Dierne/Aspexia is current asleep in her crib in the nursery, with a nursemaid sitting by and singing a Chelish lullaby to her softly. 

Oh, good. 

She feels - kind of at loose ends. Goes back to her bedroom. Takes a bath, even though Chelish technology for this is inferior to Urtho's.

After a bit, Leareth wanders back in, having gotten through the bare minimum of catching up on running a country. "Carissa, are you there...?"

"Mmmhmm, am I supposed to be somewhere? Ma'ar was going to maybe talk to Iomedae. The baby has nursemaids." She sounds gleeful about it.

"She does! You are not supposed to be anywhere else that I know of - I made sure Nayoki took care of that." He slips in, bends to kiss her. "We need to make a public appearance tomorrow. But not now. I was very efficient about my political duties and I have no more of them until tomorrow." 

"Oh good. You could come join me, the water's nice. Couldn't stand hot baths late in the pregnancy, she'd get fussy."

"How rude of her." Leareth doesn't take baths very often, but the water is nice, when he dips a hand in. He undresses and slides in beside Carissa; it's a nice large tub and there's space for both of them, a bit squeezed in but he appreciates that too. 

Lean. "You said you would be overbearing but I feel only a ordinary amount of borne. ...beared? No, that would be something different."

Leareth goes slightly cross-eyed as he tries to figure out what different meaning that would have. "I mean, I did not a stupid quantity of extra wards on our suite, but I suppose you cannot tell unless you cast Detect Magic. What kind of overbearing would make you feel an extra-ordinary amount of borne? I did carry you inside, which was rather silly of me but I wanted to..." 

- kiss. "I'm sorry. I love you and I should remember there is no point at all in trying to tease you because I will just confuse you and you will work very very earnestly at unraveling the confusion. What I meant is, I want you to fuck me in the bath."

"- Oh. Yes, I would like to do that very much." And he kisses her back. 

Ma'ar goes back to his new bedroom (which is big and nice and all his, and Vanyel offered to help him decorate the ceiling with stars that GLOW in the DARK). He sits down on his bed and looks out the window; it's not as good a view as the one from Urtho's Tower but it's all right. 

He's still trying to wrap his mind fully around what Good even is. He's not sure he has a clearer way to point at it than 'the way Vanyel is', but he has practice, now, trying to understand and predict people even when he can't read their minds, and Vanyel told him a lot of stories about his life. 

Vanyel is - brave, he thinks. He doesn't do things because he wants to for himself; he's done a lot of things that were awful for him, because he's powerful, and - it seems like he doesn't even think of that power as his, he thought of it as belonging to the people of Valdemar, because he was a Herald and he was strong enough to save so many people and make people's lives better. Ma'ar isn't sure he likes that, it seems unfair to Vanyel, and somehow unbalanced, but it feels accurate.

Vanyel, he thinks, is someone who would never ever in a thousand– in a million years, care less about the lives of innocent people as he became more powerful. If anything he would care more; he sort of said that he did care more, once he became a mage, once there was something he was good at which could save lives. 

He feels like he's going in circles now. Eventually he lies down and closes his eyes, and - isn't sure how to pray, exactly, no one really said. He thinks about Carissa, who Iomedae chose as her cleric, as the person who could help Leareth fix all of Cheliax, which has to be a Good thing to do even if Leareth isn't, himself, Good. He thinks about how brave and strong Carissa was, when she came to his world. How she talked to Urtho even though she was scared. How she never even considered giving up, even when she thought she might have erased Leareth from existence and would never be able to go home...

I want to talk to you about what Good is, he thinks. I want to understand what shape I should grow up to be, if I live here. 

At first it feels like something has gone terribly wrong. There is a waterfall of something where there was nothing, and he is being stretched - dragged - reconfigured along a dimension he did not even realize he had, and it - doesn't quite hurt, but feels dangerous, like it ought to scour him to the bones or rip him apart or both -

- and then that fades, and he's in Urtho's Tower, looking out the window at the city and the stars, and there's a woman sitting across from him, with a boyish short haircut and piercing eyes.

