"She has a holy book though I confess I've yet to make time to read it. My lay understanding was 'defeating evil' - that being, given the aforementioned discussion, a gloss on 'getting some people-harmers to not be doing that any more' -"

"Yeah. They feel that them killing us is fundamentally different than us killing them. I guess it is, in the sense that Asmodeus isn't the god of fighting Good, He has actual goals, we're about things and they're about destroying us...

I don't think Cheliax has ever kidnapped a paladin out of their room at the Worldwound under false pretenses to stop Heaven learning something. We don't need to because we're not weak."

"He has actual goals which you assume don't refer solely to the suspiciously symmetric-looking warfare, you don't know what they are, you just assume they're important because a god has them? - also I don't actually expect that if for some reason a paladin was known to have learned something very destabilizing Cheliax would hesitate to kidnap them about it, do you actually expect that -"

"They probably would if it came up. And Good would be very outraged about it and point to it as proof of how Evil we are. But I don't think it has come up, because Hell mostly isn't pretending anything, and we're not so weak we can't achieve our goals unless no one else even gets a shot at convincing people of theirs.

I'm not even sure the warfare is symmetric, people go to Heaven specifically because they want to fight Hell and people go to Hell specifically because they want to sell magic items in Dis or serve Moloch or get that job where you talk people condemned to Abaddon into coming to us instead, I've never heard anyone say 'I want to go to Hell so I can fight Heaven', I don't think we raid them and they raid us all the time - 

- Asmodeus had goals before there were even good gods around to oppose Him so I don't think it's a strange supposition He still has them. It ...doesn't matter if I think they're important? I can declare the sun unimportant, too, if I want."

"What it would mean if they're unimportant to you is that you don't consider them a point in Asmodeus's favor, when deciding whose side you're on."

"I don't know very much about Asmodeus's goals - nor do you - except that He started at them by making Cheliax the richest country in the world and the only one where anyone who's any good can be a wizard, and that He killed Aroden, and that Hell is the way it is."

"Which is to say a place where people get tortured a lot whether or not they want to, to turn into something useful to Asmodeus."

"I don't know how Osirians do parenting but in Cheliax we make children eat their fruits and vegetables whether or not they want to, to turn into bigger children who don't have rickets."

Mahdi looks like he is not delighted about the idea of Carissa doing parenting.

"Hell's normal operations are fairly provocative to people who disapprove of torture more than they disapprove of vegetables."

"That sounds like a them problem, honestly."

"Yeah, I'm not sure I have another angle on this right now."

She shrinks into herself slightly. Nods. "Thank you."

"Should we, uh, take a break -"

"Yeah. I don't have anywhere else to be, we can, like, try again later if Carissa wants, I have no idea how I compare to paladins at making progress."

"I think I'm less confused. - accordingly a little less optimistic that I will like Good once it's all explained, but I am grateful to be less confused. I do want to keep trying, if you're willing. If you come up with what you'd want I will try to be it."

"You wouldn't have to get all the way to Good but making the case for Good seems more accessible than guessing what exactly Cheliax's mechanism of Evil-manufacture is so you can specifically repent of being caught up in it." Shrug.

"Yeah. Thank you."

Out goes Belmarniss.

"Wow, fuck Cheliax," he says once they're well clear of her cell. "What a - stupid, wasteful -"

"I wish I knew what they were doing! She has a stupid philosophical position but that wouldn't send her to Hell by itself, it's just making it hard to Atone her, there's something else, and I vaguely imagined it would become obvious if I talked to a Chelish person long enough and it's not at all!"

"Maybe we should go through a - day-by-day schedule, I can't see why she'd be eliding 'then we brand children with hot pokers' but if it's subtle - and it must be - or something she's assuming everyone is doing..."

"Maybe you can actually be evil just for supporting Asmodeus and working loyally for His country. I think you can mostly get Law off supporting Abadar and working for His."

"Law is different, Law just is about the same things that being loyal to a sufficiently consistent country is about - I can't rule it out but - the schedule's a good idea."

"What do you think of her."