Then Justice can show him the way through the city (Temple of Shelyn-slash-performing arts hall! Stand selling political satires! Children begging on a corner! Sarenrite street-preacher denouncing the evils of drinking to severe excess! Food stalls!) and to her flat. (Shakti splits off to find the others and see about getting their magic items appraised.)

Justice's flat is on the second floor of a four-story building. Apart from the ceiling, which is painted to look like the night sky (as seen in Augustana on Liberty Day), it doesn't look very lived-in. Justice reconfigures the chairs and offers one to Fernando.

"Alright, what did you want to talk about?"

Andoran continues to be nicer and freer than Cheliax... although to be way too fair to Cheliax, he spent most his time cutting across woods in backcountry and not major cities.

"So I just had a lot of different ideas at spiritual counseling.  Uh, I've got a meeting with someone from Iomedae's Church later this week to make a report documenting everything I can remember about Baphomet's Cult in Cheliax and about Cheliax's response times to them and stuff like that.  Would the Eagle Knights like a copy do you think?"

He'll start with one of his more harmless ideas.

"—Yes, that could be really helpful!"

She hesitates for a moment. "...do you think it'd help if we could get in contact with them? Or are they mostly too, uh, focused on Baphomet for that to be a good idea."

"Uh, so it was a cell organization, you know, within each cell everyone knows each other, but the contact between cells was really carefully managed, you know dead drops and secret messages and such.  We apparently killed the leader of the central cell that had the most cross cell contact... anyway it could really be either way you know?  I wouldn't be surprised if there was a cell really focused on fighting Asmodeus that would be tolerable to work with?  I mean, assuming you understand the fact they will torture Asmodean priests and nobles and I'm not sure how trustworthy they would be with any agreements otherwise.  And I wouldn't be surprised if some, maybe most cells were basically bandits with delusion of grandeur and a Baphomet theme, especially without any central leadership directing them at meaningful targets."

He thinks for a moment.

"I think for the next week or so I'll be spending some of my slots on cunning and wisdom and trying to work back through years of memories for any hints at what other cells would be like and how to covertly contact them or conversely how to avoid them.  And there were there other people we worked with, like some Druids that wanted to drive everyone away from the forests and would work with us.  Actually, that is a good sign for some of the cells being amiable to cooperation.  Like I don't think we betrayed the Druids or they betrayed us, but we mostly worked at arms length, you know, very minimal exchanges of plans and resources?"

They should really cut it out with the torture, but it's hard to get actually worked up about people torturing Asmodean priests.

"It seems like it won't hurt to try, at least? If it turns out they all totally suck we can just not work with them."

"I don't think any of them are generally vicious and murderous enough to kill you just for trying to contact them?  Maybe if they want revenge for the leader's death and they figure out you're connected to it?  On the other hand, with the whole cell organization, it's not like most cells would personally know the leader, so it would be more a reputation thing than personally motivated revenge...  Like if they wanted to take over in leadership and they figure killing the people that killed the leader would be worth a lot of credibility with other cells or something like that.  Mateo might have a better guess about how other cult members will feel about the leader, since he was actually part of the central cell."

"That makes sense, I can check with him about it. And the things you remember about how Cheliax responded could be useful either way."

Presumably that isn't the only thing he wanted to talk about, though. "What else is on your mind?"

"I... I don't really have a point with this, just an observation... I was surprised how much my councilor recommended paying attention to my feelings?  Like it would make sense a Chaotic Good priest might recommend that, I was surprised Lawful Good also recommends it!  I mean, I'm not complaining, and it made sense the way she explained it, but still, it was surprising."

"—Huh." Mostly Lawful Good and Neutral Good types don't tell her to pay more attention to her feelings, but she's pretty sure that's because a lot of them don't like her feelings and think she should have different ones. "—like, what sort of feelings?"

"Apparently a lot of feelings I had thought were weakness or squeamishness or being pathetic were actually Good impulses?  Like you know, hesitating on torturing Asmodeans or about carrying out plots that hurt bystanders.  And even some feelings that led me into Evil, like you know, wanting to be friends with the other cult members, aren't bad themselves, it's just bad that it led me to participating in evil with them."

"...do you want a hug?"

"I, I guess it can't hurt to try at least once?"

He sort of awkwardly holds his arms open.

He really hopes this is a normal Good friends thing and not like, well, he thought she wasn't that sort of Calistrian for that sort of thing.

Hug! 

(She does in fact mean it as a friends thing.)

"—You can just have friends now, it's okay, no one here is going to try to make you torture people—"

The hug feels... nice?  Less awkward than he had expected.

"Yeah... uh thanks."

After a moment or two, he figures this is the best moment to get Justice's input.

"I, I had one idea that you might find kind of dumb that the councilor thought was worth considering..."

Probably she won't tell him that actually he needs to be ready to commit violence right after telling him that no one is going to make him torture people.  (He has kind of forgotten his original motive of getting her input as a contrasting opinion.)

Nod. "What were you thinking?"

“I was thinking about making a firm commitment to nonviolence.  Like maybe even an oath, not that most people will would believe I’d be serious because I’m Chaotic, but if I made it I would mean it.”

He can explain more but he will try to gauge her reaction first.

...That's a confusing thing to want to do? Like, she's heard of Shelynite-types doing that sort of thing, but most people aren't like that! Obviously she doesn't think people should make Fernando do violence if he doesn't want to, but — you really wouldn't expect a Shelynite-type to be hanging out with a cult of Baphomet—

"...why?"

(She doesn't sound angry at him. Mostly she sounds surprised and confused.)

Well, confused is better than angry, but worse than encouraging, not that he expected that possibility.

