"Why would I hate Nirvana." Admittedly a lot of people also hate Hell starting out.

"Well, let's see. The gods there aren't involved very heavily in what most people are doing - they don't run the Isle of the Penitent, or choose the lawyers, or direct even the more fully healed people towards projects, by and large. It's more peer-to-peer. Also hardly anyone has the same form they took in life, it's sort of a sign of immaturity and defensiveness to go around like that because you only appear in Nirvana shaped like your original body in the first place if your self-concept is very rigid and fragile, otherwise you might be a fox or a crane or a waterfall or something - you can change it, once you know why you'd be that thing and can keep it in mind while making some practical changes, but it'd be a rare one who came to accept what about them was foxy and then decided to look like a human."

" - what do they want mortals for, which mortal sorts of habits and attitudes are they allowed to keep -"

"The gods aren't running the place like that. The mortals aren't for some other thing that isn't mortals. I think I'll name myself Nilare."

"- let's say I went to Nirvana and then tried to, I dunno, murder people, who would do what about that."

"It wouldn't work, on the Isle of the Penitent. Other parts there are fewer protections but you wouldn't be there till you were pretty much not going to murder people. I mean, outside of self-defense, an angel will kill a demon that's invading or something."

"So there's, like, a magic holding cell with some kind of magic filter and you only get out if you're aligned enough? I guess that makes sense - do you know what percentage of people ever get out -"

"I think the record amount of time spent on the Isle of the Penitent as a penitent and not, like, a social worker, is something like fifteen hundred years, and most people need like a few decades? Uh, the island is a holding cell but it's several times the land area of Avistan. Inside the island it's more like a grab bag of different effects that might kick in if you try to hurt somebody, like they get farther away when you try, or you just keep missing, or your sharp rock turns into a marshmallow."

"Huh. I guess that's - promising."

"I think it seems real nice, it just seems like you wouldn't care for it. I think you'd like Heaven, maybe."

"That seems ...kind of unlikely? Why would I like Heaven."

"Uh, Lawful, and they do have a project and they do recruit mortals to become the sort of people who can handle participating in the project. The project being the defeat of evil."

"I think they're gonna lose. And also I dunno that 'become perfect for fighting Evil' is any more fun than 'become perfect for fighting Good'. But - it makes sense, I can see what they're doing with it."

"I know less about Heaven than about Nirvana. I'm pretty sure they don't torture people though, and if you showed up and told them about here it wouldn't matter if they're otherwise going to lose, would it," says Nilare.

"'torture people' is really just framing, when you're going to live a million years you don't want to zero in on whether a couple thousand of them hurt. Lots of important stuff hurts. 

I guess we could maybe consider - throwing things to Heaven - as an option. If we can't build our own god."

"I think we can though," puts in Daron.

"I definitely think we had better try. Even if we want to get their attention after that we'd have a much much better negotiating position. Or our god would."

"Why do you want to build one instead of promoting some folks?" wonders Daron.

"If we can figure out how to do that, that works too. Maybe even better."

"The one has proof of concept," Daron points out.

"Yep. And since the making-people mechanism doesn't even work for half-elves it almost definitely doesn't work for gods. Which I guess suggests aiming at ascending someone. Or some group of people."

"I wonder what being a god is like," says Nilare.

"Maybe the next person can be an expert in the faiths of the ascended humans."

"It's a good thing we have a great excuse to be making people so fast," Kytar says, "or we'd look pretty ridiculous. Fortunately 'we figured out how to make them with magic and have a thriving magic business' passes muster."

"How many do we get before someone gets suspicious."