"You can't, at least in Velgarth. Leareth says every time he tried the gods stopped him. Because they don't want your world to be technologically advanced. - that's not the point, because this heuristic is from Golarion anyway, just. I think - most ways to do something big hurt people. Conquering countries. Assassinating people. Even a King who just wants to govern wisely and make his people prosperous has to put down rebellions and ferret out traitors and stop his half-brother from poisoning his breakfast and - if a random woman from another world gets dropped on him he has to be the kind of person who seizes that, not the kind who lets her run off, and I think that gets you to Evil, more or less, unless you have a hobby of opening soup kitchens and healing beggars."

"...Hmm." Vanyel seems unsure what else to say. 

"It's the thing you said, right, about how hurting people to get what you want is Evil, but it's very hard to get anything done without any hurting people to get what you want. Even if Leareth doesn't hurt his staff."

"Does he not hurt his staff because it wouldn't get him what he wants anyway, or because he would rather not hurt people? ...I don't know how much that actually matters. But it feels like it might." 

"I'm - not sure those are different?  I think ....that the reason hurting his staff won't get him what he wants has to do with what he wants? The parts of people he's trying to use are the parts that are hard to encourage with torture, and I think that's part of why he thinks torture is bad."

"I think for most people those are different? And - even if you could get what you wanted by hurting someone, you'd still think it was bad because making people suffer is bad." 

"- why is making people suffer bad?"

Vanyel seems to consider this an almost stupidly obvious question. "People don't want to be hurt, and doing things that people don't want to them is bad. And - it's damaging, right, it messes up people's heads." 

"I don't think so? And lots of the time it's reasonable to do things to people that they don't want, thieves don't want to get caught and children don't want to go to school and people on a long march want to sit down, I don't see how torture's any different."

"...sorry?"

"Have you. Asked people. Have you CHECKED if literally anyone who, er, isn't from Cheliax, thinks it's not any different from your parents making you go to school? Because I don't think anyone in Valdemar would agree with you! Also I'm pretty sure it would still traumatize you even if you thought it shouldn't!" 

"I'm sure if you survey people in Good countries who have never been tortured and have only heard about it in propaganda about what their terrible enemies do, they'll say it's very bad! And 'traumatized' is sometimes a word for 'correctly learned a lesson' and sometimes for 'incorrectly learned a lesson', it's stupid to group the two."

"Arghh!" Vanyel stomps over to the desk chair and flings himself down. He yanks at his hair. "I don't even know how to argue with you about this!" 

- she flinches and steps back against the wall, looking suddenly smaller. "- I'm sorry. I just hadn't thought about it before. I'm still learning about what it's like in other places."

Vanyel hunches down smaller as well. "...No, I'm sorry - I'm not mad at you. I...think you're probably really traumatized, is all. From living in Cheliax, it sounds horrible." 

"I liked it there. I think I - mostly learned useful lessons but then a series of incredibly improbable things happened and they may not have all been the right lessons for incredibly improbable things happening all the time."

"I don't..." Vanyel massages his forehead with both hands. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to say this in a way that's not offensive. Just - my opinion as a Herald, for whatever that's worth, isn't that it's good you were able to learn how to be scared all the time so you wouldn't die, it's - that places like Cheliax shouldn't exist. That Asmodeus is - trying to break people, that's what he does, and that's horrible."

He scrunches up his face. "...Also I'm sort of confused what your point even is. If torture works as a punishment - if you're scared to defy someone because they might hurt you - isn't that in itself saying that torture is bad? Because if it was actually fine then you wouldn't care that you might get tortured about it?" 

"....no? Torture is aversive, it is motivating, it is an effective way for people to learn certain kinds of lessons, if you don't want them to learn those lessons it's a bad way to accomplish your goals, but none of that's a reason that it's - broadly to be avoided, if you do want people to learn those kinds of lessons, or if you want to - how does Valdemar punish pickpockets or men who get into drunken brawls with the guards..."

"...People don't get into drunken brawls with Guards all that often because it's stupid and they'll lose. Um, I guess people who brawl a lot get banned from all the taverns? And pickpockets are - hard, it's sad, a lot of them are only stealing because they're hungry. They...usually get a night in gaol? And if they do it enough the locals recognize them on sight and they get kicked out of all the nice neighbourhoods. I dunno, I - guess maybe we could have fewer pickpockets if we tortured them, but then they'd be getting tortured. Which is bad!" He grimaces. "- And I think it'd do bad things to the Guards - or mean the Guard was more likely to be mostly horrible people, if part of their job was torturing criminals?" 

"I mean, you have specialists for it, it's not the same job as street patrol. Having less pickpockets is really valuable, it means your streets are safer for honest people, and your country gets richer, which means you have less pickpockets only stealing because they're hungry."

"Mmm. Maybe. I just - I don't know, it still feels like - maybe then you end up with a country that's richer where people follow all the laws and also it's like Cheliax, and - random ordinary people are scared all the time and - think torture is fine, which you'd expect to correlate with them being fine with hurting people less powerful than them, right. And I think people having to be scared is - bad in itself. Whether they're scared of being pickpocketed or scared of being tortured because someone powerful wants to teach them a lesson." 

"I mean, I agree that you shouldn't have to expect you'll be randomly grabbed off the streets and tortured, it's important for punishments to be administered in response to crimes and not at random. But I think you should actually enforce your laws, with a punishment serious enough that people don't think it's a fine chance to take, or you practically don't even have that law."

"I mean, we execute murderers! And - I think being caught pickpocketing and dragged off to gaol is scary, and pretty miserable to be there for a day, enough that - I think it makes people not want to risk it happening again? And, I mean, someone who was desperate enough to feed their family might risk torture too, I - think I would, if it were me." Shrug. "And it seems like you're scared to cross Leareth even though he's not in favour of torturing you for breaking the rules." 

"I don't think I am very scared of him or I wouldn't have tried the pretend escape. I'm disinclined to because it won't work but it's hard to get your law enforcement to the level of guaranteed to fail that Leareth can manage for one specific valuable prisoner. 

I don't really see why - gaol being scary and miserable is fine but if they actually whip the prisoner then that's suddenly out of line."