And here's a human, dressed in a way that is somewhat reminiscent of the way clerics of Abadar dress while still being sufficiently visually distinct that most people would not confuse him for one. He seems to have come from one of the doors that lead further into the temple rather than from outside, and he steps beside the drow as if to accompany her just as she's turning around to go. "Well met," he says without preamble but with an inviting smile.

"...uh, hello, Cicerone? Or whatever you are."

"Not Cicerone, no, not an official cleric. I'm Jenday, pleasure to meet you, and mostly bothering you out of sheer curiosity. You can tell me to bugger off if the curiosity offends."

"I get that a lot. Usually without explicit permission to tell people to bugger off. Do you want me to just, like, preemptively answer the top three most popular questions, or -"

"—well, I'm pretty sure my questions aren't amongst the most popular ones but I'm also curious about them, now."

"Yes I'm a drow, yes drow are baby-eating matriarchal evil lawless purple elves that live underground, and no, having somewhat assimilated into surface culture didn't make me very keen on those Andoran raids where they show up and kill twenty people to escape with five slaves or whatever ratios they're pulling lately."

"...wow, no, my questions were not any of those and I am actually surprised. Those are a bit rude for starting questions, aren't they?"

"Yeah people are rude to me a lot. What do you wanna know?"

"I overheard you talking to the cleric and was wondering about the interest in econ. And also, yes, since you are in fact drow, I confess to some curiosity about the story of how you ended up up here at all."

"I like econ, the classes are free, and I can't always pick up a new adventure as soon as I hit town after a previous one. I'm actually from under Taldor, I don't know who's under you, but I came to Osirion to get resurrection insurance."

"Resurrection insurance is the best, everyone should have it. Although I guess the people who already know where they're going and like it might not care so much."

"Yeah, I haven't checked what I ping but rumor has it with drow it doesn't matter if we drop a million gold on widowed orphans with rare diseases and missing legs, Pharasma'll Abyss us all. I have checked around enough to be sure that she does not automatically do this with dead babies but as you may have noticed I am not a dead baby."

"Got a guess for what you'll ping?"

"Well, either chaotic evil 'cause Pharasma's racist, or not that 'cause I don't think I've actually done anything evil besides be a drow. I guess chaotic might be fair but I don't, like, go around breaking windows and cutting purses."

"Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good, then?"

"I think I am most philosophically aligned with neutral good but I wouldn't be stunned by one of those yeah."

"Want me to find out? Would cost me a level 3 slot but I'm unlikely to need to use it by tonight."

"Knock yourself out, as long as you're not going to freak out whatever it says."

"That would be super unuseful." He makes a gesture crossing fingers of both of his hands in a somewhat triangle-with-holes shape in front of his right eyes, mutters a couple of words under his breath, then nods. "Chaotic Good."

"Yay for me."

"Yay indeed. So, why'd you take up adventuring?"

"It's how you level, I hear."

"It's a way, yeah. Many high-level ambitions?"

"I figure probably if you could get ahold of the Starstone with Prestidigitation and a ball of twine then the Song of Gods would have more verses."

That earns a long, impressed whistle. "Godhood, huh?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, many attempt and few succeed."

"Sure, but most people you run into in a temple of Abadar looking for econ lessons don't turn out to be adventurers aiming for the 'Stone."

"I suppose as far as that goes I do distinguish myself. What's your deal, not-an-official-cleric?"

"Oh, same."

"Do they not let you have people call you Cicerone if you want to go sit next to Abadar instead of kneeling at his feet or whatever it is clerics do?"

He laughs. "You know, I don't actually know what the church thinks of this. But no, my levels aren't in cleric, they're in something else. I just happen to philosophically agree that most people should aim for Axis. I'm aiming for Heaven, myself."

"Oh, you're one of those weird things. Do you have a name for your weird thing?"

"I've read the name 'Oracle' in musty old tomes, seems to fit alright."

"I'm technically a weird thing too but only four levels of it and it's just one of the many kinds of sorcerer."

"What's your weird thing? Mine is like almost like cleric but I can literally choose to follow any gods I want or whatever; I still get cleric spells, Abadar just has nothing to do with it apparently."

"Did you test that, did you try worshiping Irori for a week or check if it still works if you head for the wrong corners of the alignment box and sing the bawdy praises of Nocticula - my mom called us 'cunning sorcerers', we run on fox's not eagle's."

"Oh that's cool, another way I'm different from cleric is I run on eagle's. And yeah when I first got these levels I was actually not worshipping any gods, I just happened to start getting a bunch of cleric spells. I became an Abadar follower later."

"Missionaries got you?"

