"I really hope they don't kill her. I - it wouldn't really be a proper marriage and I don't think I like the thing it'd be. Feels petty, to kill someone for that, but -"

"'s it legal to just buy her, not call it a marriage, just have a high-maintenance slave making magic items in your basement? Guess the paladins might not like it."

"I'm not sure. If she'd committed a crime it'd be legal, but - she hasn't actually-

- also keeping a woman enslaved in your basement seems like the kind of thing where you shouldn't be trusting in your own character."

"We could drop by and be your character."

"Yeah, Fazil's got truth magic and everything."

"I can - look up the rules for importing slaves." He grimaces. "If the paladins will go for it."

"They probably are not allowed to sell prisoners into slavery."

"What, and they didn't dismiss 'marry her off to my Osirian best friend on pain of likely death should she refuse' out of hand?"

"I mean, they weren't thrilled about it, but just killing her isn't better, and they don't have a policy against arranging marriages for prisoners, the way they are absolutely going to have one about selling them into slavery."

"If they pay me to take her then that's not selling her into slavery."

"I feel like this is really just an example of why people say Lawful Good is Lawful Stupid."

"It makes a lot of sense to have a policy against selling your prisoners into slavery even if there are weird edge cases where it is actually a good idea! It also makes a lot of sense to not have a similar policy for marriages and evaluate them on a case-by-case basis, if you trust you can filter for the ones that will be good for both people, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to suppose that sometimes you can. There are genuinely fewer incentive issues on their end with them paying Mahdi to take her so it is possible they'll consider that, which doesn't mean -"

" - hey. I'm sorry. I didn't mean - I know you're trying really hard, here."

"Well, I doubt if it'd be good for both people except when compared with death."

"I think it'd be ...fine. Which is why I feel like a bit of a jerk, it'd be easy to say 'no way' if it was going to be a disaster."

"You want kids?"

"Yeah. But not by her, necessarily, if she's going to be any of unhappy about it or committed to raising Asmodeans or just, uh, awkward to be definitely tied to forever if she seems to be making progress on the conversion and might at any point want to go off and do her own thing."

"Guess you'll be able to afford a mysterious foreign breadwinner wife and also a normal one with better parenting philosophy." She shakes her head. "Maybe I'll get somewhere with her - she got more combative toward the end and I don't know if that's actually a good sign or just a bad one but it did make it more frustrating."

"I think it was good. I think when she didn't expect the conversion to even maybe get anywhere she was - looking more at Mahdi, trying to not -"

"Not have a personality. I feel like Cheliax is unjustly maligning our marriage practices. I would like my wife to have a personality. - admittedly not an Asmodean one but - knew that coming in -"

"Anyway I think she was engaging more honestly once it seemed like it might be her best shot. Which doesn't mean it'll work, but."

"I should de-etherize some of my old notes and see if I have anything good in there for stuff I wanted to ask an Asmodean if one were holding still for me, since one is now."

"She is that." Sigh. 

"She's very hot. - this does not make me a terrible person, it is allowed, since I'm considering marrying her."

"It does not make you a terrible person but I think it'd be a terrible idea."