"Ma'ar," she says.

There wasn't time to be scared, really, in the moments of waterfall-falling-stretching, and maybe he should be scared now but oddly he isn't. Instead he's remembering Carissa's precious water-making cantrip, and the healing spells she saved for all those months. Which came from Iomedae. 

"...How do you do that?" he says, staring around. "I - don't think you'd put everyone here - is it just me, how do you tell...?" 

"I can look through your mind, when you seek me with it. I pick something appropriate. It's - an important place to you, isn't it. Aroden's was under the sea."

“Oh.” He looks around some more. “So you can just read everything in my mind? That’s neat. Why was Aroden’s place under the sea?”

"The first place where he saw - what the world could be like, if it were rich and peaceful, and the works of people who'd built it that way."

“Huh.” That’s a very good description of exactly the thing that Urtho’s Tower means to him. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you because I’m - trying to understand what Good means. Carissa thinks it’d have been worse, if Leareth were Good back when he was in Predain, but that maybe he’ll be Good here, because it - works, here? I’m confused about that.”

"Good - combines two things, I think, at least from a human perspective; that is somewhat less true from a god perspective, because our strategies and our goals are less separable. The goal shared most consistently across all of Good is for thinking beings to live happy, meaningful, interesting and satisfying lives. The forces of Good in the Material Plane generally try to achieve that goal through invention, through generosity, and where necessary through assassination or war, but not - even where necessary - through the deliberate killing of innocents, or the use and destruction of souls for fuel, or through torture, or through slavery. I think Leareth has always shared our goals. But he has employed many of those tactics, in his world, when he needed to.

Today if he had some goal that he could achieve that way, it would come with the substantial disadvantage that the forces of Good would be less allied with him, and that his alignment would read Evil to the people of our world, and this changes his calculations. Not absolutely. I am sure that some situation could still arise where it would be worth it to him to employ those tactics. But in mortals Good is not judged off what you would do in some unlikely situation but on what you do do, and it is true of most Good people that they wouldn't be, if the exact wrong set of circumstances hit them."

"That makes sense. I - want the same goal - I think I always have... I guess I don't see anything special about some strategies versus other strategies, though, it's not - it feels like it's not fundamental, in the same way, it's - like you said, there are unlikely situations where it'd come apart and break, for most people even, not just me or Leareth. I'm curious why that's different for gods, why it's less separable." 

"I bet you do see something special about some strategies versus other strategies, along a different axis. You would achieve your goals by killing innocent people, if you had to, or by destroying souls, but would you achieve them by solemnly giving you word to adhere to a treaty, and then betraying it? Or by meeting with an enemy under a formal agreement of parley, only to assassinate them on the spot?"

He winces. "I - mean - I might? But...it'd hurt, it'd feel like...losing something forever, not just - hurting people now because that's how the math falls out, to help more people in total. I don't really understand why... I guess because it's - important, that even enemies can make treaties and have parleys? And - if you destroy that it's not just hurting people right now, it's not even just hurting your reputation in particular forever, it's - the fact that agreements to parley even exist as an idea...?" 

"The price is not paid in dead people but in dead - kinds of trust that could otherwise exist. And - if that is a thing you would do if it were important enough, if you are the sort of person who'd ever do it, then the higher the stakes the less anyone can trust you. It is not worth very much to be trustworthy only when it doesn't matter. It is worth a great deal to be trustworthy even when it does."

Ma'ar nods. Shivers. "...Is that what being Lawful means, then? And - is Leareth trustworthy that way, even though he'd murder people and– would he torture people? Carissa said he didn't torture her when she got caught and she was surprised and thought he just hadn't heard the argument why it was strategic but she said it turns out he just doesn't like torture." 

"I am not sure that he has ever found himself in a situation that would be improved by torturing people. Carissa was taught by her educators that it is an effective interrogation tactic and also an effective deterrent, but it really isn't, and also if you select your staff for willingness to do it you'll dislike them on other dimensions."