"Sort of. I went to visit Axis and listened to missionaries from some other places and Axis does actually just straightforwardly seem to be an extremely good choice for the majority of people. At least people who are as psychologically similar as humans and gnomes and dwarves and elves and so on."

"I have a lot of respect for the Osirian project but I have not taken this as far as actually worshiping Abadar, seems a bit much."

"Well, I guess 'worship' is perhaps the wrong adjective. I don't pray to him or anything. I should say instead I'm more of an Abadar fan, I guess."

"I can't be a fan of anybody who insists on possessing a copy of my diary and didn't even answer my stern letter."

"—what, the library?"

"Yeah! See, I like the concept of the library! But it's very indiscriminate and there's no provided guarantee of privacy at all."

"I suppose that is pretty skeevy, now that I think of it. Ever talk to a cleric about it?"

"Yes, they didn't understand my problem and pointed out that nobody has a reason to visit the library and find out where my diary is."

"...except the god himself, what, did they not have the concept that you might not want Abadar having your diary or that the principle of the thing matters, too?"

"Didn't get it at all! They were like 'the library is a heartwarming example of Abadar's alignment with mortal values because he preserves all these things we write down' and I was like 'what about the mortal value of privacy' and she was like 'in practice the library isn't heavily trafficked for things like that'."

"Wow. That's obtuse. I suppose there is kind of an intrinsic conflict between those values, though, right—like, even if you personally would be okay with some guarantees like 'will only get the diary under these extreme circumstances' or something the value of 'I want to never ever have anyone read anything I wrote ever' is a thing that is absolutely irreconcilable with the library."

"Yup. It's not, like, top five injustices in the world, but I cannot be unrestrainedly enthused for Abadar though I agree with many of his policy opinions."

"Yeah I see that. I suppose I should restrain my enthusiasm for Abadar a little bit more, too. I've also never been a fan of the strict focus on traditionalism he's got going on here in Osirion even if it's not a core tenet or anything. The gender thing is particularly irritating, personally."

"You find the gender thing irritating, huh."

"I was born female. I use a spruced up version of Alter Self every now and then to turn female again, because sometimes it feels more accurate than this. It was a euphemism."

"Oh, huh. I withdraw, uh, twenty percent of my sarcasm."

"I'm still pretty sure Axis is a really great project and given the ratios of 'a few decades over here' to 'the rest of eternity over there'—the gender thing doesn't extend to the afterlife, as far as Osirian theology is concerned once you lose the ability to bear children you lose all the responsibilities so everyone has no genders over there—well, it was a nightmare growing up and I hate it with a passion and I would love to have a plan to burn the whole idea with fire but on balance I think it's still probably not a great idea to... actually try... to do anything about it on this life."

"Drow've got it the other way around and slightly worse, though I'm not actually positive you could get drow boys to agree they have it worse."

"Maybe I could pretend to be a drow boy, do some science to it and figure out if it was worse, having both perspectives."

"Oh, I think if you are a random drow boy with no drow family and you manage to avoid getting murdered or kidnapped it's actually definitely better, most of the - stuff - doesn't affect an isolated tourist much."

"Oh? What is the stuff?"

"If I wanted to get married to a drow boy I'd go pay some guy's mom for him and - 'legally' is a squirrely concept downstairs but insofar as it is one I would legally own the guy. But if you don't in fact have a mom or a wife or an interested aunt or anything, and look like you know where you're going, a drow boy can go around without a chaperone and do business and sleep around and stuff."

"Huh. That is in fact nicer than being a woman here. Part of the reason why I wear this is to make people double-take when I'm female-presenting instead of assuming I must be doing something wrong."

"Does that work?"

"Most of the time! People at least wonder. But it is pretty remarkable how much they change depending on what I'm presenting as even with the robes."

"I get a wide variety of reactions varying in racism and sexism. I used to sometimes put on my other color palette but I've stopped, it's a third level slot and doesn't help that much."

"I would imagine it must help more elsewhere?"

"I haven't tried it in every town on the planet but while it does help with the sun it doesn't make me look that much less foreign and doesn't make me know anything about surface elf customs besides 'going extinct'."

"That makes sense. I have personally met very few elves but in general you do seem to want children a lot less than, well, at least humans."

"It's not 'don't want children' it's 'don't like babies'. Surface elves address this by going extinct. Drow address it with slavery."

"Is birth as horrible for you all, or is it better but the babies themselves very uninteresting? I think if humans didn't have a drive for babies we would be very hard-pressed to want to go through birthing them."

"Second thing I think, but I haven't had any personally, I just hear it's not that bad if you go through a bottle of wine while you're laboring."

