“How good are Andoran ships about keeping a spare priest?  The goblet can create a few gallons of water a day, but I think that would usually be redundant with even a novice empowered priest.”

"Any pirates that're worth working with are definitely going to have enough priests. I think some of the, uh, worse ones have a harder time finding priests who'll work with them, but that's not the sort of people we'd be setting you up with anyways." And even the pretty bad sort can usually find some sort of priest, just not the kind that channels positive.

"You'll definitely want one of the cloaks — they're useful for almost any kind of adventuring, and piracy isn't an exception. I'd normally recommend strength over constitution for your belt but for ship-to-ship combat you might want the opposite, so it's harder for them to pick you off with arrows before you can even get a hit in. I'm less sure of that, though — what do people usually wear at sea?"

"Last time I was on a boat mission I think I saw the most of the one that's like a weaker Cat's Grace? But people say it doesn't work right with the sorts of armor you'd probably be wearing. The, uh, bar thingy is probably more useful for people doing things on land, boats can carry a lot more."

Nod. "And then the Wisdom headbands wouldn't be useless for you, but once we're back home you'd probably want to trade them for something that's more directly applicable — I think most of the rest of them are like that. —And if you want to carry a suicide method and you're sure you can be careful with it, the paper of Explosive Runes is better than nothing."

He nods along, their advice sounds sensible.

“Cloaks like that are a really common choice of gear from what I’ve seen.  More resistance against hostile spells is always good.”

“I thought suicide was always Evil?  Or is that Asmodean propaganda?”

Oh wait, maybe they just take the hit to alignment in order to avoid malediction?  Better Axis or Maelstrom than Hell even if they would prefer a Good afterlife.

"The full answer's a little complicated but the shorter answer is, it's usually Evil but it's not always Evil. —Uh, and it's not just Asmodean propaganda, lots of places have propaganda about it. I think the Asmodeans might push it even harder, since they really don't want people to think they can just get out of living in Cheliax that way and be fine?

What the Good churches back home say is that — if a man abandons his whole family and they starve, that's Evil, and it doesn't really matter whether he's abandoning them to go adventuring in the River Kingdoms or whether he's abandoning them to be dead, and that lots of people have some sort of responsibility like that, that it wouldn't be okay to completely abandon, especially not without telling anyone beforehand. And that most people who think killing themself will make things better for other people are wrong, and that if you have a reason to think you're different you can talk to a priest and they'll set you straight — that's not exactly how they phrase it, they make it sound like they won't go in with their minds made up. And that even if it wouldn't be Evil for you to commit suicide, you might still have been Evil to start with, and in that case you're better off staying alive and trying to make up for what you've done.

But they don't say it's always Evil no matter what. There's a story in the Acts of Iomedae, the Eighth Act, where there was this undead guy called the Black Prince, and he was definitely Evil, and rather than just killing him right away, she stays up all night talking to him about all the Evil things he'd done. And somehow she convinced him that it was wrong to do those things, and even though he was undead he still felt really guilty about them, and he wanted to repent. Only because he was undead he couldn't just stop, the way a human could — that part's kind of confusing but the Iomedaeans get really mad if people try to leave it out, they're so picky about how people talk about that Act — and so he killed himself so that he could never hurt anyone again. And even though he'd been Evil beforehand he still went to Axis, because his suicide had actually been Good, the same way it would've been Good for an adventurer to kill him.

And — if Cheliax is going to Maledict you, and the only way to stop them is by killing yourself first, then — you're not abandoning anyone who needs you, because you'd be dead anyways. You've got a good reason to think it'll make things better, because they won't be able to get information out of you, and they won't be able to send you to Hell and try to force you into being Asmodeus's slave. But even if Pharasma decided that she'd damn anyone who killed themself, I'd still rather kill myself than get captured by Cheliax, because I don't want them reading my alive friends' names and faces and plans that I know of out of my head, and I don't want my soul to be doing anything useful for Asmodeus, even just being a paving stone, and I'm sure the Abyss'd suck too but I'd take it over that."

