Someone has clearly attempted to make this room seem welcoming, but "welcoming windowless room" is a bit of a constraint. Still, it has ample light from a Continual Flame, walls painted in light colors, and a reasonably comfortable chair. Down the middle of the room is a folding room divider, with images of the Summerlands painted onto it (though without the religious context, it might just look like a particularly idealized field). There's a small gap under the divider, but not enough to see more than the Select's feet.

"Good afternoon," says someone from the other side of the divider. "I am Select Lelia Lepori. Please make yourself comfortable."

"Uh.  I've never done this before.  I just escaped from Cheliax..."

"That's alright," she says in a reassuring tone. "I'm glad you came to us for guidance." Pause. "There isn't one single right or wrong way to do spiritual counseling, so you don't need to worry that you're going to make a mistake. Some people are looking for guidance about what sorts of things are Good and Evil, or true information about the gods and the afterlives. Some people want advice on how to make up for the Evil deeds they've done in the past, or how to resist the temptation to fall back into Evil habits, or how to determine the right thing to do in the future. Some people might have found themselves in situations where figuring out the right thing was particularly difficult, and want to talk through the situation. All of those are reasonable to want. I expect I will be better at giving you advice if you're honest with me — I'm sworn not to willingly repeat what you discuss with me without your permission — but if there are matters you aren't ready to discuss yet, you won't be in trouble, it just means that my advice might be worse. If you want to take a break at any point, or to leave, that's also allowed."

Her reassuring tone helps him to speak smoothly.

"That all sounds helpful.  I'll admit my single strongest motivation is to avoid an eternity of suffering... last I checked I was Chaotic Evil.  I would find it helpful to have concrete goals to aim for, even if that's not exactly how alignment or judgement works.  So, ]things to do to make up for specific Evils, things to avoid- uh-" he stammers a moment "- I think the specific Evils I did that got me to read Evil were a product of circumstances in Cheliax, but I guess your expert opinion on how likely that is to be true, and if not what extra steps I should take to avoid repeating them would be helpful.  I do have a few specific questions about if certain things count as Good or Evil.  And some questions about ways to contribute money to causes and how much Good that will count for."

He's aware he's kind of rambling a bit, he'll try to focus down... "I would like a specific targetable plan of avoid some things, rearrange some habits of thought, and donate so much money here or there, in order to hit Chaotic Neutral within some specific number of years and Chaotic or Neutral Good in another number of years.  I'm aware that's not quite how things work but, uh, as long as that strategy isn't unrecommended it would give me something to aim for."

He almost stops to let the Select speak, but he wants to make sure he covers everything, so he adds one more thing.  "I am definitely willing to accurately explain what I've done if that would be helpful for figuring out how to make Good faster or exactly how much Evil I have to make up for."

"Those all seem reasonable to me — as you note, it isn't always possible to exactly quantify how Evil a specific Evil deed is, but we can definitely come up with a plan along those lines, probably with some margin for error. If you're strong enough to detect that makes things a bit easier, as it should be easy to determine when you've hit Neutral. —Our understanding is that detectable alignment does not necessarily correspond to afterlife destination, and in particular that an Evildoer who sincerely seeks to atone for their Evil deeds may find that their alignment aura lingers past the point when they would be damned to an Evil afterlife, but of course it's safer not to take that risk. Do you want to start by talking through what you've done, or was there anything else you wanted to discuss first?"

"As a general thing, uh, citations of research and books that in turn explain their methods and evidence in detail will be helpful to me.  Like the example I was most impressed by that I heard of recently was the Osirion project with scrying dead people."

"Is there a preferred order?  Should I go in chronological order forward or backwards or start with the things I feel most guilty about or least guilty about?  How much contextual detail do you want or need?"

He thinks a moment.

"Oh, and do you already know about the most common Chelish things everyone in Cheliax does, like, uh, I guess whipping each other in school probably counts for a little bit of Evil?  But I probably would have forgotten to mention it if I was listing thing about myself in particular."

