"Oh." Savil looks like she maybe wants to add more and can't decide what. Finally she just shakes her head. "I'm sorry, that's - I can see why it's upsetting. Anyway. Dara?" 

"I think we maybe should try to have some hypothetical kind of conversation about gods," Dara says. "I think it's going to be really hard to talk about directly because of - you know, the thing. But if we can talk about blowing up the moon instead of whatever that's a metaphor for, and that makes it easier, maybe we could try to do that here as well. I don't really know how to start though." 

"Hm. - okay, I think I've got -

Let's suppose there's a normal human person who openly wields profound power over not one but two countries, fairly big ones too; they also have ordinary government structures but anyone from either country will if asked about this normal human person be like 'oh, him, yeah, we obey his rules, we respect his authority, our government does too'. One of these countries is formally allied with Valdemar! In fact, a member of its government married into the family a while ago to secure the alliance, this in spite of the fact that the country doesn't allow Heralds including his wife within its borders, Valdemar has no intelligence presence there to follow up on whether they're complying with the terms of international friendship on their end, and also there is a spell over the whole country to prevent anyone from finding any of this weird or interesting, that affects everyone, including the royal family this government representative married into.

The other country under the sway of this normal human person with two countries up and invades Valdemar, with his sigil on their banners all the while. The first country does literally nothing about this the entire time. The normal human person doesn't say anything about the invasion either way, or about this use of his symbols, or about any of the casualties or atrocities that take place during the entire war, though at the end, when it's all mopped up with a new government in charge of that country of his, he does decide to conspicuously grant his blessing to the figurehead of the winning side after the dust is all settled.

What would you say is your opinion of this normal human person and his stance on Valdemar and his management of his countries?"

Savil is giving her a very suspicious look. 

Tantras just looks deeply confused. "That seems very unrealistic? I don't see how a person could do that. Even if they wanted to be that evil." 

"For the sake of argument let's assume this was achieved by normal human politics and fancy magery, somehow, and evaluate from there." But she does write down 'even if they wanted to be that evil' in her notebook.

Now Savil looks suspicious and also incredibly uncomfortable! 

Dara gives Tantras a faintly exasperated look. "You're talking about Vkandis, aren't you. ...Wait, what's the other country? I really should know who we have alliances with... Or is it more hypothetical than that and actually it's something other than an alliance or not even about Valdemar specifically?"  

"Iftel. It's got mind-control magic around the whole country so it doesn't seem interesting. But it's Vkandis's and I wrote 'Iftel is more interesting than it seems' on every page of my notebook divisible by five till I got in the habit of not ignoring it."

"What? Really?" 

"That sounds really fake, honestly - you're saying Vkandis can mind control everyone in Valdemar which isn't even His country?" 

Dara just looks kind of relieved. "Oh, is that why I forgot we have an alliance with Iftel? You're right, we do, I just - forgot..." 

"Vkandis can apparently mind control everyone about Iftel even not in his own territory, yeah, it's scary. But you all know it exists now that I've reminded you, and that Elspeth married an Ifteli, and that Heralds never go there, and that you import wine and stuff from there but nobody moves there even to handle their trade operations let alone because they hear the weather's really nice."

"...That's...very scary actually..." Dara says faintly. 

"I think it makes a difference that Vkandis isn't a normal human person?" Tantras says. "We expect gods to do weird god things for mysterious god reasons, and to not be able to intervene sometimes even though they can other times, and–"

"You literally just said it was really evil." 

"I think it might be time to think about why you expect that, and whether you think - finding it unsurprising - is the same kind of expectation as considering it appropriate."

"I...also don't - find it surprising," Savil says, the words coming out sort of fragmented and uncertain. "I don't like it. Gods poking things makes me uneasy. I mean, we suspected a god or gods might've intervened so that all the events leading up to, well, Vanyel's Choosing, ended up happening. And that makes me very uneasy. But it's sort of not something you can do anything about, you know? I think it is more like the weather than like a person, from our point of view." 

"Mages change the weather all the time," Dara points out with a raised eyebrow. 

"You know what I mean." 

"I don't! People can talk to gods sometimes, right - fine, maybe conversations don't really work if they're made of Foresight, but we can at least say words to them, unlike the weather. We could tell Karis to give Vkandis a piece of her mind about the war. I sort've assumed she'd done that already, actually, it was very obnoxious." 

Tantras is starting to look kind of upset. 

"People can talk to gods," agrees Belrun. "I think it could stand to be tried more, if you or anyone you know think you have an angle on it and think it won't just end up with you manipulated, hearing whatever words make you do whatever the god wants. It's, uh, not what Leareth expects to work, but I think it's worth a try or three. I would be a little surprised if Karis had already chewed out Vkandis about anything, we think it's expensive or something to possess people who aren't fairly well aligned with the god doing the possessing."

Shiver. "I hope that's true. I'd have had a lot fewer nightmares about the Karis incident if I were sure of it at the time."