"Codwin's family killed themselves during the war. What people say is, after the Battle of Olfden, his wife heard that he had been leading the forces, and they knew that Cheliax would come for them, and so she and her children all killed themselves so that they couldn't be used against him, and went to Heaven for it. People leave a plate out for them on Martyr's Day. I don't know if that's all true, but I think people would know if they were in Hell."

He understands why that story is popular but it's kind of disconcerting to think about the ages of the children involved.

They were talking about splitting the loot, why does this guy keep derailing them with theological discussions!  How to get them back on topic…

“Can I try on one of the headbands while you explain theology stuff?”

“Thanks for the explanation.”

So it’s an option if he’s ever in danger of being maledicted or something.  Good to know, but hopefully unnecessary.

“Two of the headbands are doing weird complicated stuff, I think with nasty side effects?  Maybe cursed or maybe it was just a tradeoff of the design.  The other headband from the bag is just a standard wisdom headband, and then we got a standard wisdom headband off the other person’s body.”

“I’m going for it.”

He reaches for one of the wisdom headbands.

“Try explaining some more theology, something confusing or that people disagree on!”

He’s tried Owl’s Wisdom before without much effect, he really just wants an excuse to play with the loot.

"Any specific requests for topics, or did you want me to just pick something?"

She’s not complaining about him trying out the loot, so that part is a success!

“Hmmm…”

He takes a dramatic pause as he thinks.  He recalls an interesting claim that seems to fits with how these Andorans talk about the Gods.

“So I’ve heard the Good Gods are supposed to all be working together, right?  Well, why haven’t they beaten the Evil Gods if that’s really true?  Or is Asmodeus really that much stronger?”

-and/or Good really is pathetic, and/or Baphomet really that much better at outwitting everyone.  He would have had the sense not to say those parts out loud even without the headband.  Actually… he probably should have sounded less skeptical with the parts he did say out loud!

"Well, that's definitely something people disagree about — uh, before I get into a longer answer, how much do you know about what it, uh, means, for a god to be stronger or less strong?"

“I have no idea!”

“As a general rule, more clerics (and other empowered), higher circle empowered, more empowered raises up through direct divine fiat and not typical adventurer leveling, more outsiders in their service, more miracles?  But that doesn’t account for a God hoarding power within their domain, they would seem weak to mortals even if they theoretically had more power.”

Nod. "So, what the theologian types say is, the difference between a strong god and a weak god isn't exactly how much raw strength they have, all the gods have enough raw strength that they could basically do whatever they wanted if no one was stopping them, it's — they've made some sort of magically binding agreement about how much each god and each plane can do on the Material Plane? And more powerful gods are allowed to do more things before they run out, and less powerful gods aren't allowed to do as many things, and then they... use the leftover power to do things on their own planes, or something like that. And then being allowed to do more things means they can do all the things you mentioned, like empowering more people and doing more miracles and so on. —I think that the way the theologians think it works probably isn't exactly correct, like, if it were exactly correct I don't see how the Worldwound could still exist, but that's the basic idea. Uh, that's not really an answer, it's just important for understanding some of the later parts.

So then — I think there's a bunch of different reasons why the Good gods haven't already managed to win. One of them is that some of the Good gods are less powerful than Asmodeus — Iomedae's church admits it, but people say all the ascended gods are less powerful than the ones that've been around a longer time, so that also includes Cayden and Milani, and lots of the less major gods. But I don't think that can be all of it, like, there's plenty of Good gods that've been around a long time.

