"What's up with things that could have gods and don't?" wonders a girl. "If gods are made of their things why don't all things turn into gods?"

"I think even the scholars don't know the answer to that - I've never heard it, anyway. We do get new gods sometimes, though, so maybe it's just that that only happens slowly for some reason."

"What things have gods now?" she asks.

"There are hundreds of them; I have a list of the ones I've heard of that I can loan out if you want to read through it. Some of the most powerful ones are Pelor, the god of the sun, communities, and healing; Boccob, the god of magic; the four gods of the other common species - humans don't have one, Pelor acts as ours; Obad-Hai, the god of wild places; Ehlonna, the goddess of nature in cooperation with talkers; Fharlanghn, my god; Olidammara, the god of thieves; Wee Jas, the goddess of the dead; Vecna, the god of secrets; Heironeous, the god of honorable warriors; and Kord, the god of athletes."

"...the sun, communities, and healing is three things. And hummun are a fourth."

"Mmhmm. Most of the powerful gods have more than exactly one thing - Fharlanghn's are travel and freedom, and some people say luck, too - but they'll mostly be known for one of them; Pelor is unusual that way, and because his domains aren't very closely related to each other. Really he's the most unusual of the gods in a lot of ways; he's more or less the leader of them, and takes an interest in a lot of things that aren't as directly involved with his domains as the other gods usually stick to. But gods do have personalities, and that seems to be his."

"It seems bad for thieves to have their own god," someone remarks.

"A lot of talkers think that," he nods. "And not all gods are good to have around - I've mostly left out the nasty ones but there are some of those around. In the case of Olidammara - I do think you're mostly right, but also, sometimes the law is wrong, and it's good to have people around who are willing to go against it in that case."

"What laws do hummun have that are wrong?"

"Well, different people have different ideas about that; every law got to be a law because somebody liked it. One that I think is all right that you might not is that we have to wear clothes, we're not allowed to walk around not wearing anything, most places have laws about that. Another one that's a little less obvious is laws about drugs - some drugs that change how people think and act can be dangerous, but making laws against them doesn't actually make people stop using them, it just makes them do more bad things in order to hide what's going on and makes it so that they can't talk to anyone to get help, so I think that's a bad law - the thieves don't do anything about that, but one of my personal favorite churches does, they have classes and counseling about how to use drugs safely and how to stop using them if you're having trouble, and the thieves' guild helps them sometimes when the law finds out what they're doing and tries to make them stop."

"If people go to your world will we have to wear things?"

"How do thieves help people who don't want to wear things? Do they steal people's clothes so it's not their fault?"

"Most talkers agree with it, and the ones who don't usually have other reasons not to want to spend much time in places with that kind of law; I don't think the thieves do much about it. It shouldn't apply to you, though - it's pretty much only for talkers who are humanoid-shaped, a druid in the shape of an animal or a dragon in her or his natural shape doesn't have to wear anything. Though if the dragon changes shape to look like a human she or he does have to."

"Oh, that's good, I've seen farmer suits and they look so uncomfortable."

"They are! I tried one on once!"

"I think we'll be okay at making clothes for you if you decide you want them, they're not bad when they're done well and we use them for a lot of things, you might decide they're a good idea once you see all of that. But it shouldn't come up at all if you don't."

There are more questions, but they're tapering off.

It's coming up on the end of the period, anyway; he'll keep going until they run out of things to ask but doesn't make a strong attempt to fill the time. And then he gets to do it all over again with another group, now leaning on his staff.

They want to know what the stick is for, and what hummun mean by "honorable" warriors, and what Wee Jas is into - killing folks? So there will be more dead? - and why gods have to make species when species can evolve on their own fine and why hummun donate to churches and what mate-acknowledging ceremonies are like and if hummun babies hatch.

He explains that the stick is for sparring, there was a question about that last class and he can repeat the demonstration if they want; honorable warriors are ones who treat others respectfully and follow the rules about when and how it's appropriate to use their fighting skills (Heironeous's church has whole books about that, but he's never really looked into the details; he's not a fighter - he gives the example of not stealing from people they've scared out of their houses); Wee Jas is in charge of the afterlives, and the rule that talkers can't be resurrected once they've died of old age is hers but she doesn't mind waiting for that; he's not sure, once evolution is explained, that talkers do evolve on their own in his world, but even if they did he'd expect gods to still want to make species with traits that they liked; humans donate to churches because they think the things the churches do are valuable, generally, and sometimes as a way of showing off how much money they have; mate-acknowledging ceremonies are usually big community gatherings where the couple affirms to a cleric that they both want to be mated to each other and exchange doodads that they wear to show that they're spoken for, and then they'll do a few rituals that have symbolic meanings or that are supposed to bring luck - different communities have different ones - and then there's a big feast and dancing and sometimes gifts; humans give - the phrase they use at home is 'live birth' - instead of laying eggs, which is basically the same as laying an egg, at least in the egg-laying species he knows about, except that the pregnancy goes on longer first and there's no eggshell.

"Some animals do that," the students say of live birth. "Even some hexapeds like us - spren do. But we're more related to the aquatic ones which are still TECHNICALLY hexapeds even if they don't actually have legs and those lay eggs."

"The scholars from my world are going to be fascinated when they get here. I think it's too messy to figure out like that at home - it's not just gods that make species, wizards can do it too, and they'll mix and match parts from whatever animals they like. Plus natural magic does strange things sometimes."

"I want to make a wooly flier -"

"I want a swimsnake with pink-fish scales."

"That sounds like the sort of creature they can make, yep. It takes a strong wizard and a long time to make a whole new species, though - smaller changes are easier, if you just want something a little bigger or smaller or with a different color of scales that's more the kind of thing you might be able to have done."

They have ideas in this vein too. Maybe they could turn people different colors or let them fly!

Turning colors, yep! A wizard could probably figure out how to give people wings good enough to fly with but it'd be much easier to just get something for magical flight. Which he recommends at least trying sometime, it's a lot of fun - that's a spell he can cast, actually, though it uses the same tier of spell as making food, so he shouldn't do too much of it - he can do one today though if they can come to an agreement about who should get it.

They try and abjectly fail to agree who should get it.