"Chronological order would most likely be easiest to keep track of. If there is context relevant to understanding your actions, or that substantially changes your actions, please provide it, but you don't have to give every detail that could possibly be relevant — if I have questions, I can ask them. I am familiar with the sorts of Evils that Cheliax demands of its subjects, but there's enough regional variation that it would still be helpful to mention them if possible, in case some of the things you were doing were less common than you expect. However, it's normal for people to have imperfect memories, or to be unsure which conduct was actually Evil; forgetting about genuinely minor incidents is unlikely to make a significant difference." Pause. "If you've engaged in the same action many times without substantial differences, you don't need to describe each incident separately, but it would be helpful to provide an estimate of how many times it occurred."

"Well I guess I'll start shortly after I had gotten expelled from the wizard school.  Even just one year of schooling the load you down with a lot of debt and I was thinking about how I was going to deal with it long term.  I struggled with you know, laundry wizardry and scrivening and such for a bit the first year after, during which time I fixed the flaws in my scaffold enough to be more consistent to get first circle spells regularly.  There are so many wizards, the price in cities and bigger towns for spells get driven down, so I figured I would do a circuit selling spells in little villages too small to have a wizard.  I scrimped up what money I could and promised more bribes and managed to get a travel pass to do such a circuit.  Except I still wasn't making that much money, people out in the back country don't have much cash or coin.  The debt was growing over time, the schools occasionally you know, like have people far enough behind on their debt indentured to make examples out of them to the rest of the people that owe them money.  One of the spells I had, infernal healing, if someone's seriously injured enough they would be obviously willing to pay a lot of money for it, except most of the peasants didn't have that much money in the first place.  So I came up with a debt scheme of my own.  I found a Mammonite willing to help write a contract for a reasonable sum up front, and then I kept up my circuit, but kept an eye out for people really desperate for healing.  I had managed five such contracts before I found, uh some other stuff I'm going to need to explain."

He's still leaving too much out.

"I had a pretty straightforward penalty clause for selling my debtors into indentured servitude if they fell too far behind on payments.  I used, or uh, tried to use that term on three of the five, uh, one had disappeared entirely, and one, uh, I don't think they actually got indentured but something else happened that was probably bad for them, and uh, one was straightforwardly indentured into a bad indenture."

He waits to see if the Select is going to ask for any more detail, then remembers one more detail.

"Oh, and there was one person that probably came close to dying because they wouldn't sign the debt contract or let any of their family sign it for them (even for a tenth the usual rate I charged) so I refused to heal them.  Uh, I think they lived?  I'm not sure how much Evil that counts for."

"That was overall, like a five year period of my life?  I guess six if I'm counting the year of laundry wizardry and scrivening."

"What sort of bad indenture? And when you say 'something else happened that was probably bad for them', could you be more specific?"

“For the bad indenture, I think the person I sold her to probably wanted her for prostitution although the bothered having a pretense otherwise?  I think it was for twenty years, except there are plenty of ways to make an indenture last longer.  Time injured doesn’t count.  Time pregnant doesn’t count.  People holding indentures have various ways of charging their indentured extra money that can turn into extra time.  Indenture contracts can occasionally have terms somewhat moderating what can be done to the indentured and the contract I sold had none.  And she had a baby I’m not sure she would have been able to take care of while indentured.” 

“And the contract where I think something else happened… the person I sold to was a priest of Baphomet, who recruited me into his cult, and I think they resold the would-be indenture to another branch of the cult that leveraged that man into some scheme or involvement with the cult, but I’m not sure because the cult used a cell organization and compartmentalized information and I kind of wanted to leave that previous part of my life behind me so I never tried to find out.”

He’s expecting to hear some disgust or at least a bit of judgement in the Select’s voice.

"Can you tell me more about how you became involved with the cult of Baphomet? Were you aware at the time that it was a cult of Baphomet?"

(She doesn't sound disgusted, or even necessarily judgmental; she sounds a bit confused, a bit surprised, a bit concerned.)

