"I'll look. And at Absalom, in case it's workable there. It is definitely going to be workable in Katapesh, so maybe that can be a backup plan?"

"It'd be really annoying to have to stash her in Katapesh but I guess I'd make it work."

Sigh. "Thank you. Good luck."

"Thanks."

He gets to work on researching that, and also sends the church in Sothis an inquiry about whether Abadar has any information about the internal operations of Cheliax.

Belmarniss keeps visiting Carissa. "They're having some awkwardness about trying to find a legal framework under which Mahdi can keep you as an affianced captive," she says. "There's probably something but something might be stowing you in Katapesh. But, like, I assume you'd still rather just walk out of here safely neutral or better and do whatever you want, so I can keep trying to explain, if you think that might help."

"I think it might help. ...why are you doing it?"

"What's your guess?"

"You will feel very accomplished and good about yourself and have bragging rights with your friends."

"Well, only if I succeed. D'you think that's all of it?"

"You - get Good points? But - that seems objectively less useful than your friend getting a very valuable slave, you could donate some of the money and get the Good points anyway."

"Mahdi is a good Osirian and will not randomly give me money to drop in Shelyn's collection bucket unless I do something to earn it off him."

"Is that why? If Mahdi were himself Good and he was like "I will give all the money she makes to orphanages" would you go, well, that's more Good than convincing her to be Good, I guess that's that settled then..."

"I'm sure some people game it that way and I hope that works out for them but nah, indiscriminately feeding people into a system designed to produce homogenized alignment glop is largely Hell's bag."

" - okay."

"I make jokes about Good points too and Pharasma's not exactly systematically discouraging the outlook with clearly written pamphlets. But the point - buried a few miles to the left of where Pharasma thinks it is, like how magnetic north isn't the geographic pole - the point's about trying to buy some people-not-being-harmed, with whatever you've got, and you don't in that sense 'got' random other people's well-being. Sacrificing third parties to save other third parties is sort of like committing burglary to enable a greater act of Law, like, you could imagine winding up in that situation but you should not go around thinking 'what about that place, is that one positively Lawful in expectation if I go down the chimney and make off with the silver and fund streetlights to deter future thieves'."

"I don't think I have an account of why you shouldn't do that except it probably wouldn't work."

"Are you just Lawful 'cause you want to go to Hell, then?"

"I - think the rule of law is important and I think demons are terrible and I don't think everyone just doing whatever they feel like will make anything valuable happen."

"Why's rule of law important?"

"It is a stupid waste of resources if random people have to be worrying about self-defense all the time instead of expecting they can sell things and the things won't get stolen and they can take money to the bank and not get mugged and they can go out drinking and not get raped and if something does happen the stuff will be gotten back and the responsible party will be prevented from ever doing it again."

"Drow tell each other that the spirit of competition engendered by people murdering each other all the time makes us stronger and more self-reliant and saves effort on policing and jailing the population. How would you evaluate who's wasting resources?"

"I mean, I don't think you should jail people, that does sound like a waste of resources, you should execute them. Some places sell them as slaves and that's also valid. I...wouldn't expect that people murdering each other all the time does make them stronger and self-reliant, I'd expect that it just interferes with them doing anything with their lives that isn't about avoiding murder. I guess if there were more impressive drow businesspeople and wizards than you'd expect from their numbers that'd make me reconsider whether they're just wasting their time. Also the Abyss is bad though, and the Maelstrom and Elysium don't sound great either, so I'd still want to be Lawful."

"I'm not sure what you'd expect from the numbers. We do throw lots of wizards, though. Lots of families don't let their daughters live if they can't pick up a caster level in something. You're kind of bouncing between arguments. Is rule of law important or does it just get you the best afterlives?"

"I think it's important in this life but even if it weren't it vastly improves the next one. Threatening people with death isn't a very good way to get them to learn magic but I guess killing them is a good way to get high wizards per living person. It seems kind of wasteful, though, they might be perfectly fine at some other thing. I guess if you have no need for any work that isn't high-intelligence."