My best guess about the biggest reason is — up until a hundred or so years ago, there was still prophecy everywhere, and when there was prophecy it was harder to change things for the better or the worse. It did still happen sometimes, right, but most of the time, the other gods could just see what their enemies were doing and block it. And then Asmodeus murdered Aroden, and prophecy broke, and it got way easier to change things, and — admittedly that's when Asmodeus took over Cheliax, so clearly prophecy wasn't only preventing good changes. But he couldn't keep it, he had an advantage in getting Cheliax because he knew he was going to kill Aroden but it hasn't even been a hundred years and he's already lost most of it. —Outside of Cheliax people disagree about whether Asmodeus killed Aroden but I think he did. Uh, and if you read things that Good people used to write before Aroden died, there's a ton of people who basically just wanted to hold on until the Age of Glory, and then once the Age of Glory happened they thought they'd fix everything then, and they just... put off actually fixing things until it happened, and then it didn't.

But I do think, if you look at everything that happened after Asmodeus took over Cheliax... Good's winning more slowly than I'd like, but it's still winning.

So then there's also — Good's a lot better at working together than Evil, but definitely not perfect at it. Uh, I'm definitely biased here, but I think this is... mostly an issue with Lawful Good. Like, I've got friends who are Neutral Good, we can work together no problem. Lawful Good people mostly... want everyone else to be Lawful Good... and sometimes they'll straight-up refuse to work with people who aren't Lawful enough — I think that's a bigger problem for me, since I'm a Calistrian, but you hear about them refusing to work with, like, totally normal Caydenites too, and even when they do work with people who aren't Lawful they want them to follow all their Lawful rules. The worst ones'll go out of their way to stop people from doing Good things Chaotically, even when they agree that the things are Good. And even when they get a bunch of Lawful Good people together to do Lawful Good things, the Lawfulness still gets in the way. Like, they'll swear an oath, and the oath'll turn out to force them to do something dumb, and they'll be like 'I guess I don't have a choice,' or Lastwall'll do the same thing but with treaties — that's part of how Asmodeus was able to take over Cheliax, actually, Lastwall signed a treaty that said they wouldn't interfere in the civil war, back when no one thought the Asmodeans might win, and then the Asmodeans started winning, and — most of the people they'd signed the treaty for were dead already, one of them went up to Vigil to tell them the treaty'd been a mistake and beg them to reconsider, and they still insisted that they couldn't possibly break it, even though it's — not complicated, it's the sort of example you'd use to explain to a child why you shouldn't just blindly keep promises no matter what. 

Uh, and then smaller things — depending on how much the group you were with told you about, you might be wrong about how much the Good gods have managed to do. Like, there used to be a different archdevil in charge of Avernus, Typhon, but he got killed by Ragathiel a little under a thousand years back, that's illegal to talk about in Cheliax. There was this really strong demon lord that used to go around possessing Good adventurers right after they died, she got ganged up on by Desna and Calistria and they killed her, that one's not technically illegal to talk about here but people'd be suspicious. People say Aroden killed a bunch of demon lords. That sort of thing. Uh, and then also, the sorts of things whole countries can do rather than just individual people are mostly going to be less Good, because monarchs and nobles generally kind of suck as people, there's lots of ways it helps them to hurt other people, so they'll keep slavery legal so they can get rich working their slaves to death, or ban Sarenrae because her priests kept going around telling them to repent, or that sort of thing.

And then, reasons people give that I don't agree with — some people say that whenever Good wins, it means the Good gods do a little less here and a little more on other worlds that are having bigger problems, and probably Good's actually doing way better than it used to be and we just can't tell. That one might be true but people could just as easily make the same argument the other way around. Other people say that there's so many demon lords that the forces of Good are just stuck spending all their time fighting demon lords, except there's also a lot of minor Good gods too, and the arguments I've heard for there being more demon lords are mostly pretty bad. Even outside Cheliax, some people say that the natural way most people are is Evil, and the Good gods have to work really hard just to make people be Good — that one I'm pretty sure isn't true, the people who've tried to check at all say their best guess is that the different types of Neutral are most common, and whether Good or Evil's more common depends on the country. Iomedaeans sometimes say the problem is that the other Good gods don't care about what's really important, and that if everyone were just an Iomedaean probably it'd be easy to defeat the Evil gods. That would be more convincing if Iomedaeans were doing any of the actual important work in fighting the Evil gods — that's not fair. Any of the actual important work besides fighting at the Worldwound. ...And she did pick some people during the revolution in Andoran, just not as many as some of the other gods.

