"And we don't really have very much proof. We're mostly taking your word for it that your backstory matches, honestly, yours and Nefreti's."

It's not exactly the case that Leareth hasn't thought of that, he has, but - he set it aside as not very tractable to address right now. The group seems to provisionally believe him, enough to make plans based on it, and he can't ask for more right now. The alternate-world version of him is likely to want a lot more proof before he's willing to act on it, though. 

"I could retrieve some records from my world, if I have an opportunity to travel there or to bring someone else here. I have reasonably solid proof that I have been around for a thousand years; the entirety of my history is more difficult to prove." 

"I am willing to take you back to your world but I'd need to attune a focus for it and I have never attuned a focus for another plane before and don't even know where to start."

"Hundred gold says the pharaoh's done it. - had people do it."

"I am not taking that bet," Leareth says dryly. "I do think it is a - reasonable extension of trust, to ask for his help with this and thereby give him access to my world if he does not already have it. I will ask the next time we speak." 

"Should I reach out to my contact who was recruiting for Rahadoum, or not yet?"

"Does reaching out to him mean committing to leaving in the next few days, or still leave us with some flexibility?" 

"Some flexibility, I'd just say we're interested and confirm the pay and have another probably-futile go at getting him to tell us about the work. - we should maybe disguise your alignment, if we're going with that plan -"

"I can do that. I'd have to do it at the same time every day, though. Hmmm, do you have any idea how Evil you are, can you maybe just donate an astonishing sum of money to orphanages -"

"–Wait, does that work?" 

"It can, though you're not supposed to count on it."

"Law doesn't work that way, it's not like you can be extra-lawful the rest of the time to make up for betraying a parley at a really important moment or something. But Good is fundamentally about - whether you made the world more a place in which Good can thrive or not, and if you murder someone and then donate a large sum of money to helping people then those - push in opposite directions, and it's not impossible for the good you did to count for more. It's not one for one, you can't kill a person and save a person and expect to come out even, but - nothing's really incommensurable, when it comes to Good. And certainly everyone's redeemable if they regret it and seek to make amends for it but that's a slightly different thing."

"Interesting. I am certainly doing my best to make the world more a place where Good can thrive, but - well, in the short run, and especially in this lifetime, I am paying many of the costs upfront in order to gain future improvements, and I suppose your measurement system might see only the past and present. I am unsure how far in the red I am, according to this system, and how much - offset - would be needed to balance it. It depends what is counted as a harm versus as a good, I suppose. I do have a large organization and army, which I now think I will almost certainly not use for their original intended purpose on the expected timeline, and I might as well direct those resources that will not keep for a century to other things anyway." 

"You do not get credit for future good intentions until they happen, yeah. Uh, the Evil things that come up the most in the course of peoples' ordinary lives are fairly obvious. Murdering people, enslaving people, kidnapping people, arson and destruction, worshipping Evil gods, making deals with Evil extraplanar entities, helping other people do any of those things."

"Aroden was lawful neutral."

Nod. "Like Abadar? I suppose his investments for the future would have paid off. Some of them." He frowns. "Are most people who have commanded an army evil, according to your system? I - have been willing to kill people, but I have not necessarily done more of it" (yet) "than the commander of an army, in a war. Or does it not count, somehow? Vanyel has killed a lot of people and still reads as good." 

"Starting wars of conquest is Evil, usually. Fighting Evil is Good, and yes, people have written and thought about whether that's - a concerning sort of symmetry... I think it's one of those things they end up having a whole trial about, when you die, if it's somehow complicated. Participating in wars isn't Evil, necessarily, and defending innocents is Good, and it matters a lot what your other options were. - soldiers in long campaigns do often end up Evil but the best guess is that that's not because they kill on the battlefield but because, off the battlefield, people don't conduct themselves in enemy territory the way they would at home among their neighbors."

"I think killing people who are trying to kill you is also much less complicated than killing people who're defenseless. But I mean - we've killed people who were at that moment bound or unconscious, if in the larger context they couldn't be safely held with a reasonable expenditure of resources -"

Nod. "I see. I think Vanyel would have conducted himself with perfect integrity off the battlefield, because he is Vanyel, and he fought in a war on the defending side after his kingdom was invaded, so it makes sense he would not lose significant points for this, and he certainly has defended many innocents." 

"There you go, then. If he were a serial killer who'd taken the same number of lives for no good reason he'd certainly be Evil. - anyway the reason to worry about this is because most lawful evil human powerful spellcasters around these days are from Cheliax and I worry they'll be suspicious of you in Rahadoum. I guess you could just get a truth spell and clear that up."

"I might as well at least try reprioritizing my organization's work in Velgarth and making a large but affordable charitable donation, just to see if that gets me to neutral. Hmm. Are there any especially effective charities in your country, that would be a good investment here in terms of my money going a long way? I expect things are less well run in my world and definitely less legible in my world, and I would need to put much more thought into it." 

"I know people think about that but I don't know what they've come up with."

"Perhaps I will do some research." 

"Seems worth it. I take it you won't go to Hell but it still complicates getting people to trust you, if "pulling the world towards Hell, very hard" is the first thing they see."

"I really would like to do the opposite, in fact! It does seem that it would be especially unhelpful for - the particular aims I hope to accomplish here."