"Yes, though not implemented in most places." The Eastern Empire has that setup. Valdemar doesn't. 

"The currency of Cheliax is backed by souls. 

They do know this. It is mentioned in schools, it is scribed on bills: backed by House Thrune, by our Patrons, by the Souls of the Damned, for the Greatness of The Chelish Nation. It wouldn't work if they had no way to know. Abadar didn't - see why it was unfair - when gods know things they know the things, the thing is everywhere it needs to be in their model of the world -"

"I..." For once, Leareth is lost for words. He's angry. This is not an emotion Leareth feels often and he has to ride it out for a moment, let it run its course before he can speak. 

"I - see why Abadar thinks that. I think that my mind - works that way, most of the time, because I wish it to and have had centuries of practice. But. Also. From the perspective of humans, I do not feel it is particularly fair." He lets his fingers tighten together in his lap. "We will win this war and we will fix it." 

"If there is anyone I could believe that from, I suppose it would have to be you.

He and I probably should not speak; I can't think of conditions acceptable to both of us and even if there are some we'd waste time coming up with them. But if he needs anything -

- I want to help."

"I know. I told him so. I - persuaded him, and it took some doing, that it is worth trusting you to the extent that you want to help."

(It's a complicated case, right, because he isn't entirely sure that Khemet and Abadar are on their side. He would bet nine out of ten odds on it, higher even, but - for a more normal scenario, the downside risk of being wrong would be too high to risk. And yet. This is a case of a sufficiently terrifying potential - probable - ally, where if he's right of Abadar's alignment with their cause, not cooperating with him has a downside risk as well - of stepping on each other's plans, or of whatever updates Khemet and Abadar might make from said distrust. And it would be different if their victory were more assured, but - it isn't, there's a lot of overkill in store but not nearly as much as either of them would feel really comfortable with.)

"I am not expecting you to know but I figured I might as well ask. Do you know which of Them betrayed him." 

"...several former allies helped kill him in the end. After three weeks, when he had clearly and thoroughly lost but he kept - trying to pull the pieces back together - he didn't have enough left to know what effects it was having on the world but there wasn't going to be any mortal civilization left if it didn't end. Honestly they should have done it sooner. Is that what you mean?"

"Oh."

"...I am not sure. He is certain he was betrayed, but unsure by whom; that is why he drove all the gods out of Rahadoum." 

Leareth is thinking, almost plaintively, that - he would, he would unwittingly tear apart the world just out of desperately unwillingness to die, to have it be over - and Leareth thinks that he would have wished it, too, for his allies to end it sooner, to stop letting him destroy everything around him...

"I can ask Abadar if He knows more." He has been talking to Abadar too much lately, it gives him a headache under the best of circumstances and when done repeatedly it makes the Material World feel blurry and sharp at the same time, and very very distant. The pain is worse if he puts it off but he's been using Delay Pain every day to at least schedule it for the point where everyone not possessed of a Ring of Sustenence is, unlike him, sleeping; then he can lie there in the dark and quiet until the pain ebbs and he sleeps and wakes up with a mind that remembers human things. 

- obviously worth it, if this is all going to be over in a couple of weeks.

"I would appreciate it, if it is not too much trouble." He lets out his breath. "Also transport to Velgarth in a day or two, if we have not figured out our Gates by then. I will try to synchronize it with Vanyel's movements if possible to minimize the overhead for you." 

He takes a deep breath, slowly lets it out. "And - I am considering Abadar's offer to me. We had a very long discussion and then he said he would leave it to my judgement, whether it is a good idea." 

"Your caution has been - warranted many times over, in Velgarth."

"Right. You have learned some things about my past." He wrinkles his nose slightly. "Well, translated via two sets of gods, which must be quite something to absorb as a human, even an extremely clever one." 

For a second he looks tired, more tired than most people who are thirty or for that matter on their first lifetime can look. 

"Your set has even less to work with, I think. Abadar can usually understand and answer my questions fine, even if I don't always understand Him."

He hesitates. 

"No one told me in advance that, uh, you do not actually become an aspect of a god. I hadn't met my grandfather before he became pharaoh, and he was very smart, and it made sense, that Abadar would want to shape someone in such a way He could easily communicate with them. I believed it. I think Abadar does want that but He doesn't know how to do it."

"That - makes sense. It sounds very difficult." He would definitely not want Khemet's job, for multiple layers of reasons.

