I'm Neutral Evil, I can't talk to Iomedae. I'm not your subordinate because you don't pay me and you don't give me orders and you don't decide how I spend my time. I'm not a prisoner - the paladins better not give you a hard time about that, because we had a deal about it before they swooped in. I'm your Carissa, I float around your organization making headbands and swapping math notes and keeping everybody on their toes. And I don't want to make things difficult with your new allies but don't you go fitting me into boxes that you've got rules about just because you're a paladin and need rules to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Wow. That’s…oddly impressive. 

Leareth ducks his head, briefly, acknowledging the point. 

:I think what the paladins are worried about is a - situation of coercion, here? Because I am more powerful than you and this is my facility and - even if the situation is mostly that I wish to treat you as an equal, that is hard to pull off? …I did argue to them that it was fine to do things Iomedae had directly suggested. So - if you are not angry with me over the paladin thing, and you wanted a hug…?:

Coercion is just a stupid paladin word for 'incentives'. I'm not mad at you, I just expect I'm going to have three times as much work now convincing you to look out for your own interests. But she hugs him.

:So part of the entire idea here is that - Good is a team of people that can all look out for each other’s interests, in addition to their own. And also, I belong to Iomedae, so She can look out for me as well: 

He looks very happy as he says this, and more relaxed than Carissa ever saw him before today. 

(Wrapped in the warm glow of pride and determination and impatience to fix everything, but not alone never again… It’s going to take Leareth a while to get used to that feeling, for it to stop catching in his thoughts and filling him with amazement.)

Wow, someone's really going all-in. Which is probably safest. Even if it feels like slightly too many mental contortions for Carissa to wiggle in under all of them just now. 

And Iomedae's advice when She was looking out for you was that you should get hugs from me. 

:Yes, I know! And that I should sleep in your bed! And I think it makes the paladins uncomfortable but I am at least somewhat willing to generalize that to ‘interacting with you is good for me’ even if I do not understand Iomedae’s reasoning here. And - this is a very weird situation that does not fit into any standard boxes? That the other paladins lack context on. So…I think I will maybe just continue to use the exact same heuristics as before, since you seemed to think I was using appalling Good decision processes despite my actual alignment reading:

That would be nice. I'd rather gotten used to your old appalling Good decision processes. And it'd be such a shame for all your talent at flirting to be replaced with 'I'm a paladin, I can't', even if in fact we can't, right now.

:Surely you mean my lack of talent?:

I said 'all your talent', which is one of those useful statements true regardless of how much talent it's referring to.

:I see: Shrug. :Well, I think it seems difficult to dispute if something is Good, if I am careful to avoid hurting anyone? And - it is not as though I need the paladins' rules to be Lawful, I already read that way before. ...I would actually like to talk to others about this, at some point, they - seem to do Law in a way that is very entangled with being Good, and that makes it more difficult for me to incorporate into how I reason: 

Aroden's Lawful, you could ask him. 

:That is a good idea. He is Lawful and also - well, clearly reasons compatibly with Iomedae, whereas it is less clear if, for example, Abadar or his figurehead do. ...And Aroden is the one who I think that we actually need to convince to make any changes to his approach in Cheliax? Which is something I know you do not trust the paladins to handle well: 

There isn't a way to conquer a place and change everyone in it nicely. And paladins like pretending they're nice. - no offense.

:...Well, I am going to try very hard to avoid the failure mode of - actually basing my decisions in wartime off of pretending to be nice rather than on what hurts fewer people. I think following their basic rules because it demonstrates good faith and respect for Law is different from that. Are you worried that Aroden also does that, or no?: 

I don't actually know anything about Aroden, really, except that he gave me a headband. Carissa considers it obvious that anyone would sell out at that price. 

:I think it might help if you understood him better? He is - he seems very like me in many ways: 

I can try, if he wants to talk to me. She sounds dubious. He's probably very busy.

:We are all going to be very busy for the next while! But he did seem interested in talking to you, in the demiplane - he was distracted enough that he did not even notice me praying to Iomedae, or surely he would have stopped me: 

It's true, but - confusing? I think I am a pretty typical graduate of my wizard school, which wasn't even the best one in Cheliax. One assumes if he wants to talk to random Chelish wizards he could kidnap a bunch at any time.

Leareth turns. Looks intently at her. 

:...I think you are much less typical than that, actually. But it makes sense that you have all sorts of - mental cruft - around considering that, since...Cheliax under Asmodeus is not a very safe place to be exceptional: 

It's much safer to be intelligent than not! The kids at the bottom of the class got punished!

:Intelligent, good at passing tests, and otherwise as boring and unremarkable as possible, is that right?: Leareth shakes his head. :I am - not unintelligent - but I would have done terribly in Cheliax. Anyway: He sighs, and shifts away from her. :I do in fact have an enormous amount of work to do. Can I send one of my people to talk to you about spellsilver and make plans for obtaining it?: 

Yes. For some reason, her thoughts are scoring this interaction for the hair hypothesis.

And Leareth heads off to update Nayoki, get the very short version of her run-down from Zahra, and then go review all of his notes on his tentative agreements with Cheliax so he can figure out how to navigate this without breaking his word by accident. 

(Who he should probably...contact? At some point? And he needs to arrange something with Valdemar and the Heralds - he wonders what's going on from Vanyel's side of things right now...)