"Uh, well, I want a really clear line that will leave me not even slightly tempted to use violence in even slightly ambiguous cases... I mean ambiguous in the moral sense.  And I want something I can communicate effectively to other people about what I mean."

And he wants to get clear of Evil as quickly and decisively as possible so he doesn't go to the Abyss.  Presumably Justice wouldn't appreciate that motive as much given how she risks malediction to help people.

"—I mean, if you really want to then it's your choice? But — you could also just... not hurt people if you're not sure whether it's okay, rather than deciding that you're never going to ever do anything violent ever again even if it's obviously the right thing to do. If someone else decides that's not good enough for them and they want you to swear off all violence forever that seems like their problem, not yours."

Her objection is totally reasonable, it’s just - 

“I mean I’d rather not hurt anyone ever again if I can help it, but I’m aware that may not be realistically practical or, uh, actually the most Good thing in every situation.”

What if not using violence when it would obviously stop some Evil costs him so much Goodness he misses Elysium, or worse, misses the Maelstrom and ends up in the Abyss?  The real point of a nonviolence oath is to make Good faster and surer, not to satisfy feelings of squeamishness.  

Wait, he’s supposed to listen to his feelings now, so maybe it will work out trusting his feelings on this one, as obviously stupid as they are.

That's such a weird thing to want!! It's not like she doesn't understand that people like that exist, she knows plenty of them, but — on a fundamental level, it's hard for her to really understand how someone who's not an Asmodean could see an Asmodean priest beating his slave for looking insufficiently deferential and not want to hurt him. And it's even weirder for someone like that to end up in a Baphomet cult — probably if you were like that it would really suck to be in one, though, even if you were only a little bit like that when you started?

"If you really don't want to hurt people ever then it probably doesn't hurt to swear that you won't? If something comes up where it'd be really important to use violence you can just... do it anyway. It — I mean, obviously there's some Good things you wouldn't be able to do, like you can't personally fight Asmodeans if you don't want to, uh, fight people, but there's plenty of other types of Good thing you can do? I don't think there's a single most important way to be Good, but even if there was, I don't think it'd be a good idea to... force yourself to go out fighting people if you really hate it."

"I..."

He isn't supposed to just say his feelings are stupid.  He tries to think through his feeling carefully instead.

"I can imagine a lot of situations and people I would want to use violence in during the moment, but what if like, later, I mean, I think the thought that maybe there was some chance that person would repent and try to do Good if I hadn't killed them would be really upsetting afterwards?  And its hard to know in the moment?  Like from the outside someone that is genuinely committed to Evil might look similar to someone that was doubting a lot on the inside and just needs to be given a convincing opportunity to help them turn away from Evil?  I guess if there was some way to know a really awful person was truly committed to Evil and there was no chance of convincing them otherwise I would feel okay using violence on them both before and afterward."

He can tell he is really rambling, but he isn't stuttering, and as he get going he actually speaks smoother and clearer.

And it's — personal, for him, because a week ago he was a Baphomet cultist and now he isn't.

"I don't think there's a way to — know for absolute certain that someone definitely wouldn't ever repent in the future, even if it's really really unlikely. ...If the main thing you're worried about is killing people who might repent, you could swear not to kill anyone, and then if you, like, run into someone doing something really Evil, you'd still feel like you could stop them? —I guess I don't know which of your spells you were counting as violent, maybe it wouldn't make a big difference."

Oh good a magic question, he is good at those!

"Well enchantment has the best nonviolent options but it is one of my weak schools.  Conjuration is my best school and does have a few good non-violent options like web.  I guess I am mentally kind of counting web as nonviolent..."

He thinks a moment.

"Are the guards in Andoran, uh, reliable?  I mean, I know Andoran is overall trying for Good but are they actually keeping the guards noncorrupt and Good enough that if they arrest someone I webbed they wouldn't steal from them unlawfully or beat them to death outside of a just official judgement?"

He figures a priestess of Calistria is the right person to get the real story from.  Thinking of it like that, he can't imagine blatantly corrupt or Evil guards could get away with it long in a country with Eagle Knights and openly active Avengers.

"—They're definitely not perfect. The rules say they're not supposed to steal from criminals apart from, like, taking away their weapons while they're in custody, or rape them, or beat them up once they've been taken in, even if they don't kill them, unless they have to to stop someone from escaping or something. And prisoners get the chance to tell the magistrate at their trial if they were mistreated, or they can also tell the priests who come to the jail to do spiritual counseling, and the Watch keeps really careful records of who's on duty when so it's easy to figure out who did it even if the prisoner doesn't know their name. But sometimes people do report those things, so clearly we're not doing a perfect job of stopping them. Uh, and the rules also say that if a prisoner actually dies the paladins'll do an investigation, so I don't think they're secretly beating people to death and getting away with it. I think everyone who was a big problem is already gone from the Watch by now, people say it used to be a lot worse back when Andoran had just broken free, just, that doesn't stop everything.

I think if you webbed someone it would almost certainly be fine, the biggest complaint I've heard is that if someone runs away or fights back they can be rough about stopping them — like, rough by normal country standards, not rough by Cheliax standards — but if they're already in a web they've already been stopped. Uh, other complaints I've heard personally rather than reading about in the papers — there were a couple blocks in Copperdown that was really dangerous and they spent a couple months just going around it rather than actually dealing with it, and even when everyone follows the rules perfectly it's really common for prisoners to get sick in jail, and one time I heard someone complain that they tried to bribe the Watch to let them go and the Watch took the bribe and then didn't let them go, which, I don't know why you'd admit to that. —They're not allowed to take bribes to let people off, but they're allowed to take bribes and not let people off, it's some kind of Lawful-person way to get people not to bribe them? And sometimes they arrest people who've broken the law even if they didn't actually do anything wrong, but mostly that's not a big problem, that's part of what trials are for."