"I...see? Is it - damaging to people - his mind just looks bizarre right now." 

"That's probably from talking to Her, not from being a paladin. Talking to gods is dangerous to people, but he should recover with rest."

"Why does he keep doing that? Did he want to have an argument with Her before he was convinced to do the paladin thing. - You know, knowing him, that is probably exactly what happened." She looks very exasperated. 

"I think so." Rovira shrugs. "Is he, uh, with his girlfriend now?"

"I was not under the impression she was particularly his girlfriend?" Nayoki scans around with Thoughtsensing. "- No. He is in the infirmary room again - I hope he is not feeling unwell, I should probably have someone check on him -" 

She Mindspeaks one of the Healers and tells them to go make sure Leareth is all right. 

"Well, probably we should talk with him about Lawful Good before they spend more time together, he was worried he didn't know all the rules and I think he might not," says Ignasi. 

"My father says Iomedae says to arrange a resurrection for Carissa," Zahra says while it's topical.

"...I can pass that recommendation on to him. Oh, and Zahra - Leareth delegated to me that I should talk to you about - plans." 

"Sure. Now?"

"Now is good." 

:Leareth?: she adds. :The paladins want you to avoid Carissa until they talk to you about Lawful Good ethical rules, or something? I am not sure exactly what they think you are doing wrong here but it seems worth listening: 

:I will: Leareth is honestly kind of relieved to have an excuse to delay the conversation with Carissa. He's - actually tempted to see if he can get out of it entirely and have Nayoki explain what just happened, but that probably isn't fair. 

- she's probably sitting there wondering, though. 

:You can tell her the Atonement worked: he says to Nayoki. :I will explain the - other thing, later: 

:All right: And - still while leading Zahra to meeting room three which has not been taken over to be a consecrated shrine and is available - she reaches out to Carissa. :Update from Leareth, the Atonement worked. He is tired again though and is resting now: 

- okay. Thank you.

And Nayoki will set up with Zahra and take very detailed notes on Malduoni's planning. 

The enveloping blanket of safety and strength and being among friends makes it so much easier to fall asleep. If Leareth has any dreams, they're pleasant and forgettable. 

He wakes up nearly four candlemarks later, which is much longer than he intended to sleep; maybe he didn't get enough rest last night after all. The headache is mostly gone, though. 

He stands up, stretches, paces the room a bit to wake up fully, and then goes back to the shrine-room to get his briefing on being Lawful Good. 

The paladins are so happy to talk him through everything. Most of it is like the rules for treatment of prisoners: reasonably pragmatic, not that hard to comply with, not the only possible set of such rules but clearly an improvement over not having any rules. They have a book full of example cases where you're supposed to decide if the paladin described acted wrongly. There is a lot of emphasis on how to report having made a mistake or broken a rule, or having noticed someone else doing so. 

There are inter-church treaties on the treatment of noncombatants, on surrender, on use of mind control (in contexts where you'd be using violence, it's permitted; in contexts where violence wouldn't be permitted it typically isn't either) and on envoys and wartime negotiations. There are standards just within the church of Iomedae on treatment of children, on treatment of animals, on communications within the church, on lying ("broadly speaking, you shouldn't lie to people who are trying to engage in a fair transaction with you, or who you have power over, or who are looking to you as a representative of the Church.")

And, uh, there are rules about sex, because it's an area where a lot of people get tripped up. You shouldn't have romantic relationships with your subordinates and absolutely not with your prisoners and, uh, if you have an ambiguous subordinate/prisoner that'd be a 'no'. 

It's mostly a clear and helpful discussion! Leareth is particularly interested in the systems for reporting mistakes - it has a different emphasis than the one he's implemented in his organization, more...ethics-flavoured. Most of the mistakes Leareth wants to encourage reporting of are errors of inattention or lack of skill or ignorance rather than moral failures, and so he tries to have it framed in a very neutral way that isn't about blame or punishment. 

He wants to know all the details of the intra-church treaties, and also if there are treaties signed between different churches, if so which ones, and he'd like written copies of all of that though the language barrier is very annoying. He's so pleased about the rules on envoys and negotiations, that's one of the areas where Velgarth has - very low levels of loadbearing international standards, and even the mostly-agreed-on principles are still broken every so often. It's actually one of the first differences he noticed, just from talking to Asmodean Cheliaxians and picking up that, however Evil they were, they thought Karse's envoy-disemboweling behaviour was utterly beyond the pale. 