"Yeah that makes sense. Do you also not have any instincts or cultural institutions around... raising a family? Passing on your legacy, et cetera?"

"Drow can be real parental in I think a fairly conventional range of ways! With kids that, like, talk. If they're just kind of oozy grubs we are not keen."

"Still, it doesn't feel like that much of a sacrifice to have a couple of—oh. They're babies for much longer than humans, aren't they."

"Bout six times as long, yeah."

"Okay I can see how that would be a pretty big deterrent."

"I mean, even if it's just a year or two they wake you up in the middle of the night and I think most people feel at least slightly more murdery on short sleep. So a drow who wants a kid buys a milk slave if nothing else."

"Could instead hire a nanny."

"In a drow city you've just got drow and slaves. Maybe, like, a contingent of duergar or something passing through who are neither, but not hiring out nanny services."

"Oh yeah I know the drow problem is way harder I was thinking about the elves up here."

"Maybe they do hire nannies, I don't know."

"I wonder how you guys even evolved such a distaste for babies. Or, I suppose, failed to evolve a taste."

"My theory is there's something on Castrovel that makes us like babies."

"That... I suppose would make sense yeah."

"I'm mostly against mind-altering drugs but I think I might make an exception in order to like babies for an hour as an experiment if I ever find myself on Castrovel and they offer me the 'grubs are cute' mushroom or whatever!"

He laughs. "Under what conditions would you accept using it in less experimental forms?"

"I'm not having children till they can be demigods."

"Very valid. Although I'm not sure what a god's dating prospects are."

"Having demigods isn't a priority, just a minimum requirement."

"Still curious about godly dating lives now."

"Well, I know all the verses to Nocticula's Favored, but if you want to know about anybody else you will have to scandalize their clerics."

"The downside of not being one myself is the lack of any personal means of communication with the divine."

"Some of them do have kids, I hear."

"It's very mysterious!"

"Well, you know, with divine power on your side doing something mortals can manage by accident is probably trivial."

Giggle.

"You adventure? Do you have a stable party at the moment?"

"I do and I do not, respectively. I'm just coming off a small break from it."

"What was the break for?"

"I take 'em occasionally to help out with some church stuff. Mostly on the money side or teaching side when they'll let me."

"Will you be instructing me in economics?"

"I might! I was thinking of looking for some adventuring jobs nowish since we're between sessions but I could stick around for a bit longer."

"I'm looking too but I can't always find something right away when I want it, adventurers are only so much more cosmopolitan than people who charge me triple for falafel."

He rolls his eyes. "Adventurers should be much more that, it seems like it should come with the job!"

"Are you saying you haven't met the type that just really likes stabbing lawless evil things?"

"Oh I've met them I just disapprove of them and think they're doing it wrong."

"What's your philosophy of adventurism, then?"

"I don't so much have a philosophy of it as think that there are ways to do it that improve the world and ways to do it that don't so much."

"But there's sometimes money in stabbing the lawless evil things!" she says innocently.

"I'm pretty sure the ways that the free flow of money improve the world emerge in the aggregate under some ideal conditions and do not necessarily hold for every individual monetary transaction."

"Ah, you attended more than one of the economics classes."

"I teach some of them, I darn well should have!"

"Is it fun, teaching them?"

"I enjoy it quite a bit! But it's more fun with people who are actually interested and most people who take these are in that category, so there's a selection effect going on here."

"Yeah, I bet that helped. I liked tutoring, sort of, when I was in school."

"What's school like, where you're from?"

"I've never been to school anywhere else so I'm not sure what the salient differences are. A lot of it's co-ed?"

"—huh! Your boys get educated?"

"Yeah, they do. They usually don't make it into the advanced classes but not all the girls do either."

"I guess other than all the murder stuff is pretty okay then. ...or at least not that terrible."

"Slavery. Murder and slavery."

"Right, that one too."

"But yes, apart from those - and constant food anxiety, which relates to both - it's just a society which has all the normal society things like art and love and civilizational edifices of various types."

"But the amount of those is sufficient to tip all of you over to C.E.? I suppose it would be, given how bad they are, if it's sufficiently widespread..."

"I haven't found counterexamples who died old enough to have gone to trial. I can't scry on my own yet, though, I've been doing research by buying crystal ball uses."

"Do you have any particularly nonmurderous dead kin in mind or are you trying some vague candidates?"

"I checked my parents and some people I know from school."

"I suppose until you die you won't really be able to find out if Pharasma is racist enough to completely overrule any potential scryings of future afterlives."

"Or I'd have to meet a kindred spirit, I suppose."

