"Huh. It is certainly my aim that in the long run slavery in Osirion be at least that rare - maybe prohibited entirely, depending how Andoran works out, though there are a lot of features of Andoran that make it a questionable test case. I think we'll be down to less than five percent in forty years even without any further intervention, a lot of our reforms last year were aimed at - making the institution less self-perpetuating."

"That does seem like a particularly high leverage kind of reform. I have much less historical data on countries transitioning from models with slavery to those without; usually the comparisons were between different initial setups for a country when it was founded. What is Andoran like, and what makes it a questionable test case?" 

"Andoran is a former province of Cheliax that broke free shortly after Cheliax fell to Hell's rule. They made the decision to make almost all Evil illegal. They have a naval order that intercepts slave ships, they send expeditions down into the Underdark to battle evil and occasionally rescue slaves there, and anyone who reaches their land is, by their laws, free. They choose their leaders by popular vote.  It is an experiment I'm very glad of but the results have been chaotic so far - Galt tried to copy them and there it was outright disastrous -"

"Ah, I have had that feeling. 'I am very glad somebody is trying this experiment, and also glad it is not my country doing so first.' Do many countries in your world choose leaders by popular vote? A few of ours do, or have at a point in their history, but I think our gods feel negatively about it; a suspicious number of their failures look like odd streaks of bad luck." 

"It is not common but I've seen no signs the gods specifically object. Rahadoum does. And countries run by religious orders often select their leader by a vote of the members of the religious order."

"Votes by a smaller number of people in powerful positions is also much more common in Velgarth." He pauses, trying to find the trailing edge from earlier. "–right, I meant to ask, what is the Underdark and what is Galt? I am still constantly bumping into place-names or terms I do not recognize." 

"Galt is also a province of Cheliax that declared independence after Cheliax fell to Hell. They, like Andoran, started out with a bunch of revolutionary ideals about human freedom. Then the revolutionary government was overthrown by a more extreme subgroup of revolutionaries, which was overthrown in turn. The current government has lasted ten years, which is longer than most of them, and conquered a bunch of Galt's neighbors. The whole region is a bit of a mess and they tore through almost everyone in the country with any experience in administration or government - they kept executing everyone from the most recent ruling class -"

Leareth winces. "Unfortunately, that is a very good way to end up with nobody competent in your leadership and thus a very disorganized country." 

"And Galt has special weapons for executions which prevent the soul from reaching the afterlife." Sigh. "Lots of places do, actually, but most of them use them less routinely."

"–What? Where does it go instead?" 

"Stays trapped in the blade, reportedly. We haven't closely examined them."

"I keep thinking I must have learned of all the disturbing things your world has to offer, and then there are more. That one at least has some analogue in Velgarth, although not an especially close one - I am thinking of a powerful magical artifact which I believed to be the result of a human mage's soul bound to a sword." 

"We have that too. It's done intentionally, sometimes, there are upsides of being a sword though on the whole I don't think it'd suit me."

"Oh, I suspect she did it intentionally in this case. For a definition of 'intentional' that may have included being cornered into it. I agree both that there are advantages and that it would not suit me." 

"I don't think immortality would suit me very well either, I'd get so horribly lonely."

...Leareth is not really sure what to say to that.

"There keep being people," he points out after a fifteen-second silence. "Albeit different ones." 

"Maybe it is not as lonely as I imagine it. And of course it is not hard at all to imagine that it's worth it. But the immortals of my own world always struck me as so terribly without equals. Without - things that could last."

Leareth doesn't wince this time. His expression stays very level. 

"...It is a little like that in my world, yes. That might be a convergent property of being immortal in a world where most beings are not - though I would think your world less like that, since the souls of all dead humans are de facto immortal, and there are outsider beings such as archons." 

It's very subtle but he's been watching intently and something in his eyes - relents, slightly. He smiles. "I summoned some axiomites - the lawful neutral equivalent of archons - when I first got my powers, to ask them questions. They were very patient and almost entirely useless because they don't think about things like humans enough to solve any dilemmas for me. I guess they were better than Abadar. If you try to put ethics questions to him you almost always get a headache and some advice that would work much better if you were a god."

Where was he going with that line of questioning, anyway...?" 

Leareth is distracted by several immediate thoughts, the first of which is that he's never wished he could ask a god ethics questions more than he does right now, the second of which is that he cannot at all explain to someone who might tell Abadar why he so badly wants that. He doesn't think that any of the Velgarth gods have guessed his plan such that they could inform Abadar, though he's not as sure of that as he'd like. 

"I am so curious what sort of ethics advice gods give each other," he settles on. 

"All of Abadar's ethics advice boils down to, uh, specify what you want, then imagine being lots of different decision procedures, then figure out which one gets the most of what you want, then be that."

Now he wants to pose ethics questions to Abadar about five times as much, which he tries hard to keep off his face but probably doesn't succeed, especially not against someone with major intelligence boosts courtesy of their god. 

"I said once 'I don't think I can be a decision procedure as an - atomic, one-step sort of thing to do!' - and He felt so disappointed.

He says He would have you as a cleric, if you would like that. Not now, of course, as it'd interfere with your undercover work in Rahadoum."

Leareth is already formulating his response to the first part - it's not an atomic action as a human, no, but that is something you can do - almost something you have to do, to be self-consistent over time–

–and then he loses that entire train of thought and just stares at the pharaoh.

"What." 

"Don't worry, He's not going to do it uninvited."