"Right, so the my third time looking to sell one of my debt-contractors out to someone that would indenture them, I met this man I thought was a priest of Asmodeus at the time, he went by the name Gery.  He presented himself as a traveling adventurer-priest.  He bought the debt contractor for a higher price than I had expected to get, and then got me involved in this scheme.  It basically amounted to robbing some guards, you know the sort that check travel passes.  I didn't like these particular guards for extracting bigger bribes than was normal.  Gery swore his scheme was legal, and in fact would serve his God in showing those Guards their proper place, and the I would be rewarded for helping and wouldn't get in trouble, and after apparently thinking over my wording carefully, repeated his oath with my suggestions on the wording just to reassure me.  We pulled it off.  Afterwards, he revealed the truth, that he was a priest of Baphomet, and he wanted to test my skill, and he was impressed by it.  He offered to let me go my own way, even described exactly how I could be sure to get away cleanly, but also offered that we could accomplish a lot together in tearing down Asmodeus.  He said he liked my cleverness with my debt-contracts, but I should be using my cleverness against Asmodeus instead of for him.  He had this grand speech about how we could pay back Asmodeus's technical truths and subtle deceptions with blatant lies, tear up his contracts, twist his hierarchy against itself, tear down his order, pay his cruelty back sevenfold-"

He cuts himself off.  He was getting too excited describing it.  Recalling that speech still kind of brings a smile to his face, even after hearing Gery repeat the speech dozens of times more over the years and realizing the nature of the flatteries employed he can't bring himself to hate Gery.

"I figured I was already in, and it couldn't be an Asmodean loyalty test with all the oaths involved saying otherwise, and I actually liked what he had to say about tearing down Asmodeus.  Gery had a few men waiting as back up, and we murdered those guards just because we could, and uh, I was a cultist of Baphomet for the next seven and a half- I guess closer to 8 years- of my life, up until around a week ago."

He pauses for questions.

(Someone is importing Baphomet cultists into Andoran?? —not the point right now.)

"The impulse to resist Asmodeus is a Good one, but it sounds as if Baphomet's servants directed it towards grave Evils." Pause. "Can you tell me more about the murder. You say you — did it because you could? Did it occur to you that it might be wrong, or that you could refuse?"

"I mean, I assume if I did refuse, my own life might be in danger, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.  Uh... at the time I was really glad to kill those guards because they liked to be extra assholish on top of the normal bribery and thuggery guards get up to in Cheliax.  I did not consider the alignment of it at the time.  Looking back on it with my perspective now... I assume killing people for being assholes is Evil, but killing them for being servants of Asmodeus serving his tyranny would come up Neutral at worst, maybe Good if it was Eagle Knights doing it in the process of freeing some slaves or something like that?  I know in Andoran I can just report servants of Asmodeus to the Law, but I would assume doing that instead of vigilante action is more of a Law vs Chaos thing than strictly Good or Evil?"

"Killing people for 'being assholes' is nearly always Evil. I — there is a simple version of what I am about to say, which is adequate for most people in their daily lives, and a more complex version, which I will explain as best as I can, but where I may miss some nuances applicable to particular cases. 

The simple version is that killing people is nearly always Evil, and people in their ordinary lives should not kill other people except in defense of themself or others, and that if they are in a situation where their ordinary life requires them to kill others, such as if they are a soldier fighting in a war or a magistrate who sometimes orders executions, they should seek out spiritual counsel who can give advice better-suited to their situation. 'Don't kill others except to defend yourself or other people' is a good rule for most people to follow, even if it's not the best possible rule, because people often overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of killing others, or imagine that it is justified when it is not, and also because it is much safer to err in the direction of not killing someone when it would have been Good than to err in the direction of killing someone when it is Evil.

The more complicated version is — killing people is always a serious harm, one that it is better to avoid when at all possible. Sometimes it is not possible, or can only be avoided at costs that are far too great to pay, but even in those cases it would be better to avoid it, if all else were equal. People sometimes imagine that murder is always Good, or at least Neutral, if their enemies are Evil, if the wrongs their enemies have done are sufficiently great, but this is not necessarily true, and is particularly unlikely to be true in cases where significant Good was not achieved thereby. The Church of Iomedae teaches that the difference between vigilante murder and execution for a crime is more than just a difference of Law and Chaos, and that vigilante murder bears many additional harms — among other reasons, it often puts even those who have done nothing to provoke the vigilante at fear of their life, and often leads to return killings in kind." Lelia feels like that's a sort of inadequate explanation of why vigilante murder is generally bad, but this is the sort of thing that's pretty hard to explain to Chaotic people.

