"Of course. It'll improve with time - favored souls like yourself tend to be a little less predictable than clerics that way but I expect you'll progress very quickly."

"Thank you."

"Has Raafi given you all an explanation of how to petition for clerichood?"

"I don't spend a lot of time on the internet."

"Of course. The important parts are having a holy symbol - the sun, in this case - and spending an hour a day in prayer or contemplation. I can arrange for some prayer books to be brought but the specifics don't matter that much, honestly, the mindset is much more important; it's a time of focus on your calling and what it means to you. And it's easiest for me to take clerics who are some variety of good - people who value helping others because it's the right thing to do, more than for convenience or personal gain. I can take neutral clerics, too, sometimes, but it's harder to find the right sort of connection, especially if they feel strongly about tradition or freedom."

"Do I need to start doing this?"

"No - the favoring process is different, most of the rules of clerics don't apply to you. It's a stronger connection in some ways but less flexible, for both of us - I can't rescind it, either. But I feel you've proven yourself thoroughly worthy of it."

"Thank you."

He grins. "You'd traditionally be entitled to a fairly high position in the church, too - you can expect any of my clerics from my world to be a little awed, I don't favor people often. I'm not sure I'll do things the same way here, it's so different from what I'm used to, but you're still entitled to some of that sort of authority, whatever it ends up looking like. If you're interested; I know you're busy."

"I take vacations twice a year."

"Let me know when you have one coming up and I can arrange something. For now I should probably see where Raafi has gotten off to."

"How should I tell you?"

"Oh, you can get my attention by mentioning my name. Not completely reliably, there is a limit to how many things I can be paying attention to at once, but if you try a few times over a few days I should notice. Retroactively, potentially - if you would have called me about a situation I can notice that a few hours before you would have. That works for anyone, though it'll work a little more often for you and my clerics."

"...I'm confused about that last but I gather you're in a hurry and explaining isn't urgent."

"In practice it means that if you're in the habit of thoughtfully calling on me for help, sometimes the help will come without you calling and before you know you need it."

Nod.

And he goes and finds Raafi and they can go to the studio.

The studio would like to know what this is about! They assume it's big.

Well, this is Pelor, the god of sunlight, healing, and community, and one of the most powerful gods of his world. He's interested in explaining about gods, now that they're going to be around.

Wow, okay! Here is an interviewer ready to improvise softballs if he needs any to produce a clear explanation.

Okay.

Gods are a type of being from another world. Each god has one or a few domains that defines them; Pelor's are sunlight, health, strength, and community. These are less interests and more fundamental aspects of the god's self; it's reasonable to say that Pelor is sunlight and health and strength and community, with the implication that things that affect those affect him as if it was his own body, or rather more so - and therefore just as a human might do anything from scratch an itch to seeking medical care for a wound, a god will react to harms to their domains. This is usually beneficial to mortals, since most gods' domains are things that are good for or useful to them and gods have a much deeper understanding of what's needed for their domains' health than mortals.

Gods, like other beings, can be categorized ethically as good, neutral, or evil and lawful, neutral, or chaotic. Good and evil are generally the more important classification, though lawful and chaotic aren't irrelevant; Pelor is neutral good. Good gods take an active interest in the wellbeing of mortals, and generally have domains that are important to mortal flourishing. Neutral gods' domains are often still important, but less directly tied to mortal wellbeing - travel, Fharlanghn's primary domain, is vital to some mortals, but others live perfectly contented lives never leaving the town they were born in, while mortals who can get by without any sort of community are vanishingly rare. Evil gods are much less common and have domains that are opposed to mortal flourishing - disease, hatred, murder, that sort of thing; the good gods oppose them.

"Should we expect visits from more gods?"

Almost certainly.

The gods in the world at the moment are himself, Boccob the god of magic, Fharlanghn the god of travel, and Ehlonna the goddess of forests. He and Boccob are major deities; most of the other major gods are deities of specific species in his world, and will be interested in this one to the degree that their associated species are; that will be primarily gnomes and halflings, to start. The god of death and undeath is also a major god, the only evil one, but the local afterlife system may make this world uninteresting to him.

"...local afterlife system?"

"Oh, yes. Anyone who's summoned a daeva becomes a daeva, of the type that corresponds to their personality, or fairy if there's no particular correspondence. Everyone else goes to a similar realm that the locals call Limbo, which is less well set up; I intend to ask our goddess of the dead if she'll fix that for you, and what if anything should be done about the fact that it overrules our own system."