<...I think that your civilization, as part of preparing everybody to serve Asmodeus, does not have some important concepts about the world which Andalites care about. Like that slavery is bad.>

"Lots of people on Golarion think that slavery is bad. Do you mostly mean bad for the slaves or bad for the slaveowners, I have seen both."

<...bad for the slaves. I guess it is also probably bad for the Yeerks to do evil things but I don't really think anyone else is obliged to care about how much they hurt themselves when torturing people.>

"So you are at war with the Yeerks because you expect this to produce a galaxy where less people are enslaved and their - civilizations destroyed - what does that entail -"

Alloran is finding this ridiculously challenging but it's the most important task in the world and he's going to try - <Yeerks do value their slaves not screaming and begging constantly, it is distracting for them. But they obviously do not want their hosts to have any genuine power to lead an interesting or valuable non-Yeerk-controlled life. They don't want existing political systems to continue. They don't want people to have a choice over whether to have children, because they want a large next generation of slaves. If you have mind-control magic they will substitute that for the existing proposed systems of indoctrination that they expect to make people acquiesce to slavery. They will permit some quality of life improvements, but never ones that would make people no longer want to be hosts -- Taxxons agreed to Yeerk slavery because they were desperately hungry all the time and kept losing their struggle not to devour one another. Yeerks will never invent something that makes Taxxons not hungry, because then they wouldn't want to be hosts anymore. The Yeerks will destroy everything that is not relevant to getting their slaves to shut up and breed more slaves.>

"That makes sense. Why do you...care about that."

<...wouldn't you think that it was bad if everyone in Cheliax were enslaved and all your works repurposed to entertain your slavers?>

"It would be bad for me personally but I wouldn't expect you to care about it! And it might not actually be a worse state of the world, I'm - not sure? Not wanting to be enslaved is related to the flaw that Ihys introduced in mortals, that makes us worse servants of the gods. It seems entirely possible that Asmodeus will think that everyone being controlled by Yeerks is much closer to the universe being the way it is supposed to be."

Right, of course, these people worship torture and slavery anyway, of course they're natural allies to the greatest evil in the galaxy -

<Do you think that Asmodeus is right about that?>

"I think that it wouldn't even mean anything for Asmodeus to be wrong about that! If he wants everyone in Cheliax to be enslaved then that will happen. If he doesn't then it won't. Maybe how they feel about it is an input into his decision but probably not."

<We are in space now. I think we are very far from where your god has any influence. There is no one here to decide what is good for you or bad for you except you. Do you want to be enslaved and tortured.>

"I think you're wrong about Asmodeus's reach. But entertaining the hypothetical, no, I don't."

<Then I do not want you to be enslaved and tortured! I want things to happen to you that you chose freely because you wanted to! You can think of that as a bizarre Andalite preference, if you would like.>

"Presumably there are some interests I could pursue that would make you feel differently, right - like, if I decide that I want to work with Mhalir -"

<I hope you do not decide that because it will increase the amount of people being enslaved and tortured but I don't want you to be enslaved and tortured since otherwise you might make bad decisions!>

"...sorry, it's hard to tell which lines of conversation are unimportant tangents and which are getting at real, important alien values differences or something, but - if you could enslave and torture me to prevent a thousand other people being enslaved and tortured, would you?"

<I don't know. For a million of them yes. For a thousand - it is very harmful to set a precedent of willingness to do such a thing. No Andalite has ever done such a thing and that is an advantage that we have, in interacting with the world, people can be sure that if they fall into our custody they will not be enslaved and tortured. It is impossible to negotiate with Yeerks since they do enslave and torture prisoners - observably - so nothing can be done that runs the slightest risk of capture by them.>

She tries to smile, because that sounded like - actual reasoning about this alien's priorities, instead of just yelling phrases with affect attached. "Thank you. I think that makes sense. Among Andalites, there are norms about how to treat other peoples and what treatment of other peoples to permit, and if a violation is egregious enough you will intervene, in order to preserve a galaxy with - the kinds of civilizations that you like, which are mostly not ones that are Yeerk-controlled and pointed at producing lots of cooperative hosts?"

A tremendous wash of relief. <Yes.>

"Why did you kill all of the Hork-Bajir."

<Hork-Bajir are a peaceful people with bladed limbs they use to strip bark from trees, but Yeerks use them for violence, as extraordinarily powerful and dangerous troops who can terrorize their slaves on other planets. Permitting the Yeerks to have millions of them would have made it much harder to win the war and save the galaxy. We tried everything else we could think of, first. Mhalir complains that we did not participate in negotiations in good faith but we were desperately trying to turn the tide of the war so we would not need to kill the Hork-Bajir, and we were willing to betray everything else, first, if it might give us a chance to not have to resort to that. But everything else failed. It was a gravely evil thing to do it and it would have been just to see me put to death for it but - we saw no other way to save anyone, let alone the Hork-Bajir. And most people prefer death to being a Yeerk slave. Certainly all Andalites do.>

"Really? That's - why - it seems possible that you are just not good at math and are not understanding what an eternity is -"

<I have thought a great deal about what an eternity as a Yeerk slave is and I would rather be dead.>

"What - makes it awful - is it painful in its own right -"

<I am not sure if it would be inherently painful even if I were sometimes allowed to control my body and speak to others and if the Yeerk were not pursuing the destruction and torture of everything I care about, but it would still be - a deep and awful violation, having something inside you that you have no power over that sees every thought and every memory and can decide exactly how to use them all against you ->