"I don't think they're getting nothing, I think they aren't getting use. They're buying some people-not-being-harmed."

"That's....not the relevant kind of something."

"If you could spend, like, a copper, to cause someone's soul to not get eaten, would you do it even if you didn't get the soul afterwards?"

"I ...guess? I wouldn't spend all my money on it. I dunno how I'd decide when to stop. When the novelty wore off, maybe."

"Good common sense, there," says Mahdi. 

"Let's say you'd spend a whole gold on it, that's a hundred souls. Do you suppose it's likely on balance that even if you didn't follow up on that one of 'em would ever make a gold in their ensuing existence and also be like 'that was pretty cool, I'll do that too, till the novelty wears off' -"

"Sure, all right, if it's that cheap and it's a one-off maybe people get helped for the novelty. But - it's an ongoing cost, sustaining a divine realm that other people can live in, and it's not cheap, and if you get nothing out of it eventually you'll stop. That's - the whole problem I have now, right, is that it's not very cheap for me to continue to exist so everyone has to try to figure out if there's a way to get enough out of me to make it worth it."

"There's an idea, we could drop you off in Nirvana, see if they have anti-suicide precautions..."

"They don't, I did ask the paladins if it'd been considered. Happy to take her, absolutely not equipped to keep her from doing magic research, on the spot, badly."

"I don't want to kill myself. Why would I do that."

"To report to Hell, presumably. That's why an Atonement would also work."

"Asmodeus probably already knows there are other worlds and I don't know that Kyeo's are specifically interesting or valuable to Him and I like being alive."

"Be that as it may."

"I think it is not that expensive to create and defend spaces where people can figure out good lives. Elysium is infinite and Desna is not to my understanding actively doing maintenance, and it's lovely, and the inhabitants defend themselves and intervene elsewhere on behalf of others as suits them."

"I don't think Elysium would be a nice place if it had to take everybody."

"There is a tradeoff between resource-intensiveness and niceness and universalness, yeah. But almost all of the places at any point on that tradeoff are better than Hell."

" -relevantly here I don't think Hell is very bad or anything."

"Devils are made, and warped to further alter them, through torture."

" - yes, I know that. Childbirth, or war, or, I don't know, eating chili peppers, is also painful but sometimes people do painful things because there are desired results."

"If it were voluntary I would have many fewer objections."

"People want stupid things and the things Asmodeus wants for them are more important than the stupid things they want themselves."

"Isn't that what's wrong with Ibyabek?"

"What's wrong with Ibyabek is that they all die and don't go anywhere after that."

"That too, but the reason they're so poor is the thing where somebody's deciding that they should want only specified things."

"That seems like it would be fine if the person in question wanted them poor for some reason like that it'll make them more motivated or more compliant. It seems pretty stupid if it happened by accident because they didn't understand what money was for."