"It seems like both of those possibilities would be really scary!"

"Yes. And Carissa is in Heaven and she - knows something, about the war, but she said she could not tell me in response to a random Sending..." 

He misses her so much. 

"Tell me about her?"

He's not sure why she's asking, but sure, he can do that. "She is very clever, and - ruthless, in her own way, she knows how to achieve goals. She was a wizard in Cheliax. She– it taught her to keep herself so small... Then my ship arrived in the Golarion star system and I - kidnapped her." He feels a bit - he can't say he regrets it but he feels sheepish about it, or something. "And proposed a collaboration, which she accepted - it was very mercenary, at the start, I bribed her with large quantities of spellsilver since we can mine it from asteroids..." 

He can say a lot of things about Carissa. How she was starting to learn not to be so small, to stretch out and grow into the brilliant ambitious person whose shape he could almost see as an invisible negative space around her - how upset she was about the war against Hell... How they got along, how she kept thinking he was nice and considerate and even charming... 

"And she's in Heaven now?"

"Yes. She got an Atonement to Lawful Neutral, I thought she would go to Axis, but maybe allying with Iomedae to fight Hell is enough to have one sorted as Good..." Shrug. "I did not expect to be sorted here. I read as Neutral Evil before." 

"Our reading in life is based on everything we did, and how we related to it as we did it. If you - go back, and change how you relate to your past actions - it can fail to reflect that. And of course  in Nirvana we bend the rules to try to grab everyone we can."

"I noticed. There is a reason I brought Alloran here instead of anywhere else." 

"What is he like?"

...That question is much much harder to answer. Mhalir hesitates for a while, shaping his thoughts. 

"He is - like me, I think, in many ways. He is very competent, he will be ruthless when needed to achieve his goals. I - thought of him as rigid, before, but I - enslaved and tortured him so I could wear his body, for many years, and I think that was not the ideal circumstances under which to get to know him at his best. I thought he wanted all of my people dead, but this is rather understandable on his part. He murdered a planet of innocent people rather than let us win there, I thought in monstrous at the time, but under his ethical system I think it does make some sense..."  

He recounts the pieces he remembers from the conversations he let Alloran have, with Carissa and with the cleric of Sarenrae. 

"It - sounds like it is good that he came here eventually."

"I think so. I - am very glad of it, I wanted...." He trails off, running out of words again. "I am still not sure why I did it. It was tactically stupid. I - was so confused - I wanted to achieve something and I am still not sure what it was and I am not sure it counts for anything much if good came of this by accident..." 

"What're you confused about?"

"What Good is. If - if it is even real, if the things people say are - reflected meaningfully in what actually happens... Also what it means that Nefreti Clepati said I was the same shape of person as Malduoni, who I later found out was literally Aroden, I am very confused about that, but it is a separate thing." 

"I don't think there is a - pure pillar of Good somewhere to consult about anything. The courts decide how people sort, and Detect Alignment approximates the same thing with a little less nuance. There are people trying to make things better, and I think many of them are trying very hard. - I haven't heard of that second thing."

Nod. He hadn't really been expecting answers. "Do you - trust - the Good gods?" He isn't sure 'trust' is the right word or concept, here, he's grasping at something that still doesn't quite hold together for him. 

" - I expect that we'll get people to every trial and that everyone who comes to Nirvana will be okay eventually even if it takes them a long time? I - don't think they lie to people. What does trust mean to you?"

He considers that for a while. 

"If I were to make plans based on - taking their claims about Good and its motivations at face value - would my plans work." 

" - I think that depends a little bit on how good you are at planning. But there isn't a different account of their motivations and values than the ones they give which would be better to use for planning."

"Really? My experience is that people very rarely say the thing they actually mean and I had not expected gods would necessarily differ on this." 

"I think people on the Material Plane are often very bad at knowing what they really want and don't see much reason to try to make themselves really and truly understood to other people. Because things are very very bad, on the Material Plane."

"And you think things are, in fact, less bad here." It's what everyone has been saying this entire time and it still feels very hard to believe. 

" - here in Nirvana? Everything is lovely here in Nirvana. The problem is the entire rest of the universe!"

" - it's not your problem right now," she says uncertainly after a little while. "You will have the chance to do things once you've taken a little time to heal and recover, and you'll be stronger for it."