He's delighted that there are standards on treatment of animals! It's a constant uphill battle to pitch that as ever worth prioritizing, to people in Velgarth. Leareth tries anyway, because mistreating animals (and children!) is usually also bad for pragmatic reasons, but it's not like he has a real rule of law or the ability to set norms outside of his core organization. 

(Vedric Mavelan's case isn't the first time that an external actor, funded or supplied by Leareth, did something very unfortunate with that. He tries to minimize it, but ultimately the vetting and supervision he would need to prevent it costs more than it gains him.) 

He's pretty on board with the stance on lying and deception; it matches fairly well to his own intuitions, though of course it's not like he's ever been speaking as a representative of a church before. 

- he is a bit confused by the level of emphasis they're putting on the sex thing but is happy to compare it to the standards he sets in his organization, which are roughly that commanders or team-leaders are hard-line banned from relationships with their direct subordinates, and romantic relationships between people in the same chain of command, but less directly, are discouraged, and need to be reported to colleagues.  

…sure, that seems like a fine organizational policy., if it is followed. They can get to work on copying and translating everything for him. Once things are a little less hectic he can talk to the people who set policy in a given area, too, they generally appreciate input on how things translate across cultural contexts.

Leareth would be delighted to have that conversation! He's definitely tried to set his organization's policies in a way that was as - well, hands-off - as possible, and also something that can be clearly and concisely documented, since he wants to be able to recruit people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds in Velgarth, and for them not to be confused about what's allowed and to spend minimal cognitive effort on making sure to follow internal rules instead of on their actual work. Though to be fair this is a lot more true for his magical researchers, especially the people who specialize heavily in math and abstract work like that, they mostly mean well but they do tend to be very absentminded. Soldiers tend to have an easier time with rules, and there are in fact correspondingly more standards of conduct related to military operations than to purely internal relationships between colleagues.

(Leareth is very engaged in this conversation - he's getting to discuss internal infrastructure of organizations! With a world that is incredibly good at this and also coming from a totally different set of premises! He's curious and delighted and not even slightly thinking about Carissa in relation to this.) 

Now that he is Lawful Good and Iomedae is speaking to him personally the paladins are going to trust him about Carissa. Even though they are very confused. It’s a different culture, some things might not translate. Maybe he is unaware that from a Golarion perspective it looks like he’s sleeping with her. They can talk to his staff about it later.

Carissa, after spending a while anxiously waiting for Leareth, has a bright idea: not anxiously waiting for Leareth. She leaves her room to explore the facility. Maybe if she acts like she knows where she’s going no one will stop her.

Leareth has, in fact, been musing that he forgot to ask Iomedae why she thought him interacting with Carissa in specific ways - asking her for hugs and/or sleeping in her bed if he sleeps better there - was advice that would help them win. Mostly he's not sure how hard he should be pushing himself to talk things out with her rather than putting it off. It's not that he's anxious about the conversation, per se - he usually isn't about social things, and also not feeling fear is so convenient - but he doesn't want to hurt her. And it seems like he keeps hurting her, and he doesn't know how to stop - he wishes he could just ask her but that seems like the sort of question that she won't give a straight answer to and that will, also, hurt her. Again. 

Nobody stops Carissa from wandering. She's not a prisoner, after all; they dispensed with the door guard too once the Chelish envoys were definitely far away and not coming back anytime soon, because Leareth's staff are very busy with various preliminary preparations for intervening in a war - he gave that order weeks ago, long before any of them knew which side or even which war they would probably be intervening in - and they have better things to do. 

The god-alignment-math researcher who donated her sparkly shirt to Carissa (it's a craft project she made in her spare time, with tiny faceted mirrors shaped by magic out of glass coated in a very thin layer of metal) smiles and waves to her in the hallway. 

“Hey! Can I show you what Aroden gave me - it’s an intelligence enhancing headband, the highest grade kind - you have to try it on, even though you’ll never want to take it off-“

She isn't briefed thoroughly enough to even recognize the name Aroden. "- Who? Oh, is that the person who kidnapped Leareth and then sent him back with an apology and some random servants of a different god? Sure, I'll try it." 

“Sent us back with such a good apology.” And she gives her headband, which feels a bit like giving away both her arms but - she needs friends, here, and she’ll likely get it back -