"All right. I have a ...long list of questions and clarifications. Firstly, uh, why do you want to do this instead of just making up a fake name and history and going with that?"

"I would like to not inspire suspicion. If I'm an obscure claimant that someone tracked down in the River Kingdoms, as they are doing with many obscure claimants, I'd have - friends, right, some kind of history. If I had a reasonably good command of Iomedaen theology I learned it from someone. If I speak modern Chelish Taldane that demands an explanation. I'm planning to be prominent, you understand. I like politics and I think if you came back you'd be good at it and have some important perspectives to bring to it. People will wonder, at that, and they'll go looking, and once they go looking it's much likelier they figure something out. And it would be limiting to try to pretend to have - the set of interests and commitments that would be consistent with not having come to anyone's attention before this."

"Whereas if you pretend to be me then you expect that to hold up to serious inspection? Are none of the people who knew me going to be alive?"

"No. You never met Morgethai, right? And the rest of the resurrected nobles - I went through and checked every single one of them. I am reasonably confident you were never face to face with anyone returned, and if you were it'd have been an incidental interaction. Most people don't remember what other people looked like eighty years ago."

"The other thing someone could do if they were suspicious is follow up in Axis, are you asking me to avoid those inquiries?"

"Yes. I'm aware that it's a costly request, but - there are parts of Axis that can't be scried from the Material. I am requesting that you live in one of those and don't take correspondence from the Material, and ask your friends to forward any that reach them and are about you to you."

"What if the Church tries to contact me?"

" - including if the Church tries to contact you. I am in fact planning to deceive them. Because - right now they hate me. If they encountered me outside negotiations or the Worldwound they would take me prisoner, interrogate me about everything I'm up to, and then trap my soul. I would like to be an ally to the Church. One of the things I found appealing about being you is that you have reason to have a good working relationship with the Church, and I'd like to. But - only if they don't think of me as the person they despise and fear and hate."

"It's the Church. You could - contact them to arrange negotiations, and then explain that actually you made enormous sacrifices on their behalf and are their ally."

"That is a very inspiring amount of faith you have in the Church. I do not think I could do that and in any event it would be - more people who know the secret. As a professional obtainer of secrets, it really is so much easier to get them if more people know them."

"I'm fine with living somewhere I'm unscryable and telling my friends that I do not want them to answer inquiries about my whereabouts or whether I returned to the Material except by forwarding me those inquiries. I won't lie to the Church for you, including by omission, without a lot more of an explanation of why I should do that. If they write to me or a friend of mine requesting to know whether I returned to the Material I'll write you and notify you and you can have a month to give me a better explanation, or I'll tell them everything."

"That is very reasonable."

"Next line of inquiry, what kind of ruler of Chelam you would be. I admire you as a person but also I am not confident in your - not being evil."

"I'm Evil. But I am not planning to do Evil as you. You said you wanted to be a good person, so being you is being someone who is trying to get it right this time and be a good person. I don't expect to be perfect at it but I mean to follow the Queen's existing quite limited and merciful code of law, and free the household's slaves, and get the people priests and teach them Iomedaen theology and keep the roads safe and kill the monsters and do all the things where Goodness is just about execution. I'm very good at execution. I'm probably less good at - some other parts of Goodness - but I am not going to commit atrocities in your name."

"Petitioner comes to the castle, young pregnant woman, wants you to do something about her lover, who said he was going to marry her but it turns out he was already married a village over."

"That wouldn't - happen in Asmodean Cheliax. The woman would not expect it to be a productive thing to do, and wouldn't come up with the idea. I can guess that the correct answer is to fine the man and oblige him in support of the child since Iomedaens don't like infanticide and his lie is the cause of the woman's plight, but - I think it is perhaps important to the test questions you generate that their world isn't the one you remember."

"Slavery."

"Lastwall doesn't allow it. It should probably be phased out in some kind of reasoned and careful manner so that the slaves can start new lives and so that you don't undermine all confidence in contract law, and there are complicated cases like species of not exactly human intelligence, but the most standard kinds of it should be phased out."

"You'll need to marry."

"I should find an honorable and decent" archduke "man who I'd be pleased to have my sons turn out like, and I should work quite hard to make that relationship valuable to him, and to show him the" extremely precisely calculated "vulnerability that inspires men to decency, and I should work diligently to raise our children to be good Lawful Good rulers of Chelam who'll go to Heaven."

" - so, normally that'd probably be close enough, but I'm actually extremely worried about the described situation where the nobility are a mix of returning exiles from several different countries, random distant claimants, and resurrected people. I am worried this produces a situation where the usual structures that enforce decency and expectations aren't present. You should figure out what you and your to-be-husband mean by marriage, in lots of detail. Do you expect him to be faithful? Do you expect him to support you? Does he expect to make decisions about the children's education? What's a dueling insult in his culture? How much is he willing to spend to cure the children if they're sick?"

She nods, and listens intently, and tries to let it filter back through her to produce the person who would have worried about that.

"I find myself slightly upset about the children. If a child bearing our family name has the seat of Chelam it feels like they should be genuinely related to me. I am not sure this resolves to an objection but it does bother me."

"If it helps, we are related. Only in the manner that all the Chelish aristocracy are related, but my father was Gervasi Nicolau Ricard Sanc de Montero, and his mother was your second cousin, and there are other connections but more distant ones."

"That does actually make me feel notably better about it. ...the Church of Erastil."