"I'll be sure to tell you if I ever meet one and have some way to contact you. Maybe Message."

"If you're planning to stay within a couple hundred feet of me indefinitely you can probably just shout 'hey Belmarniss over here'."

"Ye of little faith, I'm sure I could metamagic it up to arbitrarily long distances. Or maybe there's some other spell that does it, I'll admit I don't know."

"Sending does it. Twenty five word limit though."

"'Found a kindred spirit, come over to Sothis whenever.' or some variation should work."

"I will await your missive. Though we could also just party up and then I'd be within a couple hundred feet, save you the spell slot."

"Pretty sure Sending would be useful to have anyway but yes partying up sounds like a good idea."

"Where do you usually go looking for investors?"

"I get some mileage out of being friendly with the church, get early pickings on the odd jobs they post sometimes, but I don't think anything beats adventurer's taverns in sheer volume anywhere."

"I was hoping there was some secret they don't tell drow about, oh well. Do you know of anything good?"

"Not recently or I would've been more tempted to cut my break short earlier but I could look harder. 'Belmarniss' was what you said I should shout to find you?"

"It's my name. Shortens to 'Niss' if it's too long. You said you were Jenday? Is it the same when you've recently imbibed?"

"Yeah, nice and neutral. The girl version is Jendayi and boy version would be either Jendayo or Jendaya so I decided to just do away with those vowels."

"Efficient. Does it mean anything? My name means 'bottomless pit'."

"It means 'thankful'. Really, 'bottomless pit'? That sounds like a pretty short word for it. I suppose drow languages would have plenty of different words for holes and caves and such."

"Belm for hole - a cavity not a puncture or a worn spot in your pants, specifically, and one too small to live in though sometimes if someone lives in a very tiny cave people'll call it a belm for the same reason people up here talk about living in closets - and ar for ground or earth or the solid bits of the planet in general, and niss for 'without limit' - the syllable also appears in our word for 'sky', that's 'limitless up', or 'immortal', 'limitless life'. So 'bottomless pit' is a somewhat idiomatic translation, it doesn't actually have to be pointing downward."

"'Limitless cavity in the earth or other hard bits of the planet'. Has a nice ring to it."

"Thank you, Thankful."

He laughs. "It does when left untranslated."

"I like my name all right but there's a reason I picked the bit I did for the nickname!"

"Fair, fair."

"I've been staying at the Onyx, do you wanna see if there's an adventure hook there?"

"Sure, why not. Figured that would be where you'd be staying, right direction," he says, nodding down the road they've been walking.

"Owner has a price list! Posted on the wall! If I give him those amounts of money I can receive the corresponding services! It's very cool."

"As opposed to?"

"Racist price-gouging and/or asking me where my husband is."

"You're a caster, though."

"One time proving that did work, actually."

"One time?"

"Lot of times it's just an excuse and they switch to a different one. One guy thought I must have a magic item and I wasn't going to blow all my spells for the day demonstrating in more detail."

"Wow. I kinda want to talk to someone about it."

"I have been reliably informed that racist price gouging is not in point of fact against the law."

"The price gouging, maybe not, but refusing service for a lack of husband when you're a caster is."

"I'm not sure it is. Being a caster means I don't have to obey the women's curfew, not that I cannot be refused service at private establishments."

"Harrumph. Maybe."

"You may have encountered less of this on account of not being foreign, I think a lot of it is just about being foreign or a drow and sometimes they just assume if I'm in Sothis I probably married some human or something."

"Not sufficiently Lawful," he grumbles.

"Being racist isn't illegal!"

"Using half-thought-out keywords from law to excuse racism is against the spirit of Lawfulness!"

"I really don't know what philosophy of Law you're talking about here but I'm curious, why is this against the spirit of Lawfulness?"

"Because it's not using the, the code one lives by and trying to derive what it means to live by it and why, it's doing whatever you want and painting a pretend layer of Lawful over it by using the right words. If you're going to just do whatever you want at least own up to it."

"I think your thing there is how you do Law if you're not in a supportive environment, but these are Osirians who can probably make Axis solely by never doing anything illegal or donating to charity."

"Which is why it is against the spirit of Lawfulness even if it is, quite literally, not against its letter. As it is not illegal."

"I will concede that it's not especially spiritual as racism goes."

Snort. "That's a way to put it, I guess."

"You don't think people can have a deeply felt code of law which happens to include being racist, or possibly nationalist, or sexist -"

"I think if they did they would not be co-opting local law lingo for it."

"No? Why wouldn't they? It's right there."

"They'd have their own! I mean I guess they could just to sound sufficiently local but colour me sceptical."

