:Van, I think that's a compliment: 

"It's - 

- so, everyone dies, right, and they go to Pharasma, and sometimes it's straightforward but for most people it isn't, they've done some good stuff and some bad stuff and some lawful stuff and some chaotic stuff, and any afterlife that thinks they have a good claim can send a representative to argue that this soul should be theirs. 

And the Neutral Good afterlife sends for everybody. They show up to every trial, for every person, for drow slavers and orc raiders and cannibals and worshippers of Rovagug and child-murderers and all the rest of us, who are probably just as ugly, from some angle, and they say 'We think they should live forever in paradise. We think there's Good, there, even if they never really managed to find it. We'll take them'. And sometimes no one else has their act together so they get a crazed serial killer or whatever and they have this isle, in their paradise, for rehabilitating them or at least keeping them out of more trouble. That's Neutral Good - like, there are lots of ways you can get there, there are lots of kinds of people who end up sorting that way when there's only nine ways to sort people, but that's what it is, and it's -"

:Awwww. That's my Chosen, all right: She nuzzles Vanyel's shoulder affectionately. :What's the Lawful Good afterlife like?:

"Heaven fights Hell. I don't know a lot of details about that because it's mostly happening on other planes and in incomprehensible ways. They intervene on the Material Plane less often than Nirvana does but not never. There are also realms of Heaven dedicated to rest, and ones dedicated to debating ethics, because - it's bad for even the kinds of people we are after we die, to do nothing but war. Their gods organized the crusades to take back territory from the Worldwound."

"That's - quite something. I'm guessing Nirvana is the other Good afterlife, er, that'd be Chaotic? What's that like? I'm also curious what Chaotic Good people are even like, I think most of the people I know are more Lawful-ish than me and not less." 

"I am chaotic good! The chaotic good afterlife is actually called Elysium, Nirvana's neutral, and Elysium is an infinite expanse of magical wilderness. Elysium does not as a plane intervene on the Material one because it has no governance structures and doesn't do anything in an organized fashion but lots of its denizens intervene on their own or in small groups or whatever.

- if you want to think of Heaven's central claim about what good is as 'good is fighting evil' and Nirvana's as 'good is paradise for everybody' Elysium's would be, hmmm, 'good is not a thing you can build for people and then stick them in'. That they've got to - do it themselves, ultimately."

:Wow. I kind of love it? Even though I'm, well, not that thing. I suspect all Companions are Lawful, it's - kind of the entire purpose we serve?: 

"Purpose you serve?"

:Companions are one of the key pieces of our kingdom's government. We were created by a god - or gods - when the first King of Valdemar prayed to Them for a miracle. We're magical, we Choose and bond to particularly upstanding people as our Heralds, and they're the core government. Heralds are supposed to be impossible to corrupt and this is basically true: 

Her eyes flash briefly to Vanyel. 

Vanyel is not looking at her. 

"Huh. I don't know of any countries here with an arrangement like that - and if there were one it'd probably be a - paladin order? But yours must be slightly different from that. It sounds like a good idea."

“It works reasonably well for the most part. Heralds also tend to have magic, the various kinds of Gifts I mentioned.”

"Does the god also pick who is in charge or do you - decide internally from among the Heralds, or - what -"

“Hereditary monarchy, but with the additional requirement that the heir be Chosen, so sometimes they have to go a little further out in the family tree.”

Nod. "Kind of like Osirion."

:How does Osirion do it?: 

"Uh, Abadar picks the most suitable of the pharaoh's descendants - direct descendants, ideally, but if none do then he'll branch out to brothers or nephews or something. The pharaohs have, like, thirty kids apiece so he doesn't usually have to branch out but they gathered the whole royal family in, even distant relations, when the last pharaoh was dying, just in case."

:Huh. Does Abadar talk to them directly and, um, tell them how to run the country?: 

"I think most possible answers to that question are heretical or something!"

"Formally the pharaoh is an aspect of Abadar but most laypeople are really unclear on what exactly that means. The most useful way to reason about it is by thinking about what happens to people when they ascend to godhood - they get a bunch of new - parts of themselves, ways they relate to the world - there still is something that can reason like the human that they were, but it's not all that they are anymore. Becoming pharaoh is sort of like that except that instead of ascending to the god that you would be if you ascended in your own right, you ascend to - Abadar. I know that's not a great explanation, gods are hard to think about."

Vanyel makes several odd faces. Eventually shakes himself a little. "Right. Anyway. I guess I should learn more about what sorts of spells you already have, and I can tell you about the kinds of things I can do and which ones are tiring, and then we can figure out if this is a good way to break into people's tombs."

He feels sort of uncomfortable with the tomb-raiding concept, but it's not like the dead people can use their stuff, and besides, if it's possible a True Resurrection would - work - then he's suddenly more desirous of money than he's ever been in his life. Also it sounds like a good way to learn a lot quickly about this world. 

"Yeah that sounds good. Uh, arcane magic comes in schools. There's abjuration - shields, alarms, defenses - you clearly have some of your own of those - conjuration - that's both making stuff from scratch, which is made of magical energy and always temporary, and summoning creatures or constructs from other planes - divination, which is scrying and information-gathering magic. Tongues is a divination spell. Prophecy was divination, back when we had prophecy."

"The gods and some people used to be able to - see possible futures. They didn't always come true but they were - real information, if you knew how to interpret them. Aroden's return was - prophecied like that. When Aroden died prophecy stopped working, reportedly for the gods as well as us, and now we're all flying blind. Divination spells that are about conveying information someone else currently has work fine."

"...Wait. You're saying your world had Foresight and then you broke it?" 

" - not us personally! Aroden died a hundred years ago. But - yes."