"Do you not have Abadar or Irori? Or Norgorber, I guess, apparently for some reason he lives in Axis even though he's Evil. —Thank you." She visibly relaxes slightly.

"None of them ring a bell, at least? And you're welcome."

"Huh, weird. Do you not have a lot of Lawful Neutral people or something?"

"I don't know what 'a lot' is? There's a lot of lawful neutral Kochabites, though Kochab manages to stay celestial. I think Thyslin is Lawful Neutral or so?"

"Huh. Well, if you've got plenty of Lawful Neutral people, I don't have any other guesses for why none of the gods from Axis are doing anything on your world."

"My understanding is that gods just vary in how much they show up in different worlds."

"Before today I didn't even know there were other worlds besides my world and the First World!"

"There's a lot of worlds that Milliways contacts. Some of them don't seem to have any gods, even. Sometimes they're overwhelmed by zombies, or a meal is more expensive than sending a message around the world, or everyone's born with magic."

Blink blink. "If there aren't any gods how are there people at all?"

"Oh, this is really interesting! Are you familiar with farmers selecting their best animals to breed?"

"Kind of? I know it happens but I wasn't a farmer back home."

"Nature is kind of like that too! In the wild, life forms don't always reproduce and die at the same rate. Say, if there's a lot of wolves around, deer that are faster runners will be more likely to reproduce and less likely to die, so it's like nature is selecting for faster deer. …I can talk about the utility of intelligence in many worlds and how that creates pressures for people, I can talk about common misconceptions, I can speculate about early animalcules but I don't necessarily know all the details there. But I think in my world people and gods started existing together, because of this sort of process."

"I think I'm confused but I don't know what would make me less confused."

"The short version is that sometimes worlds get a really tiny bit of life, and then it turns into lots of different kinds of life and sometimes there ends up being people, even without any gods, because of how nature tends to work. And weirdly often at least some of the people are humans. I have no idea why."

"And the humans don't all... die? I was always taught that humans are so weak that if there weren't gods to protect our world we'd be crushed."

"Well, if the humans do all die they don't write books about it or show up to Milliways to buy drinks and chat, now, do they. – my understanding is my world is on the more delicate side, I'm curious what you expect would crush the humans in yours."

"I'm not sure, they didn't go into that much detail in school. ...I guess maybe that was also one of the things the Asmodeans were lying about."

"They do sometimes tell the truth, if usually in very twisty ways. Bar loans out books from anywhere, you could see what other people in your world say about it."

"—It does? ...Does it have a copy of Calistria's holy books?"

"Almost certainly!"

"How do I... ask it for books?" (She's turning her head like she expects they're hiding behind the bar or something.)

"She can hear you. Tell her you want to borrow a book and she'll put it on the counter like she does with napkins."

"Could I borrow a copy of The Book of Joy and Blood for Wine and a book about which things the Asmodeans were lying about?"

There are now copies of The Book of Joy and Blood for Wine on the counter, as well as a napkin. "Do you have any preferences for length or region of origin or recency? There's a lot of books like that."

"It would be good if they were focused on the sort of things they taught us in school growing up. So probably it should be from somewhere near Cheliax and pretty recent. And it shouldn't just be replacing the lies with different lies, like it shouldn't be talking about how the Queen is Good or anything like that."