"They have to invent their own words? Do you have your own words?"

"They don't need to invent their own words just their own reasons, 'you're a woman' is only a valid excuse around here and it's masking the racism whereas they could just say 'I have a code that goes against serving nonhuman species equally' or some such."

"First one's so much shorter, though!"

"It's also false!"

"In the most technical of senses, I suppose that could be considered the case till I have a real big dinner, but they don't know that!"

"The—what?"

"I have been informed that the important thing about being a woman is being able to get pregnant! Elves don't have that always-on - can you imagine, we live hundreds of years -."

"Oh. That's—well, yes, but I meant that it wasn't true that that was their reason, come on, keep up."

"For one thing they don't ask about whether I'm fertile at the moment, yes. Are you saying the true spirit of law requires honestly accounting for your decisions to strangers on demand?"

"No, like I said, it could be they're just using the local sexist lingo just to fit in or something but, again, colour me sceptical."

Giggle.

There's the Onyx, complete with price sheet and unusual adventurer diversity according, though Belmarniss is the only drow.

Unsurprising.

"You have a particular MO to find interesting sponsors?"

"I usually don't go after the sponsors directly, I listen in for things I could help with and try to get in on a party. You?"

"When I go after sponsors in these kinds of places I tend to look for parties that need a healer most desperately. Every party wants a healer, but some will be crushed without one."

"You might have better luck with that strategy abroad, actually, clerics of Abadar are significantly more mercenary than most. It's the monetary theology, I think."

"I'm neither a cleric nor a follower of Abadar, but yes I would expect so."

"Yes, I know, you're an 'Abadar fan', but your competition for the healer slot is mostly clerics by volume."

"Maybe I should try fishing for adventures elsewhere next time I find myself elsewhere."

"I keep hoping I'll have an excuse to go to Tian Xia. I speak the language and everything."

He whistles. "Rather far away. How come?"

"Oh, see the world, experience the variety of cultures, try the food, nothing earthshaking."

"How come you know the language," he clarifies, "given how far it is."

"Drow aren't grown up for a hundred ten years, they stuff a lot of education in us."

"That makes sense. Having neither the skill nor the longevity for learning languages, I am pretty happy Tongues exists."

"It's a good spell but you miss all kinds of fun nuances!"

"Maybe after I'm immortal. Or a god. Whichever happens first."

"You know a way to do immortal without the godhood?"

"Well, Aroden did it, how hard can it be."

"He did something but he didn't actually do it without godhood and look where that got him!"

"I'm pretty sure he was immortal before the godhood. The end result is a bit depressing though yes."

"I wouldn't rely that heavily on legends about deities even if the legends are about before that."

"Okay, point."

"I wonder what happened to all his clerics, I don't think I heard."

"Lost all their levels, I think."

"But like - all of them all of them, or just like, no more spells - if a paladin falls they can't cast spells and their magic horse dumps them but I think they can still hit you with a sword real hard -"

"I—actually don't know. Probably only no more spells but." Shrug.

"Wonder if Iomedae or someone was able to pick them up. I should look this up. Background research."

"What for?"

"God stuff! How gods work and under what constraints. Do you not research this?"

"Not per se. I don't think I am very close to the point where it makes sense going for the Starstone so I've been focusing more on that."

"Yeah, I'll concentrate the research closer to when I'm about to go, but that doesn't mean I can't do bits of it sooner, or at least write down what I want to find out."

"Fair enough."

"I plan to see if I can get any gods to talk to me before I make my run. There are some things they don't tend to do and if they actually can't that'd be good to know so I can if necessary frontload it."

"I don't think gods are known to be very talkative about this kind of thing."

"Sure, but it's cheap to try. At least if you just pray instead of buying a Commune."

"Maybe Abadar himself would degin to answer. Despite his stance on mortal rights such as privacy he is pretty accessible, for a god."

"I don't know anyone who's gotten him to talk, do you?"

"No, but I don't know that I know of a lot of people who really tried, and it's not like trying this is mutually exclusive with and other ideas to get the gods talking."

"What do you mean by saying he's accessible if you've never heard of him talking?"

"Oh, I mean, he talks to the Pharaoh and stuff all the time and I'm pretty sure priests and all that can get some limited response? I mean I haven't heard of him answering any specific godly power questions and suchlike."

"I think nudging your clerics doesn't count! The pharaoh would count if he functions as they let on, I'll give you that."

"I wonder if I could get an audience with him under truthful pretenses."

"Ooh, fun, if you decide to try let me know so I can send you with questions."

He giggles. "Will do."

Belmarniss hits the buffet and listens in for things she and Jenday would be useful at.