Savil looks deeply uncomfortable, but doesn't say anything. 

Randi lets out a heavy breath, and cups his hands over his nose. 

"Van, is that everything?" His voice comes out a little muffled. 

No. It's so, so far from everything. Vanyel is very aware that he's skimmed past a decade's worth of conversations with Leareth. There's going to be a reckoning, later. But...not now, apparently, not yet. 

"Er, I've got a bit more context on their magic, and on where Leareth thinks he's being held. That can probably wait." 

"It can wait," Randi agrees. "We've got to at least do our due diligence that any of this is real - Katha's working on tracking down those soldiers..." 

"They probably won't know anything about, er, whether Asmodeus really tortures people in Hell." Vanyel shrugs. "And - don't forget we're on a time limit, here, Leareth thought he'd be moved back through the rift to their world for further interrogation soon." 

"Right, right." 

Randi pinches the bridge of his nose again. He looks, in that moment, so appallingly weary. 

"...Anyway. Vanyel, go speak with Savil and Kilchas. You can brief them on everything Leareth said to you about, er, the invaders' magic - see if you can put your heads together and figure out ways to beat it with what we have..." 

Vanyel feels almost as tired as Randi looks. And also...off-balance? Surely that can't, just, be the end of that conversation? 

Well. He did just present them with a highly urgent problem to address. One that still needs addressing - maybe especially needs addressing - in the worlds where Leareth is untrustworthy and evil. 

There's going to be a reckoning. Later. But, for now, he can nod to Randi and squeeze his friend's shoulder in comfort, and then go discuss with his aunt and his friend the best way to, maybe, rescue the man he was destined to die fighting. 

And a long way away: 

Leareth sits, watching Carissa out of the corner of his eye (and with all of his Thoughtsensing). 

He's musing on exactly what kinds of cost murder has. Part of it is direct; he prefers, personally, that thinking beings not die. The philosophical justification might be 'because he could have been in their position' but it's...never felt like it needed to be justified via argument, to him - it's always felt fundamental. (And it's not about squeamishness, particularly. He's killed a lot of people by his own hand, and never hesitated. According to the papery-whisper memories of a lifetime long, long ago, he killed a man - a boy - when he was thirteen, maybe twelve, because the other boy was about to kill him and he, Ma'ar, wanted to keep existing...) 

But there's also the aspect of precedent. The doors that one closes, by being known as a murderer; the opportunities for cooperation and trade that can be held open by not doing that. And that - feels less like it falls on the Good/Evil axis that Carissa described to him? And more like it's...about Lawfulness. 

Which hints that it might be a more promising avenue of common ground, between the two of them. 

Leareth knows that Carissa is reading his mind, and he holds himself open to her, and tries to clarify his own thoughts and make them explicit more than he usually would. He is, after all, trying to cooperate here. 

"- I mean outside of war, yeah, you shouldn't murder people because it's terrible for Law, and any reasonable Lawful society will set things up so that no one has to go around being terrified of being murdered. In war.... I think realistically war's just bad for peoples' Law and it's hard to do much about that, at least when it's war against other humans and not against the Worldwound. You don't have all the reputation costs, because everyone knows that just because you'll kill people in a war doesn't mean you'll kill people randomly, and those reputation costs that you do have are not very avoidable, because you're not going to get through the war without killing people, and no one really knows whether you killed marginally more or marginally fewer than you should have."

She thinks of the First Arcane, patiently staring her down in front of the Ifteli prisoner, not so much because he suspected her of being squeamish but because someone might, if she didn't handle it -

That doesn't seem like it hurt her Law. She was the kind of person who'd predictably do that, if it came up, and then it did and she did. The things about war that feel like they inevitably hurt your Law are the - ransacking farmhouses for food, grabbing prisoners and figuring out later which side they're even on - she's not very worried about her alignment, Neutral Evil still gets you Hell (though if she did defect, she'd be breaking her oaths, which might well be enough to kick her all the way to Chaos, but that's irrelevant, she's not going to defect) -

"Also," she says aloud, "I think Cheliax just tries not to be a place where many doors are closed because you harmed other people. Because you did it recklessly or unpredictably, sure, but if you're an executioner or something, or if you ordered a brutal crackdown on a rebel province, people won't treat you worse on those grounds." 

"That is the impression I have been getting of Cheliax, yes."

Leareth is musing, now, that it's a little surprising how he apparently reads as Lawful according to this alien categorization system. It's not that he's gone around breaking his oaths, exactly, but - that's because he's avoided making any agreements to serve any kingdom or country or monarch, or any other stand-in for someone else's ideology and goals. He...would if anything have expected to read as Neutral on that axis; he doesn't intrinsically care about following laws, he just - tries to do what works. 

"It's possible the readings aren't as accurate in another world." It isn't exactly weird that he's Evil but it's sure a fact she already knew and now has proof of, that you can be that wide-eyedly Good about everything all the time and still have Pharasma size you up as a person who tried to do things and is therefore Evil.

That's the reason Asmodeus is going to win. 

"Well, I think it's to your advantage, that you're Lawful Evil. If, when they show up, you tell them that you have an army and you'll help them take Iftel, on the condition that you get autonomy for your own projects, they'll be much more excited than if you were Neutral Evil."

"- I do take seriously the consequences of - breaking my word and being known to have broken it, yes. I suppose that is a key part of what 'Lawful' means, in your world's odd ontology." 

Leareth frowns, more to himself than aimed at Carissa. 

