted murder was still a type of crime. 

Though she's not clear on how - close someone needs to get or how hard they need to be trying or how clear the intent of murder needs to be to count as attempted murder. 

"If the paladins agree then I don't understand why one of the paladins isn't trying to do that themselves, then, I thought they could enforce the law. - And yeah, banning things that are fine is a problem, I don't know for sure if I want more laws without knowing how to fix the thing where people use them to do bad things and not good things and I don't know how to write laws in a way that that doesn't happen. Also, I left town after the riots, so I didn't hear about what Ibarra did during them. 

- The convention is starting very soon and I want to collect my thoughts before it starts - let's talk more afterwards, I can meet you back at the temple, I go there in the evening sometimes to spend my spare channels." 

Nod. "Sometimes I end up with evening plans but I'll be sure to tell you before I leave the convention if anything comes up, is that okay?"

Victòria is waiting just inside the sanctuary at the Temple of Shelyn that evening, with some writing supplies out.

Desnia arrives at the temple, holding Pere. Spots Victoria and walks over. 

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long. What're you working on?" 

"I was writing a note to a paladin but I finished so now I'm practicing drawing so my next letter to Valia will have better pictures. Speaking of which, is it alright if we stop off at the temple of Iomedae after this so I can drop off the note?"

She’d honestly somewhat rather not but for stupid reasons which she’s going to ignore because they’re stupid. 

“Sure, that’s fine by me.” 

"You wanted to do a channel before we head out, right? Is now a good time or would you rather wait for more people?"

"Seems a bit emptier than usual right now, so maybe I should see whether the temple of Iomedae needs them more if we're going there anyway. Since paladins can't channel and they don't have many clerics and even fewer now that Valia is gone. You've sent her a letter? Have you heard back from her yet?" 

(Oh, so paladins are a special kind of priest of Iomedae that can't channel? Victòria is kind of confused about why Iomedae wouldn't just make everyone a regular priest but maybe there's things they can do that normal priests can't.)

"Sure, that works for me. I haven't heard back yet but I only sent it yesterday, and it might take her a bit to find someone to read it to her."

"Then let's head over now." 

She start heading out again, still holding Pere. 

"Have you already spent all your channels for the day?" 

"—I'm Chaotic Neutral, I channel negative."

Ahhhh. She doesn’t externally react. 

That seems concerning? She’s kind of been assuming that Victoria couldn’t be Evil, but it seems like that was a wrong assumption. She’s… not Evil and powerful, at least. Desnia had checked this morning. 

She doesn’t really have strong reason to disbelieve the claim of Neutrality, but this means that Victoria’s not Good, and Desnia had thought she might be Good. She feels… betrayed, somehow, even though Victoria could have easily lied about channels for a while before it got suspicious, probably. She just had noticed that she wanted to be able to lean into trusting someone and Good seemed like a reasonable standard for trust.

Maybe Good was too high a standard - Desnia doesn’t even know for sure that she herself is Good - they might both be Chaotic Neutral together, and the only difference is which god chose each of them. 

Why are all the plausibly Good delegates former Asmodean priests or Songbirds that don’t want to talk to her. Why is everything so hard. She should prep Detect Good tomorrow, maybe. 

She should say something before it’s an awkwardly long pause. 

“Do you find negative channels to be more useful than positive ones? I’m not sure how Neutral clerics pick their channels.”