Protective squeeze. "We will have to take good care of it, then; I would be very sad if I were lifebonded to a magic sword instead, it seems it would be less snuggly." 

"A sword seems like a dumb choice. If I have to be an inanimate object at all I think I'd like to be a book. Which might be snugglier than a sword but that isn't saying much."

"A book does seem much more suited to who you are as a person. Anyway. Unless you have further questions about the Mage Wars or immortality, I can tell you about the present plan next." 

"Go ahead."

"There is various reasoning behind this plan, and behind starting it in Valdemar specifically, but the core of it is fairly simple." Leareth takes a deep breath. "I wish to create a new god, which will prioritize people's flourishing to a much greater extent than the current ones." 

"...huh. O...kay."

"...You are really not going to like the next part, I am sorry." Leareth is kind of bracing himself for her being mad at him, even though normally it doesn't get to him at all when people are mad at him, he would have a hard time being the person he was if it did. 

"...okay. Do you want me to guess, or -"

"I mean, I suppose you can guess if you want, but I am not going to make you, I will tell you." 

Squeeze. "Go ahead."

"This plan requires a great deal of power and the best current idea I have for obtaining that power is via blood-magic. It would take up to ten million lives. I am very much hoping I still find an alternative before the final point, but the reason I need an empire is so that I can have that many people in it." 

"You're right! I don't like that part! Can you kill a god or two instead, that has to count for more than a regular person."

"If I could get one to hold still for it I would consider trying! I am not sure how it would actually work to try to extract power from destroying a god. If I had - hmm, several dozen Heartstones that I could control fully - that would do instead. The Star-Eyed Goddess seems very unlikely to allow this." 

"'Seems unlikely to allow this' doesn't seem like you spent a long time exhausting the possibility. Like - not just the ten million people, that many people probably die of natural causes throughout the world every, I don't know, year? Five or ten years maybe? The logistics, the moral injury to everyone having all those ten million children, the sheer - yeah. I don't like this part."

"I do not like it much either. I simply - decided, after enough time, that I disliked it less than I dislike the state of the world remaining as it is forever. Also, the current gods have control of the afterlife and can reincarnate people; most Companions are reincarnated Heralds. They do not generally make use of this to bring people back with their memories and personalities, but since I know this is possible at least to an extent, I believe that a helpful god could eventually restore the dead people." 

"- reincarnated Heralds, wow, that's - a distraction - uh, in what sense are people reincarnations if they don't have their memories and personalities, what else is there -"

"Compatibility for lifebonds, for one. And some personality traits, there is a sort of kernel there, but the same basic mold of a person can be fairly different under different circumstances, it seems. However, the Companions do turn up with memories and personalities, so clearly this information is not just lost." 

"I guess that's promising but..."

"But it is still a very horrifying plan and you are reasonably unhappy that I am willing to consider it." 

"I'm not unhappy that it crossed your mind, I'm unhappy that it's plan A and 'murder the Star-Eyed in particular and steal all her Heartstones' or something isn't."

"I do not currently see a route to killing the Star-Eyed that would not require that level of power input anyway. I have tried the route of negotiating with the gods, including trying to scope out whether any are enemies with Her, but it is difficult when they will not talk to me. If you have ideas for potential god-killing schemes, perhaps they are new ones I have not already considered, so I would be delighted to hear them." 

"I'll think on it."

"Anything else you wish to ask about right now? I suppose there is the matter of why I think that it is possible to make a god that will act differently from the existing set, which is - complicated and high-context and I will need to at some point dig into further notes for it, but certainly something we ought to discuss eventually." 

"It seems like it might have to - do you have a name for it, even if it's just, like, something totally uninformative like Project One or something, seems otherwise hard to talk about - it seems like it might have to not just be motivated to act differently but also have a different powerset, given that you seem likely to be overconfident about how much the existing gods squabble and disagree. If it's more than you expect, one more medium-sized god squabbling and disagreeing would only be able to nudge things in a local area - I guess that might be the idea, to have a place where you can invent things, but they have to be able to take into account things that happen far away outside their own territories for coincidence management because mortals routinely travel betwixt and between territories."

"Hmm. I had in fact been assuming that initially it would be one territory among many. Though if you are correct, my new god might either face more resistance then expected, or possibly active alliance from an existing god who is not willing to talk to a mere human such as myself. The opportunity for negotiation is something I had been planning for as well, but it is definitely worth pausing and considering whether I have fallen too deep into certain assumptions about the negotiating conditions."