"This is a complicated topic, so I would like to give a few examples, in the hopes that they will be clearer than philosophy, if that's alright with you. I will try, when I can, to give my sources, as you requested, but in some cases I will be working from stories I remember hearing; you have my apologies."

Pause, in case her explanation was sufficiently confusing that he has questions before she even provides examples.

"That... mostly makes sense?"  Good is annoyingly narrow, as both Asmodeus's and Baphomet's teaching describe, so it's not that much of a surprise.  He takes a moment to process... he actually had kind of gotten his hopes up from Justice and her group that maybe Good wasn't as annoyingly narrow as he had thought.  He still wants Good, it means other people will be narrowly constrained from hurting himself when he gets to an afterlife.

"I was planning on trying to work off the Evil by selling spells and donating for however long it took as opposed to vigilante action or joining the Eagle Knights or anything like that... but like, uh... if war broke out between Andoran and Cheliax tomorrow it would be important for me to know to minimize killing even of Evil people in active service to Asmodeus."

Now that he's thinking of it he's kind of worried he slightly dented Justice's and her group's alignment by having them help kill the leader.  Judging by some of Justice's comments, she's willing to take some serious risks to her afterlife, but if anything that makes him want to avoid dragging her (or her team) down even more.  Can he donate some on their behalf?  He can ask about that after he hears her the examples.

"Examples sound helpful.  And it's fine if not all of them have sources as long as you think they are illustrative of other things you are confident in the sources of."

"To be clear, I do expect that defending Andoran against a Chelish invasion is one of the situations in which killing others would be most justifiable. In terms of other examples...

When Andoran rebelled, this of course involved quite a lot of killing. There was a clear Good objective, the liberation of Andoran from Infernal rule, which could not have been achieved without killing people, and which achieved significantly more Good than the harm it caused; participating in Andoran's revolution was typically Good. Paladins fall if they willfully do Evil, but the Good gods chose many paladins during the revolution, and in Andoran few of them fell. I am aware of one case of a paladin of Iomedae who Fell after killing a priest of Asmodeus who had surrendered, and another instance, after the revolution, of a cleric of Milani being renounced by his goddess after engaging in vigilante murder of repentant former Asmodeans. —Clerics are held to a more lenient standard, but they do need to stay within a single step of their deity's alignment, and can be renounced for acting against their deity's goals even if they maintain their alignment.

In Galt, many more paladins fell, and many more clerics were renounced by their gods. I believe that the majority of those were during the aftermath of the revolution, but I have also heard of multiple cases in which entire farming villages were massacred in areas that had remained loyal to Cheliax, sometimes with the 'justification' that everyone there was in service to Asmodeus. Most of my information there is via secondhand accounts, which may have been exaggerated in some cases. I have never heard of anyone empowered by the Good gods knowingly participating in a massacre of an entire village and remaining empowered.

Although this is not the primary focus of the Osirion scrying project, its researchers did take the opportunity to verify whether people of various occupations were always Evil, as had sometimes been posited, along with those who had been convicted of various crimes. They did eventually find a non-Evil person who had been executed for murder, but while I don't remember the exact numbers, it took many more attempts than their efforts to find a non-Evil magistrate, soldier, or adventurer. Their reports are public, though I don't remember the specific year.

According to The Trials of the Third Crusade In Retrospect, by Ser Alard of Kenabres, one paladin attempted to eliminate demon cultists from Kenabres by executing every Mendevian with an Evil aura on sight without a trial, and Fell for it. 

You mentioned the Eagle Knights; my understanding is that Eagle Knights who detect as Good typically are typically achieving significant amounts of Good, often through the liberation of slaves, and putting in some degree of effort to reduce casualties, and enforcing behavioral standards to some degree within a cohort, but I could be wrong about the details of their operations. Not all Eagle Knights, even powerful ones, detect as Good. Some self-professed Eagle Knights operate in a way nearly indistinguishable from ordinary pirates, save for their opposition to slavery, and my understanding is that those ones typically detect as Evil; Councilor Marinella Montenogor discussed a particularly atrocious case in her recent speech to the People's Council, and her staff published a transcript."

