"Fun, though. -probably. I've never been somewhere where the gods weren't known, before."

"The idea of known gods is really strange to me, I'll admit!"

"It seems like it! They're a substantial influence, in my world - more often through their clerics than directly, but it's not unheard of to meet one, Fharlanghn especially."

She nods. "Ours are - at most the subjects of morality tales, really. The monks believe, sometimes, and you hear rumors of odd things some places, but... Well, it's not a question for everyday life."

"I imagine ours will be interested in you, when we make contact. If they aren't already; I don't know whether Fharlanghn knew where he was sending me, but it's not impossible."

"I don't know how friendly a reception they'd find, and I'd be worried about cultural miscommunication - especially if they expect any kind of loyalty or exclusivity of worship."

"I wouldn't expect that. They vary, a little, but even some clerics follow more than one god, and lay followers are very rarely exclusive, especially among humans. They may make demands - Fharlanghn objects to people being trapped or prohibited from travel, Obad-Hai cares about the preservation of wild places in their natural state, that sort of thing - but they're usually fairly reasonable; I haven't seen anything obviously objectionable here."

She nods. "What do they tend to offer people, in exchange?"

"It's not a trade, generally, any more than you'd trade with someone to stop them from fouling a well. Indirectly, though, they make it easier to get the good parts of the things they're in charge of - clerics of Fharlanghn assist travelers and refugees, and help with international diplomacy, and spread new ideas from one place to another, and a druid-tended area is much less likely to have an imbalance in wildlife that leads to predators attacking livestock, and so on."

"People are unlikely to agree to follow any edicts without something in return, then."

He nods. "I expect that you'll end up with native clerics, eventually, and they'll have a better idea of how to navigate that - my guess is that they'll end up being less generous with spells and services than the clerics I'm used to, so that they have those to trade. There might be some violence in the meantime, unfortunately; that happens in my world, too, from time to time."

"There'll certainly be violence if any deities insist on the non-loyal obeying their edicts here. I'd also expect the idea of worship and following a god's edicts to possibly not mix well with local ideals of loyalty."

"The best model would likely be presenting the - temple or what-have-you - as a separate political entity, which people can change sides to under certain incentives, with goals it pursues through usual political means, but I'm unsure that's easily doable broadly. People won't treat gods as beings with the inherent authority to command them - even our mythical gods certainly never passed down laws - and the closest conceptual slot we have is 'foreign, powerful head of state.'"

"It's not the usual approach, certainly. It might help that most of the things they want are either very specific - leave a particular grove alone, for example - or already broadly considered right - I see that your people don't keep slaves, for example; what would you do if someone tried to start, either here in the city or one of your trading partners?"

"In the city they'd be arrested. In a foreign polity - if they were taking our own people as slaves, we'd invade them. If their slavery gave us an opening against them and we wanted them weakened, we'd fund rebellions to destabilize them. If their slavery made them stronger, we'd see they were taken down to their old balance. If they had been our allies, Hashirama would likely insist on lowering the amount we trust them, and treating them accordingly. I'd agree, because how a polity treats their own people tends to be indicative of how trustworthy they are on an international scale. But what other nations are doing to their own people is not our business unless and until it impacts us."

"Hashirama might wish to interfere - he's unusually internationally minded - but he'd have trouble getting political support to sacrifice any of our interests in favor of someone else's."

He nods. "Gods aren't like that - I'm not sure they're capable of it, actually, even if they wanted to be. Their domain is their interest, more than anything else. People who travel, or want to travel, are Fharlanghn's people; they don't have to be loyal to him, or even have heard of him, for it to be personal to him if someone is stopping them."

"I'd expect something like that to cause conflict."

"I'm still not entirely clear on the role gods play in the governments, though. What would happen, if a nation collectively refused to go along with a god's wishes? Would it vary with the god? Would people be likely to support a call to action?"

"It would depend quite a lot on the god - they vary a lot in how powerful they are, and in what tactics they prefer. Fharlanghn in particular doesn't really have an organized church or dedicated following, so mostly what you'll see is individual clerics handling whatever part of the problem they feel capable of solving - by diplomacy, often, but also directly rescuing slaves or sabotaging slaving efforts, warning travelers including traders of problems in the area, that sort of thing. Obad-Hai doesn't have many lay followers, either, but his druids are much more organized and tend to be quite magically powerful; most duid circles can fairly easily level a city, if they really want to, though it's very rare for things to get to that point - I'm not sure it's happened in my lifetime, anywhere in the world. I'd expect you to end up allied with Ehlonna, here - the goddess of living in balance with woodlands - and she's very inclined to diplomacy, and mostly withdraws if she's seriously challenged, though she'll defend specific holy sites, usually with magic."

" - Hashirama could reshape a mountain range if he felt like it and still be going strong. Madara had to be banned from experimenting with throwing asteroids at things until Tobirama does the math on what's an acceptable size of rock to fling at the planet. Or we figure out how to put him on another planet, I suppose. Those are our two strongest fighters in this village, but they're not unique in this world - 'can level cities' is about where we start considering someone a notable threat, but not game-changingly powerful."

"Well." He chuckles. "That'll be very different, then; I'm not sure what to expect."

"I'd expect most exceptional violence would be early on - perhaps while people are feeling each other out, before people notice how thoroughly stupid fighting would be. Each of our magics can do something the other can't, and I'd expect we'd be bad at defending against each other. Long term - the balance of power would largely depend on who gets what balance of both magics first."

He nods, thoughtfully. "I think it's to our collective advantage that Fharlanghn found you first; I expect he'll handle it well, whatever happens. He's not against change, but he does have an interest in seeing places continue; he doesn't like the destructiveness of war, and it affects him even when it doesn't involve him. - possibly I should focus on finding him some more clerics."

"Were you thinking in this world?"

Another nod. "It'll be simpler, I think, introducing the concept to the world that way - one god, with clerics who understand the world they're working in and a fairly obvious reason not to want to form his own state. It'll still be chaotic when we make contact, but it won't be quite so alien."

She hums. "And there are types of magic that don't require gods?"

"Mmhmm. It's possible to be a cleric without following a god, technically, though it's less common to be able to pick it up that way. I can't teach anything but what I know, though."