"I...am not sure how much our discussion of Good and Evil, as - concepts defined by Pharasma - is being negatively affected by the fact that the translation spell is mapping it onto preexisting concepts in our local language. Which I - suspect are not, in fact, the same. And it might clarify things, if we could instead talk about 'Pharasma-Evil' and 'Pharasma-Good' separately from - what - from the concept of altruism versus selfishness...? What do you think?" 

"I suppose? Even unusually altruistic humans are often Pharasma-Evil because Good is very specific and it's hard to achieve. Ninety eight percent of Chelish people go to Hell. It's lower other places but we're still winning. You keep saying altruistic things but you're still Pharasma-Evil, which just goes to show that you can't be Pharasma-Good while actually trying to get stuff done in the world, and shouldn't try. That's not an argument against altruism, the argument against altruism is that you should care about things that affect you and not things that don't or only could in a weird hypothetical or only do if you are very worried about what your life will be like if you get brain damage."

Leareth opens his mouth to answer. Closes it again. Pauses, staring past Carissa at the blank formless wall of the Rope Trick demiplane. 

There are a lot of threads he could try to pull on, here. At some point he needs to address the fact that, according to his long experience and resulting world-models, it actually seems more plausible that Asmodeus is skillfully using propaganda in His territories, than that He is in fact stronger than all of the other gods and all of the Good alliances and truly winning everywhere else... 

He'll come back to that, though. 

"...I mean, why do you think a person ought to care about things that affect them? It seems that, if you take your model to its full extreme, surely it would just be - better - to have no preferences at all, so that you will never lose and never be disappointed?" 

This is obviously a straw-man of her position, but Leareth is curious to see where her first objection is. 

"I mean, that seems right? I think before other gods gave us free will humans didn't have preferences and so didn't mind being slaves."

Leareth, again, finds himself spending thirty seconds just boggling at Carissa, trying to even wrap his mind around what she's saying. 

"...Do devils have goals?" he hears himself say, eventually, faintly. "Because - it sounds as though you think they - the best devils, at least - are the ideal being, which I imagine implies they do not have free will. And - I think that, in fact, the ability to maintain goals at all relies on having preferences? At the very least, a preference for 'Asmodeus achieves his goals', but that is...nonetheless not the same thing as lacking preferences at all..."

Leareth has no idea if this line of argument will land at all. He's still trying to get his bearings - he's trying very hard to understand Carissa's current worldview, because it - in fact seems important, if she's right and he's wrong - and also understanding her is a step toward convincing her of his worldview... But it's still jumbling together in fragments in his head, not fully coming together. 

"Devils do have preferences and goals. They are generally understood not to have free will, but free will isn't literally the same thing as goals, just, I think mortals used to not have either...should I just try to give you a quick course in Asmodean theology, here -"

"...Yes, that might help - since I continue to be very confused. ...For what it is worth, I am fairly sure that in this world, mortal beings - humans and others - came to exist over aeons of slow change over each generation, and there was - never a transition from lacking free will to having it - that is part of why I am so confused." 

"Okay. Gods made the world. Gods are intelligent and powerful and capable of many things, but there are specific kinds of things it's costly for them to do directly, and cheaper for them to delegate to smaller minds that only get sensory input from their immediate surroundings and locate all their cognition in a physical body and can interact with magic through physically manipulating the world. There are two kinds of beings relevant here, mortals and outsiders. Outsiders don't have a soul separable from their physical body, all their them is located in one place, if the body is destroyed they're gone. It's also very hard to make new ones. That makes them useful for some purposes but not for others. Mortals are physical structures on the material plane of a type that attracts a soul. The gods made them - I don't know how exactly, it might've taken aeons for all I know. Mortals are useful because they can create more mortals themselves, and because when they're destroyed a soul remains behind, which you can use to make a new outsider, or burn for magical energy, destroying it. Does that all seem right so far, aside from the gods making mortals?"

"- As a model, I think it holds together so far? I - suspect Velgarth is different on aspects other than whether the gods created mortals, for example I am not sure that we have 'outsiders' in the sense that your world does - mortal souls are not destroyed when the material body dies, but they also do not do anything without the necessary scaffolding." 

Leareth frowns. "- You said that mortals are physical structures 'of a type that attracts a soul'. Where does that soul come from, if not from an existing pool of souls?" 

"It forms from the Positive Energy Plane."

"What is that - what are its properties...? I am not sure that Velgarth has an equivalent." 

"Uh, I've also heard of societies calling it the Furnace, or the Cosmic Fire, or Creation. It's not safe to travel to, it's very magical and very high energy and will incinerate you unless you're shielded properly, and even if you are it can give you cancer. Clerics of Good gods channel positive energy for healing? Positive energy in concentrations safe for humans still destroys undead?"

"Right. I - suppose I can take as a premise, for now, that your world has such a plane and it is where souls originate. Go on?" 

"So, originally mortals didn't have preferences and only had goals that the gods gave them. But some of the Chaotic gods decided that actually mortals should be like gods, which make their own goals and have their own priorities. And they made it that way, but - mortals are too small to be like gods. When you set a mortal brain to making its own goals it does a dozen different dumb inconsistent things. Not just 'not serving Asmodeus', like, people who don't want to go to Hell will still do Evil knowing it'll send them to Hell because it's sort of annoying not to, or people will get addicted to things, or women will stay with a man who beats them, or kids will break rules even though they'll get in trouble...and so now everything kind of sucks, and Asmodeus is annoyed about it. Once you're in Hell he fixes it - not all the way to the state humans were in before the gods, but fixes the part where people want things and don't do them, or don't know what they want, or want things they can't have, the ways that wants are just broken because human minds aren't meant to hold them."