Uh, I definitely missed some things." She glances around at her party members.

"It does seem relevant that changes in the balance of power among the Outer Planes themselves are potentially highly relevant, and we know very little about them. I've heard it asserted that Nirvana is significantly better at achieving victories in trials than they were even a few centuries ago, but I have no way of verifying this. I think it will most likely be very difficult to ultimately defeat Hell itself, far more difficult than simply defeating Cheliax; it is generally agreed that the gods are far more powerful within their own domains, hence why outsiders are not constantly falling victim to assaults on other planes."

"Obviously you do also hear people say that Evil has an advantage because they're willing to do Evil things. I think that's less true than people think, many Evil deeds aren't actually particularly helpful for anything but serving the Evil gods, but I don't think it's always false. There are advantages that go both ways, it isn't helpful to pretend that all of them favor Good."

"Things have gotten a lot better for halflings the past hundred years. When Aroden died slavery was legal everywhere I know of but Lastwall."

The headband isn't that much of a help in following everything, but he does realize a few important things about himself.  He wants to be on the winning side, but if all creation is in some kind of eternal stalemate, or at least a very drawn out struggle in which it's hard to pick a clear winner, then he wants to be on the side that will make him comfortable.  Hell is eternal slavery, the Abyss is probably some kind of eternal battle (which would be exciting in small doses but not as an eternal existence), Elysium is probably actually entertaining or at least relaxing, at least based off Desna (dreams) and Cayden (alcohol).  He should ask about Elysium more.  Also, the thought isn't quite articulated, but he is vaguely aware he should at some point figure out how to actually get into Elysium (as opposed to just repeating what he thinks they want to hear).

He nods along at what seem like the right moments.

"You know, one of Baphomet's clerics I knew liked to boast how Baphomet could ignore all the divine treaties and that gave him a massive advantage, but if all the proper Gods are actually holding back a lot while Baphomet and the other demon lords are putting out everything they have, then that's actually kind of pathetic on the Demon Lords' part since it means their maximum output of clerics is comparatively even weaker than it appears at first glance."

He thinks another moment.

"You know, I had kind of assumed Iomedae was one of the more effective Good Gods because there is a Hell Knight order that kind of venerates her and some of the comments by Baphomet cultists implied she was a more serious threat than other Good Gods... but if actually she is extremely focused on the Worldwound maybe that explains both of those observations?"

He still kind of likes Iomedae from a single comment made earlier about her priests recommending donating money (which would be a convenient way for him to get clear of the Abyss), but maybe she just wants all the money for the endless battle at the Worldwound?

"My guess is that Baphomet's priests were just lying about whether he has to follow the same rules as the other gods, if any god could just break them I think the Chaotic ones all would, but I don't know for sure, you'd want to ask an actual theologian.

Uh, and she doesn't just fight at the Worldwound, but it's definitely one of the biggest things she's focused on. It makes sense that Baphomet's most worried about Iomedae of all the Good gods, there's not an obvious Good god that'd be doing more to fight Baphomet, but if I had to guess Asmodeus'd be most worried about... Milani, probably? She doesn't have as many priests as some gods, but her followers are really dedicated to fighting him. I, uh, am pretty confused about what those Hellknights think they're doing, but I don't think Asmodeus would allow them to partially follow Iomedae if he thought she were his biggest threat, that'd just be giving her extra help for no reason. ...Uh, just to be clear, I'm not saying the Church of Iomedae is useless or anything, it does some good work, it's just that it's all the sort of work you can do by getting a bunch of Lawful people who'd never dream of doing anything Chaotic together, and that's pretty narrow."

Probably they'd be less frustrating if they stopped trying to pretend like they were always doing whatever was most important when they willingly handed Cheliax over to Hell. Or if fewer of them were Lastfolk, the Iomedaeans who were born in Andoran are mostly fine.