"Malediction's an evil spell, for one thing, and you can make a case that it shouldn't be if the person's otherwise going to vanish, but - actually you know what we should do is ask the person, whatshisface, for the name of somebody recently dead, see if we can scry 'em - but even if you construct the case for it, for practical purposes you need Pharasma's buy-in and that wouldn't be the way to bet. There's probably things you can do for Hell that wouldn't be evil. If you anonymously sent Asmodeus a nice cask of tea that would probably be more Chaotic than anything. But contributing to the general Hellish effort to do Hellish things is going to tend to be Evil since the Hellish things are."

"Sure." Sigh. "So once Asmodeus has conquered the whole world everything'll be Evil because it advances Hellish aims?"

"...I guess? I don't know, I'd kind of expect somebody to start threatening to let Rovagug out before it go that far."

"Probably that's why He hasn't done it yet but someday everyone that awful will be out of the way."

"You seem very confident in his long term prospects of success here."

"If any of the other gods could stop Him they would've done that when He took Cheliax. They couldn't, and didn't, and every year Hell is in a stronger position and everyone else isn't. ...the Abyss will continue being around on account of being infinite, and I guess the other chaotic planes too."

"Have you tried asking a paladin why they didn't stop him then?"

"They were kind of shifty about it but they agree that He's much stronger than Iomedae because She's a new god and had a lot invested in Aroden's plans which Asmodeus foiled."

"I didn't know Asmodeus took credit for killing Aroden."

" - who did you think did it?"

"- I have no idea, I just didn't know that Asmodeus said it was him. Which does at least suggest it is not widely understood to be the case."

"Asmodeus mostly lets the other gods be - they're not pursuing his goals, but gods are - the kind of entities that matter. He'll destroy them if they get in his way but not otherwise. So He's killed Ihys, for giving mortals free will, and Aroden, for his scheme to rule Golarion or whatever it was."

"The Ihys one I'd heard before. Uh, how central to your Asmodeanism is Asmodeus's personal badassery and his history of assassinations?"

"Well, if He were going to lose then it would be stupid to follow Him."

"...it'd still make local sense for all the same reasons if he were going to lose in five thousand years but still at this time controlled Cheliax. It's not like he'd say 'public service announcement, I'm expecting to go down like a ship made of sharkbait'."

"I don't - care about five thousand years, not really, or - I do, but it's a mistake of the kind humans make, and I am not going to decide my life with it."

"I don't think he's poised to take over the world next week."

"No. But if He's going to do it eventually, then I want to be something He can use, and if He's not going to do it eventually, then whoever is, I want to be something They can use. Because - that's five million years, five billion years - it's the difference between everything and nothing -"

Belmarniss glances around at her party members for help. "You guys are letting me do all the talking."

"You were doing a good job of it. Uh, the thing that jumps to mind for me is that things we can do might determine whether Asmodeus, in fact, conquers the universe forever, and that's important on whatever scale you'd like."

That is pathetic the way wanting to stab Pharasma is except infinitely moreso.

"Axis gets stronger every year," he says. "They invent things. Hell copies the things they invent, admittedly, but - not all inventions are straightforwardly copiable, and the culture of inventiveness evidently isn't."

That is.... a convincing argument for permitting the continued existence of Axis once Asmodeus has conquered everything.

"I heard that the secret to a happy marriage is to not argue religion with your wife, actually," says Mahdi.

Hagan swats him.