"I mostly avoided this problem, I was just as interested in anyone as proving how smart I was even if you didn't factor in the implicit threats to my life."

"Well, see, if you're smart, proving you're smart is probably great fun."

"A little bit but mostly not implicitly? I knew I was smart. I think I was - curious what they'd do to find out more, curious what kinds of things it's expected smart people could do. And I wanted the leeway and freedom that came with it being common knowledge."

"What kinds of things is it expected smart drow'll do, be a wizard?"

"Yeah, lotta wizards. Clerics too if you're more wise than cunning. Military, government, our variant of banking, logistics ops."

"Can you choose to be a cleric? In Osirion lotsa people who dedicate their lives to the church never get a level out of it."

"Demon lords might be different. For one thing nobody keeps dedicating their life to one if a year or two goes by and they've got squat to show for it, they pick a different one."

"Ah. I think people in the church mostly believe that if you're being that conditional about it you don't have the right attitude for it."

"That's probably true, if you're picking your god on that basis. Less so if the whole thing is propped up by the desire to spend slightly less time as a horrible grub later on. That said I'm sure anyone who just deeply feels called to advancing the goals of Orcus can get a level out of him a bit faster."

"What goals are those?"

"He's into undead but he actually isn't very popular with drow as far as I know."

"Do drow slaves mostly go to the Abyss? Do you know?"

"Don't know. I haven't gotten enough crystal ball time to check ones I knew. They're not the ones killing the babies, maybe they get Maelstrom."

"Sure. Is the crystal ball checks just out of personal fascination or are you going to do something with it -"

"Uh, it's kind of to give me a sense of the problem space? I don't want to show up to bother Pharasma without something more substantive than 'how fucking dare you'. I assume she gets that, uh, not all the time, but now and then."

Snort. "Probably."

"So I want to know who's going where and why even though really no matter what I find it boils down to 'how fucking dare she'."

"Fair enough."

"There aren't that many people who could get my dad back. Been a while."

"Have an ear?"

"Fished a bone out of the soup."

"My brother could but it'd be hard to explain why you figured he would. They're okay? The Abyss is dangerous, right -"

"I wouldn't go through you, ideally, I'm imagining maybe I develop enough cachet as a cultural consultant to ask. For both of them and my sister too once there's parents to put her with, if I'm going for broke. I have confirmed that they both continue to exist within the last year, though obviously that could change at any time and it's hard to get a sense of how perilous their immediate conditions are given what there is to look at in the Abyss."

"I'm sorry."

"Lots of people in the Abyss, they're not, like, objectively special. Lots of people in Hell too."