"Now I'm wondering how long it takes you to tell, maybe I'm still in the danger zone and I shall fall in your esteem somehow."

"Usually it's pretty noticeable as soon as you try to solve some problems together but I guess if you ...lose your temper on someone and stab their kid and then dump a lot of money on a temple to cover it I'd change my mind? There was one guy who seemed pretty okay until he started making fun of his pregnant girlfriend for writing him a letter..."

"Wow. Uh, I don't have a pregnant girlfriend, guess I'm safe."

"What was in the letter?"

"She wanted him to send support."

"She was at this point still his girlfriend?"

"Letter said, uh, 'love you dearly and hope you are safe and successful. the stove stopped working and we are buying another, which means we had to dip into the money for the midwife. can you send more? we got a discount on the stove so it will be only two gold.' He read it aloud eight times in different voices so I remember it."

"Wow."

"Eventually he sent her the money on the grounds that he'd only have to see her four more times before she hit him up again for it to be cheaper than a whore."

"I can imagine thinking that way but why would he think it was endearing chitchat? Were you at the time relating fictive backstories about the dozen women and their bastards you've left in your wake?"

"No! We'd been sharing reasonably entertaining adventuring stories, and then he got the letter and spent the rest of the evening going on about it. - he was drunk, I guess that didn't help."

"I never drink! If I have unbecoming attitudes that would be thus revealed you'll never know."

"Oh no! I will just have to take your word for it about the lack of pregnant girlfriends."

"Never been into girls. Just as well, it'd've been kinda fraught."

"Why's that?"

"Just always having to be on the lookout for a backstab. Bad enough trying to have any friends. Even the girls who're actually nice have their moms breathing down their necks. If I'd decided to stay down there and buy some dude that wouldn't have been totally risk free but at least the dominant narrative would be that he was mine and didn't have to listen to anybody but me so I'd only have to watch out for actually antagonizing him personally."

"Wow. Sounds  - awful."

"When I was young and naive I imagined I'd explore the globe and learn that actually other people other places were good and decent and all the things you hear about them are lies. And - I mean, it is like thirty percent lies."

"Everywhere's got something wrong with it. And I don't mean to give the impression there's nothing good and nobody worthwhile downstairs either."

"You could say a lot of awful stuff about Osirion and it'd be nearly all true and we're doing our best. Well. Some of us are."

"Within its, like, project scope, Osirion is doing all right."

"I guess. That's also true of Cheliax, though."

"I mean, sure, Cheliax has a project and succeeds at it. But its project sucks while Osirion's is merely - narrow."

"I think successful projects usually are."

"You're not wrong."