A second ago she was at work in the temple of Erastil in Sothis, which was actually going pretty okay, all things considered. Now she's in a grassy field with a couple fruit trees and a table and chairs and some notebooks and pens.
This is unexpected and requires a ton of power and is therefore sort of inherently terrifying. And she's alone, and defenseless, and she doesn't know where Verita is.
She mills around in steadily increasing amounts of distress until Hagan appears, just as suddenly.
"She has no idea what she's doing. And she isn't Chelish, has no claim to it at all."
"She puts it on you. I mean, I don't know if she will, but if this were - more of a political operation that's what I'd expect."
"I'm pretty sure I'm still pretty close to zero qualified to run a country. Maybe Imrainai's better - "
"And it's an awful awful awful job." Sigh. "Maybe not quite as awful in Cheliax? But maybe moreso.
- she could raise Aroden."
"Maybe. The spellbook might have limits she hasn't hit yet. I'm not sure you even can raise entities that have just - stopped existing - "
"Yeah. Dunno. - that's easy to test, she could try for someone who got sent to the Abyss and killed off."
"I guess they'd probably mostly be bad people to have running around."
"Yeah. But I mean, if we just get some sermons from Osirian religious education and raise the people mentioned as cautionary tales I dunno that we'd want them around."
"I wish I could help Elizabeth at all with anything but inconveniently I have spent my entire life desperately trying to be unqualified for power. - not that this was much of a change from how I just am as a person naturally."
"I honestly sort of imagine that as alternate versions of Elizabeth and Connor we are all wildly unqualified to be in charge of anything. - maybe the fairy who goes with the pharaoh isn't, but I do note that he's still - not much more than a kid, so."
"The others presumably have one of those too? And are adults? I don't think fairies should be in charge of Cheliax, though, that sounds like a mess."
"Fairies should definitely not take over Cheliax. - I guess yours is the only other world that'd have one that isn't a fairy, isn't it," she says to Alex.
"He shouldn't run your country either.
He was tortured for a long time and does not like being alive now."
"Ah.
"You know, the actual sane thing to do here is to meet someone in Cheliax who has the ability to lead and something resembling a legitimate claim to power, and agree to back that person if they take high-level marching orders from Elizabeth. But I think this might require a lot of skills we are also short on."
"Pharaoh probably knows. He has pretty good foreign intelligence and 'who would we love to have in charge of this country if we ever got the shot' is the kind of thing we know for most countries."
"I'm not certain that who your pharaoh wants in charge meshes very precisely with what's good for Cheliax in the hypothetical event of the death of its patron deity."
"I mean it's almost definitely a follower of Abadar who'd be a cleric if Abadar weren't refraining on that front to avoid getting him killed. I doubt this is the best one could do but it's not that Osirion wants Cheliax weak or something."
"I would expect Osirion to want Cheliax to be more like Osirion. I don't know that Cheliax wants this, or should want this."
"I'm not saying there's nothing good about Osirion, just - I am not very impressed by Abadar's societal preferences, on the whole, and am less impressed when I consider applying them to my countrymen. Our women have jobs. Our girls go to school. Our marriages are freely chosen. Maybe Abadar would be a step up, if he had the power to control the country, but he'd be a very complicated step up, and a step that would result in a huge amount of resentment from many different corners of society."
"I don't actually think Abadar cares about any of that. But I'm not a theologian."
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