Leareth hesitates, but only a little. "- If it would help, to have a history of Velgarth, and my life specifically, in easier to understand terms, I - would not mind telling you, at this point." 

"I would certainly be very interested."

Leareth sits back. 

"I should start at the beginning. About eighteen hundred years ago, by Velgarth's calendar, there was a powerful mage named Urtho, who was called the Mage of Silence - and a boy, Ma'ar, who was his student..."

He doesn't give a very detailed summary. If only because it would take too long otherwise. He mostly includes things that he's pretty sure the gods of Velgarth know, and so Khemet could know them via Abadar but it's only polite to not make him work so hard for it. 

He is a good listener; he looks emotionally invested, and sad and angry at the right parts, which are most of them. He moves his chair a little closer, a couple times, though they're still at well more than arm's length apart. 

Two thousand years is too long for magic to bring anyone back to life. 

"The gods of Velgarth," he says wearily, "are not totally sure what caused the Cataclysm but technological and magical progress was definitely some kind of element in some way. So they're trying to make them not happen again so the world can't get destroyed again. Also, and of at least equal significance to them, because it's noisy in its own right. Probably if they weren't so upset about the noise they'd put more effort into figuring out what specifically and precisely needs to be banned from now on, because it's not sanitation. - Abadar has tried to argue this and not gotten anywhere."

"It is - complicated, I think, what needs to change. What underlying process, I mean - the decisions of individuals are always a random factor. I made a mistake in not de-escalating the war. Urtho made a mistake in - building whatever weapon it is that he used, I still know little of the details there, all the records were lost. But that is not really the level at which I would want to remove the cause, if I were a god. Still, I think our gods are using a rather broad, blunt-force strategy, here, and if They could talk to humans, They could do better." 

"Abadar does not have your records. I'm sorry; I asked. He's saving everything from Velgarth now but he can't step back in time to do it."

"Oh. ...I understand. I was not expecting him to." 

"He had all of Aroden's. It would've - helped, a lot, right - with - 

- you're afraid -"

Leareth blinks at him, his expression very still. He's pretty unclear on what Khemet is trying to communicate, so he just waits, expectantly, to see if it'll be clarified. 

"I care about what you're trying to do. I want to help you succeed at it. I know that part of what you're trying to do, right now, is assess whether we are on your side. Whether Abadar could reach your records or not would not, actually, be informative on that front, I don't think. But you're also - even if you think you should try to be his cleric, it's a very difficult thing to do if you desperately don't want to. I wish I could help with that part. ...also with the trust part, but that seems harder. I'm a very good liar. In your position I would be less sure than I'd like."

Leareth nods. "I think the best way you can help with - trust - is by answering my questions, and not otherwise trying too hard in a given direction. I...also would like it if I could - reason more neutrally about it. I am not sure if my experiences with Velgarth gods are applicable here, even, it is just - hard to disregard centuries of habit. I suppose you could tell me more of what it is like, what he is like, since you are also his cleric? Also of the upsides. I currently have a vague understanding that it would grant some powers but not how much." 

"When humans started out, at least in Golarion, more or less all of them travelled in small groups, gathering enough food to survive, and when sufficiently bad things happened they died, and - they had other skills, some were better at them than others, but the world didn't have the thing Abadar valued in it, yet. And then, in the places where food was plentiful enough, grew easily enough, it made sense for people to start to specialize, and then it did, and then he tried very clumsily to nudge it down that route, for a long time. He is credited with having brought about civilization but I think really he didn't have many of the right places to intervene on, not back then. - the power of gods is related to their age and experience, and their number of worshippers, and the strength in this world of the underlying concepts they stand for, and He wasn't weak but he couldn't possibly have done something like Osirion...and even less of the gap had been bridged, between how we understand the world and how gods do. 

People say that Abadar is the god of cities and commerce. Cities - specialization. The thing that matters is specialization, gains from trade - there's a concept, I don't know if your world has it, that even if one person is the best in a whole city at every trade he's still better off trading with all of the other incompetents, because there's something where his advantage is largest and he can maximize how much stuff he has if he focuses there and buys everything else -"

"We have that concept." Or, at least, he does, and some books written under names that were his once, and the scholars of the Eastern Empire. "'Comparative advantage'?" He had wondered about Abadar's goals; from the start, Abadar has seemed - if not aligned with him, exactly, at least much closer to a god he could work with, have a productive alliance on shared goals. Maybe. Unclear.