"Right. We're trying to engineer a race of more responsible men."

"Why aren't the hundreds of daughters of the profligately procreative doing as their fathers do?"

"I think people mostly inherit traits from their same-sex parent but I'm not actually an expert on this, just read a paper on it once. A fairly speculative paper though it had some interesting things on its side, like orphaned children from different immigrant groups having different propensities to lawlessness."

"Ooh, interesting test population."

"All kinds of money for that sort of research these days."

"Funny how all the ones you ever hear about confirm that we're great and everyone else is terrible."

"They weren't even arguing that the Avistani thing was terrible! Just that it produced men who would take more risks than women. Arguably even good, if you want high level casters in your society."

"I think finding research studies the most appealing shape of evidence is charming even if all the research is very corrupt."

"A lot of it's under the guidance of the new pharaoh. I wonder if he was a mathematician or something, before."

"What, so, once blended with Abadar you got the church but with more fondness for research studies?"

"I mean, I think it implies that he retained any of his previous characteristics, or nothing would've changed at all."

"I guess, yeah."

"People do imply it matters that Abadar have lots of choices so he probably isn't just straight-up possessing folks to puppet the nation."

"It's important that the pharaoh is human because it helps him rule better but no one has a very clear sense of what that means or in which senses he is or isn't human."

"Maybe someday we'll have a pharaoh who wants to clarify."

"I'd be awesome at ruling people and I'm not human!"

"See, I always interpreted that as 'human' in contrast to 'purely divine in nature' but some people think it does need to actually be a human. Though presumably if it does it'd only be because Osirion has a mostly human population."

"Is the pharaoh permitted a nonhuman wife if he wants one?"

"I think so."

"If this were a proclivity of his I'd maybe give Sothis more space."

"You think you'd be good at it but you don't want to marry into it?"

"Oh, do his wives in fact rule people? A lady in waiting doesn't count."

"I have no idea. Probably not."

"Didn't think so. I'd consider it under more favorable circumstances but probably I'll just never get married. Or maybe I will if I manage to become a god."

"I don't expect it'd be very fun to be a pharaoh's wife, in particular, what with there being so many of them."