Pause. When she next speaks, her tone is a little gentler.

"Your case seems likely to have been — particularly difficult to navigate. Chelish resistance is sometimes an exception to principles that would normally be straightforward, as many extremely grave Evils that would ordinarily be handled by the law, such as empowered priests of Asmodeus attempting to damn as many people as possible, are entirely legal and in fact encouraged. Speaking speculatively, with the understanding that I may be wrong in either direction, I would expect that extrajudicial killing of empowered priests of Asmodeus necessary to prevent them from carrying out grave Evils would generally not be Evil in itself, that extrajudicial killing of other agents of the Chelish state to achieve a Good goal that could not be achieved without their deaths might or might not be Evil depending on the situation, and that extrajudicial killing of ordinary people solely for being in Cheliax's employ would be Evil. It also seems likely that a cult of Baphomet would attempt to manipulate its members into engaging in more Evil than actually necessary, with the goal of seeing them damned to the Abyss."

He jots down the names of sources she cites.

It make sense Asmodeus would rig things so that even fighting him screwed over your afterlife.  He hasn't entirely turned off his skepticism so he notes 'defending Andoran against a Chelish invasion is one of the situations in which killing others would be most justifiable' as, well, very convenient.  He doesn't even think she's lying, just letting her obvious loyalty bend her reasoning a bit.  He doesn't mind too much, if anything it makes her seem more human.

"Those examples are all helpful.  I've been rethinking a lot about Baphomet's cult in the past few days... it would make sense they would do the opposite of trying to mitigate the casualties or harms or whatever, since the leadership wanted us all counting on Baphomet to reward us and protect us from the rest of the Abyss... uh, to be clear I always had my doubts about how reliably Baphomet would or even could deliver on that... I just didn't act on them until recently."

"So it's not relevant to my past so much, and I've gotten a good impression of Andoran's justice in the past few days -"  And if Andoran's justice ever failed he knows an Avenger he trusts to step in. "- so it probably won't come up, but I do have some more questions on the dividing line on self defense and defense of others in making killing non-evil."

"Of course, I'd be happy to answer them."

"Well I guess uh... assuming it's your only option or near enough to it... I inferred killing someone to stop them from killing someone else is at least neutral... What about killing someone to stop a rape?  To stop them from destroying or robbing someone's livelihood?  To stop a maiming?  What about non-livelihood levels of asset robbery or destruction?  Is it better if you're doing it on behalf of someone than if you're doing it to protect yourself?  I assume there are lots of circumstances and such, but uh, generally?"

He knows Good people are supposed to get worked up about rape.  And it seems like taking someone's livelihood is a round about way of killing them.

"Killing someone who is actively attempting to carry out a rape or a robbery or a maiming is generally Good or Neutral, if you don't have a non-lethal way to stop them, although if you can stop them without resorting to lethal force that's preferable — many would-be robbers will give up the attempt without you needing to actually kill them. Extrajudicially killing someone because you expect they might at some point in the future do one of those things is generally Evil, though of course it depends in part on the circumstances — for example, it would be gravely Evil to attack someone unprovoked because they looked shifty and you thought that they might be a robber, but it is not Evil for adventurers to take a commission to arrest a group of bandits, even if they ultimately can't avoid killing some of them before handing them over to the law. If someone is actively in the process of robbing another person, you don't have to assess the exact amount of wealth that they are likely to steal before intervening. The guideline I've heard is that defending yourself is Neutral and defending others is Good, but the line between those is not always straightforward."

"That all makes sense."  It's not actually that awkwardly narrow, it seems workable as rules to live by.

"Uh, would you like me to continue chronologically?  ...it is 8 years of activity with the cult. I can try to pick out illustrative examples and summarize if you want to get an overview first?"

"Yes, please continue. If you'd rather summarize first, that's perfectly fine."

