"It seems kind of - all over the place? But that's less a confusion and more an unfamiliarity."

"Honestly, it's seemed that way to me too. Just a minute, I'm going to get something to eat now." 

Leareth comes down a few minutes later, nods to both of them, sits. "...It is very restful, being in a place where time is not passing outside," he says after a beat. 

"Yeah, I think so too."

"In any case. Do you have questions, further explanations, or requests for me now?" 

"I've been doing all my assigned reading, you probably have more questions than I do right now. Though I do want to know more about your homemade god plan."

"I might answer your questions, then – though, I will note that I expect to revise my plan substantially. The corpus of 'every book written in every world across all time' will, I hope, contain some material relevant to creating a friendly god, or possibly on other methods of fighting or negotiating with gods on their level which I would end up preferring. Also, I have all the time I need to consider and process this information." Leareth ducks his head, wearing the closest thing so far to a real smile. "I am grateful for that." 

"I think the most basic confusion I have is how you're convinced that the gods aren't how they are strictly because of being gods, so that a designed one wouldn't pick up the same traits. It seems like most of what you know about them is observational, and not from up close either. I'd be less skeptical of a plan to build an artificial god of the kind they have in Arda because those vary very widely on inspection, and it's possible to perform a close inspection."

Leareth gets a very speculative look. "Interesting."

He thinks silently for a while, then turns back to Cam. "Speaking of my original plan: it does depend on my ability to closely inspect the new godlet at a stage where it is still possible to abort and begin again – or not, if it seems too risky. Also, it is possible to infer a great deal about our gods even by outside observation, and they do vary on the parameters that I care about. Within a certain range, possibly a smaller one than the gods of Arda; I predict that it is possible to vary outside this, but even if not, a god where every trait is pushed to the edge of the range that I prefer would improve the state of things greatly. For example, some gods are much more averse to change than others; they vary widely in the frequency and size of their interventions; some are more protective of the lives of mortals in their regions. Some care very strongly about certain specific outcomes, for example, the gods of the Haighlei region are absurdly protective of lifebonds in particular. Given all of that, I am reasonably confident that it is possible to create a much better god, and very confident that I would be able to confirm or discomfirm this early in the process." 

"There are certain traits that I do think are bound into their nature as gods, which any god I create is likely to have as well. Being cryptic, for example. This is inconvenient but tolerable; however, if other worlds have less irritatingly cryptic gods, that would be useful to know more about." 

"If they're cryptic by nature, how will you inspect the baby one? The Valar weren't exactly cryptic and I had apparently non-cryptic interactions with some Maiar. Unless you want to call 'being a dog' or 'being a huge creep' or 'speaking via proxy through the forcefield surrounding her country' forms of crypticism."

"My understanding is that the cryptic nature of our gods comes from their ability to perceive all of the planes at once, as well as a vast number of possible futures diverging from any moment in time; this is not something they can explain non-cryptically to mortals. My world contains many kinds of being, including ones at various places on a scale from 'mortal human' to 'god', and the crypticness also scales with the total power, how close a being is to being a full god. I have observed cases of beings becoming more powerful over time – not the full process from creation to god-power, but snippets of it. I can draw inferences from which traits changed versus not with this transition. In summary, I expect that a baby god will be much less cryptic, and that many of the traits possible to verify at that point would persist to later stages. I am, however, very interested in learning things here that would make me more – or less – certain of this." 

"What are examples of intermediate beings, or ones in transition?"

Leareth can tell the story of Tekhralsh, an unusually powerful Abyssal demon summoned by accident by an unwary mage about eleven hundred years earlier, in a country far to the southeast of Valdemar. Most Abyssal demons aren't smart enough to have a preference one way or the other about being summoned; the few that are more intelligent tend to want to go home. Tekhralsh, though, apparently saw an opportunity to gain power by straddling the two planes, and managed, by performing a few 'miracles', to gain a cult following as a god in a small city. He then arranged a tradition of human sacrifice to fuel his ascent to actual godhood. He started out significantly more powerful than any human Adept, and made it somewhere past the overall power level of a Tayledras Heartstone before a religious order, likely prompted by their own local god, managed to banish him back to the Abyssal Plane. 

"Gosh. Was he unusually bad as they go?"

"I would say so, yes. The only full god that I know of who is anywhere near that bloodthirsty is local to a small coastal region in the far south." 

Leareth can give a few other examples of already-powerful extraplanar beings ascending closer to godhood, including one that he thinks crossed the threshold to full godhood and is still around in the east. He also has a few case studies of beings that started out mortal and became...more. In those cases, they usually did end up with substantially altered goals and values. 

"Which you believe to be through the mechanism of foresight?"

"Well, in several of the cases the change only happened as a result of an existing god choosing to help. The sword called Need is an interesting case; she was a human mage a very long time ago, long enough that there are no actual records of her origins. From what I can piece together, she prayed to a certain set of gods who are - no longer extant - and was granted the answer to a specific prayer, which was to save some captive women and avenge some other dead women. She is still around, thousands of years later, and – approximately the only thing that she does or cares about is rescuing or avenging women." 

"What, uh, sorts of things make gods cease to be extant?"

"Very few. In this case, a...war...which ended when a mage-weapon was used that should not have been, and it combined badly with some other conditions and nearly destroyed all life on the planet. It was about eighteen hundred years ago." 

"Ah."

"...In the interest of full disclosure, it was to some extent my fault." Leareth frowns. "In my defence, I did not start the war. I was also not aware that my former teacher, who did start the war against my kingdom, had built world-destroying weapons and kept them in the basement of his fortress. Also I was very young." 

"Not really the thing I was thinking about but good to know."

"What is the thing you were thinking about?" 

"Uh, the time I destroyed a planet. It's on my mind a lot."

"That makes sense. I would apologize for reminding you but, well, that does not seem like the appropriate response here. You believed it to be the best or only path available to you at the time. While I do not have enough information to judge if you were correct, it is plausible to me that you were. In any case, I very much hope that I can help to mitigate the damage done, and that someday it will be repaired enough to no longer be so often on your mind."