"Is that supposed to only work in Hell for some reason or is somebody doing sinister experiments trying to replicate it? Figure out how long somebody has to spend chilling with a Symbol of Pain before they're a model citizen?"

"I think that while formation in Hell involves pain it is not actually just inflicting pain until whatever the problem is self-corrects and is way more elaborate than that. I think it also tends to involve both kinds and degrees of harm that mortal human bodies don't withstand well so if you tried you'd just kill someone instead of improving them."

"Mm-hm."

"That said Chelish people seem more okay with hurting living people than the paladins and I think it's not unrelated? If you think that sometimes hurting people is good for them and in the average case it's entirely fine for them then you're not going to tie yourself into knots as much about avoiding it."

"Seem plausible to me."

Sigh. "I hope you're wrong about Hell not being you-preserving."

"It could be you-preserving and not me-preserving."

"I think it's almost definitely me-preserving but I still hope you're wrong about it not being you-preserving."

"I think I'll take that as a compliment."

She doesn't really have anything to say to that. 

"I'm gonna take a break here, end on a high note. Do you have stuff to write with if you think of things you want to circle back to later?"

"I do. Thank you."

"You're welcome." And she knocks to go out. Looks for Fazil.

Still talking with the paladins; he stands up and goes to join her. "How'd it go?"

"I think I made some progress. Also apparently Kyeo got his very own headache from Abadar, did you hear about that?"

"I did!" He shakes his head in amazement. "I'm - glad, of course. It seems to have been productive."

"I wanna ask him to do it again, see if Abadar knows why Cheliax has such a good return on investment in making people Evil, I want to know what they're investing. Wanted to run the idea by you."

"- I don't think we should expect that to work, gods talking to people is very rare - I assume if this were widely known Iomedae would know it, Hell being more her focus than it is His? And She presumably doesn't. Why do you think there is something in particular?"

"I expect Abadar has more eyes there than She does; they do commerce and do not do any evil-defeating by and large. I did Mahdi's schedule idea, and it's possible that prayer, alone, can make you evil, but that's not actually my understanding, and there's not a lot else there!"

"Well, you can ask Kyeo to try and I can also try to talk the paladins into letting me put in a request in Sothis."

"Good idea."

"I want to ask him what Abadar explained but I'm sure he doesn't want to repeat it a dozen times, let's fetch everyone -"

Kyeo can be found in his room, looking out the window. He is not sure what all these people are doing here. "Yes?"

"I was curious what Abadar - wanted to explain. If you're comfortable sharing it."

"How to add two and two and get five."