"So uh, opportunistic murders by that cult cell were about... two or three a year?  Not any more because we were thinking about avoiding leaving a pattern or evidence or anything.  They were often of Chosen in small villages or circuits, but also as we got the chance to kill with minimal risk... we killed guards, soldiers, nobility, and minor adventurers.  More targeted murders, like a particular noble that was trying to hunt down bandits (which we tried to resemble in our patterns so they would underestimate us), would be about, once a year?  Minor complicated schemes, like uh, leaving a few minor false indicators of undead or fae or Druids to confound people, or uh, minor opportunistic frame jobs, were multiple times a year, maybe most of those aren't even Evil?  We can talk about it.  Complicated schemes of varying effects were about once a year or so?  A complicated scheme, uh, to give a more successful example... leaving goat themed calling cards and iconography in a barony in a way that got the baron to order every goat in his land slaughtered and burned.  That uh, discredited him to his neighbors and the Church so we could operate in his land with less obstacles and risk of him successfully calling in aid.  But also maybe the goat herders that affected were hurt, so maybe that comes up Evil?  And uh, I wasn't personally doing all this, I was often the spotter or front-man, like pretending to be a laundry wizard and collecting information.  But I knew what they were doing and definitely meant to help with all of it in what I did."

"I guess that's the very loose summary.  Uh, there is stuff I'm assuming was non-Evil, but maybe we should talk about.  Gery got a second circle to tutor me and I improved in wizardry.  Gery tried to educate himself and us, so we would read all sorts of things: banned contraband books we obtained from Inquisitors or Chosen we robbed, the books village clergy had, the books nobility had on them when we robbed them, books he got from a secret source I assumed was just Gery stashing when we robbed people but in hindsight was maybe the central cell of the cult passing out reading materials.  Uh, other context... I felt a lot friendlier with the cult members than I had with anyone else in my entire life, but I think maybe I had low standards for that, the group of Andoran adventurers I decided to escape with, uh, seeing their friendship and cooperation was kind of a decisive factor in my choice..."

He's stuttering again and kind of mumbled the very last part, but it was still understandable.

"It is not Evil to feel friendship for someone who is carrying out grave Evils. It is — an impulse towards the Good, to care about another person and want to do right by them, though of course in practice it can be fraught to maintain a friendship with someone who would use you for Evil ends. "

Long pause.

"As for the other matters, I expect that at least some of the murders were Evil. Without knowing more about the circumstances, I'm not sure how many of them were Evil, but in your place I would err on the side of assuming they will weigh against you in cases where you are uncertain — there is very little to be lost by doing more Good than you need to, and even a single murder can easily damn the perpetrator. Attempting to imitate or resemble bandits might be Evil, if you imitated them with robbery, rape, or similar crimes, but I would not expect it to be more Evil to adjust the timing of crimes you were already planning to commit in order to more closely resemble bandits. Attempting to trick the Asmodean government by pretending that there were strange creatures in the area is most likely Neutral or Good in itself, though it could be Evil if you did so by committing Evils emblematic of those creatures. I would normally expect framing other people for crimes to be Evil, as you're causing serious harm to your targets, but I'm happy to discuss specific scenarios if there are some that you think may not have been. It... is possible that the goat iconography was slightly Evil, but I think I would expect most of the weight to fall on that baron's shoulders. 

Learning wizardry is not generally Evil, though wizarding education in Cheliax often involves Evils, such as practicing damaging spells on slaves or prisoners, and if your cult imitated those Evils then it may have been Evil. Reading books that are banned by the Asmodean government is not Evil in itself, though it could be Evil to ... knowingly read a cursed book that inflicts a compulsion towards murder on the readers, or anything along those lines? It is a matter of ongoing debate in what circumstances it is Evil to read a book that is banned because it instructs the reader in how to carry out Evils, and I don't know the matter to have been put to a Commune, but paladins who are given dispensation to read banned books on Evil rituals so that they can learn how to counteract those rituals do not Fall simply for learning about the rituals, and I would expect the dispensation to be a matter of Law rather than a matter of Good. —To be clear, I don't expect it to have been Evil for you to read contraband books.

Insofar as you were assisting with Evils rather than carrying them out yourself, I would expect that to be a mitigating factor, though not to wholly negate the Evil."