"Get up, pray, go to work, sell flowers, go out for dinner or drinks, go home, maybe with somebody, go to bed. On days off... go to services, go out and do their shopping, go to the theatre or the races or pick up extra work for more spending money..."

"If money were actually the root of all evil I think Osirion would've noticed and I still can't imagine it's just the praying! What the hell! Literally!"

"My conclusion is that doing things is mostly Evil unless you're specifically trying to follow some other god about the things but it's weird that in other countries this is not consistently the case!"

"It's not! Osirion has most people hitting Axis and religiosity makes a difference, mostly in Law, but not a huge one and not markedly toward Evil - drow are mostly evil but I could not think of any besides me who were adults and had definitely never been so much as complicit in a murder when I tried!"

"People...watch executions? It's frowned upon to not show up to them. Lots of people have had abortions which I know is Evil but I haven't and that shouldn't get the men. Lots of people own slaves but I know lots of Osirians own slaves too and Cheliax doesn't actually permit enslaving humans, just halflings. And lots of wizards sell their souls but that's just - common sense, right, you're powerful enough to know you're already Evil, you would rather your soul be the property of a specific devil who can use it than join the general rabble flooding Avernus, it's a consequence not the original thing..."

"Osirion has found that slaveowning is a risk factor for Evil, actually, but it won't do it all by itself in an otherwise unremarkable life. And men being married isn't even though the pretty earrings shouldn't change it as much as all that, so it's probably just that people with slaves are likely to abuse them and spousal abuse is less typical. What's - what's the youngest someone's made a high enough circle to determine they're already Evil, that you know of, in Cheliax -"

"I was 22. That's not literally a record for wizards but it's rare, and I don't know anyone who was younger ...the Queen took the throne at 17 and was already Lawful Evil - she's a sorcerer - though that's not a remotely typical case...I had a classmate who committed suicide when we were 15 and I scried him once, he's in Hell, but the suicide explains that all by itself..."

"Right now my best idea is 'see if Kyeo can raise Abadar again and this time ask him if he knows what the fuck, since he ought to have eyes there at all'."

That sounds like a really long shot and she doesn't even expect there to be a real answer. She nods.

"Does there seem to you to be - like - a fact of the matter about how much of a dick someone is depending on what they do in various situations? Like, somebody who makes his slaves work all day versus someone who does that and then also - what wouldn't affect their productivity - shaves their heads because they would prefer to have hair and this makes them cry, is the second one more of a dick or does it cash out in some other terms for you?"

"We have the concept that some people are jerks, or sadists or whatever, I don't think it's got much to do with Evil but I could sort people I know by how much of a jerk they are."

"The formal system is stupid in lots of ways but I manage to ping Good while thinking that, so it might still get somewhere. What makes people jerks?"

"Playing games with people." Like everyone here keeps doing. "Expecting not just that people will do what they're told but that they'll - entertain you with how they'll do it. Putting people in a position where they'll obviously do something pathetic, because you think it's funny. Betraying people when you don't even get anything out of it."

"Games like -"

Like saying that to keep you in a box making magic items they have to marry you and you have to try to filter for people for whom the powerlessness isn't actively the entire point by acting like you might want this. Like requiring you to convert but not telling you so. Like having lots of rules about who you can complain to, because it's so important to treat you well, while planning to deny you an afterlife. 

"I dunno. Sometimes punishing people for being too standoffish and sometimes for being too chipper. Setting them tasks they can't succeed at so you can punish them for failing."

"Okay. But not, like, torturing people, that's not being a jerk?"

"Torturing someone because you want information they might have is just common sense, it's not being a jerk to try to accomplish your goals. Torturing someone as a punishment for breaking a rule they knew about or should've known about is not being a jerk. Torturing someone to teach them a skill or lesson that for some reason they can only learn by being tortured is not being a jerk. Torturing someone because you need to practice your torture skills for one of the above uses is not being a jerk. Torturing someone for no reason at all is being a jerk, I guess, but in real life it's almost always one of the above cases."

"Huh. What the goals are isn't an input? Setting a policy that torture is a consequence for rulebreaking isn't?"

"N..no? Most peoples' goals are not my goals and my goals are not their goals but I wouldn't say that this makes them a jerk, having their own priorities. Why would I expect them to have my priorities. You need some consequence for rulebreaking and torture's nicer than - imprisonment, or maiming, or execution..."

"People have different priorities all the time but in different ways. If somebody wants to build a very tall tower of their own drinking glasses I can think that's stupid but not be remotely invested in stopping them. If I am playing sports with some people they will have the goal of winning and I will have the goal of them losing so I can win instead, but that isn't the same category of opposition as if someone wants to torture me."

"Why is it not the same category, it seems like the same category to me."

"Well, the point of wanting to win at sports is so the sport can take place at all and the point of not wanting to be tortured is that should that occur it will be bad for me."

"I guess I don't think of not liking being tortured and not liking losing games as different in kind. I guess you like games enough to choose to play them even knowing you might lose them? But mostly people get tortured because they, I dunno, decided to be a spy, or decided to worship another god, so you can say they liked those enough to chance losing. Maybe that's why it feels like more of a jerk move to torture someone for no reason."

"What about people who go to Axis, if Asmodeus scoops 'em all up and starts torturing them when they were not particularly inviting this with risk-taking?"

"It feels a little silly to apply judgments like 'a jerk' to gods in the same spirit as it feels silly to apply them to hurricanes but if I think of a human-scale equivalent of that I'd think it was - sort of tragic. I'd hope we'll go after Heaven and the Abyss, which keep attacking us, and then Abaddon where they eat people, and just work out some kind of terms with Axis."