"Familiar like you've heard it before? I don't think I mentioned Earthfall but maybe I thought about it at some point."

“…No, not that…” He shakes his head. The missing-puzzle-piece sense is back, again. “It - I think it reminds me of my own past, a little. But I have no idea what that means.”

"...that Aroden spent some time on your planet, maybe? It gets to this later but he spent a while exploring other worlds, looking for something. It says he didn't find it."

“- I suppose it would not be surprising, if he wrote off  Velgarth as - not being useful for anything.”

Leareth isn’t upset about this, exactly, but he looks distantly sad, and very tired.

Pat pat. "You're not going for Good, you're allowed to fight for it just 'cause it's yours."

...Yes. That's how the world works. It isn't especially reassuring. 

"Is there more in the book about his...goals and values? As a powerful human, I suppose also as a god?" 

"As a powerful human he seems to have - tried a bunch of different stuff - he spent a while fighting a war with a demon lord - that's practically a god - who wanted to kill all the descendants of Azlant for some reason, so I guess he is, uh, anti-trying-to-kill-all-descendants-of-Azlant. He's got, you know, some standard Lawful Neutral god stuff here, prosperity is good, the rule of law is good, people should be able to invest in their futures, we should educate children, humans haven't reached their potential and they ought to."

"...Standard Lawful Neutral? That is a large proportion of what I want, and - it felt as though it was the thing - part of the thing - that you were claiming was Good? So...I suppose I am confused." 

"No, Good is selflessness, and fighting Evil. "Richer countries are nicer for everyone" isn't Good, it's just being reasonable. The Lawful Neutral gods are generally in favor of prosperity, self-improvement, sanitation - so's Asmodeus - you can't let Good have a monopoly on places being places where humans achieve stuff."

"- But the reason I even care about prosperity and progress and self-improvement is because I - care about things being nice for people - that is not being selfless, I care about myself as well..." 

Leareth feels like there's still some kind of baffling miscommunication happening, here. Something that feels utterly self-evident to him, that - that all of those things come out of the same generator - and so he's still, apparently, sliding off the fact that Golarion seems to slice and dice it up into multiple concepts, in a way that - probably is principled but doesn't obviously feel that way to him, right now, in this (disoriented, confused, sad) moment... 

"Like I said, I think you're Good except for the willingness to murder millions of people which, in humans, doesn't usually go with all the other stuff. But - I'm obviously not Good, right, and I want Cheliax to be rich and have good schools, and I want all the kids in the country with the potential to become wizards to get the best wizard education, and I want the laws to be enforced so people don't have to worry about whether there'll be bandits on the road. You don't have to care about other people to want that, it just flows from - the thing you said in Iftel, caring what kind of society you live in because that's informative about how contingent your place in it is - I think that's Lawful Neutral."

"...All right, I - still feel as though there is something going on here, where - I have what feels to me like a single source of my motivations and values, and your world wants to divide that up into what you are calling the Lawful parts and the Good parts? ...But anyway. Do you think Vanyel is Good?" 

Eyeroll. "The Goodiest Good. The paladins'll love him."

"Well, he has killed thousands of people. For exactly the same reasons that my plan involved killing millions. I...am not sure how he would have reacted, if I had had the chance to tell him of my plan in a less - coerced - fashion, but. I think that he understands what I truly want, here. And that if he were ever in the same position, he would..." 

A long pause.

"....he would do math about it. The same way that I have." 

"You didn't decide to keep me or - sell me to Iomedae - because you didn't want me to go to Hell."

Leareth just stares blankly at her for a few seconds.

"What? Sell you to–" He stops. Takes a breath. "Sorry, I think I am - missing context. It was - definitely a motivating factor, in - asking you about plans that resulted in your staying with me rather than returning to Cheliax - that I did not wish to hand you back to Asmodeus. Because I, personally, feel that Asmodeus makes very poor use of the humans available to him. But...I have the sense that you mean something different?" 

"That's the reason I didn't hit it off with Vanyel, is that was his proposed solution to me wanting to go to Hell and him feeling that I shouldn't get to decide that. So I think actually the two of you are doing - different math, or something. And the Good math is more about not letting anyone do anything different than yours is."

"Hmm. I - think I may have gotten off on a different foot with you, than Vanyel did. I met you in the context of being captured by someone extremely competent, and...I suppose from Vanyel's perspective, he met you when you were already a helpless prisoner of the Tayledras. And so you were - someone he would want to rescue - someone he thought of as needing rescuing. Which is a different mindset. And - I have the sense that you strongly dislike being pitied?" 

"I strongly dislike dying and subsequently not existing! If he'd been like 'oh, I feel so bad for you, I'll let you go', I wouldn't have taken issue with that!!! Melody loosened the set command because I was like 'oh, woe is me, I am lying here immobilized in the dark, imagine how that must feel' and this was objectively stupid of her but I'm not mad at her for it. - I wasn't actually upset about lying there immobilized in the dark because I am not three."

"...Really? I -" Leareth stops, frowns. "I mean, I was not actually that upset, most of the time, because - feeling the emotion would not have helped - but in general I think that being immobilized in the dark is upsetting?" 

"Right, which is why babies cry about it. I think - feeling the emotion would not have helped - is what I mean, that if you are at all competent then you'll just not be upset about lying there immobilized in the dark for a day, and if you are so incompetent that you do get upset, that's not anyone else's problem!"

"I - hmm."

And, again, Leareth has to pause and think for a moment.

"...So - my Healers gave me drugs for pain, after Nayoki retrieved us. I remember the Chelish cleric who did magic healing on me was very confused about that. And - I think mostly they did it because they wanted me to be able to rest, so that I could recover faster, but partly because they are trained as Healers, and so - find it distressing, to see their patient in pain? And...that is probably what Melody was feeling? She is primarily trained as a Healer, I think - one who was drawn far outside her experience, in this situation - and, in my own organization, when I sign off on training curricula - I think it is good for my Healers to be encouraged to care about their patients' experiences? Because it - helps them track what will lead to a faster recovery? ...It might still be the fact that Melody's actions were unhelpful for keeping you prisoner, but that is not what she was trained for." 

"I don't know much about what aptitudes are required for Velgarth healing. I can't think of any jobs in Cheliax where you are encouraged to care about peoples' experiences? Even teachers or whatever, you wouldn't want them to dislike punishing students, or they wouldn't do it as often as they should. I guess, uh, prostitution, gotta care about the other person's experience if you want repeat customers. But ......not necessarily in the kind of way where you'd experience distress about having to then torture them to death? There's, like, caring about what is going on in their head, and there's attachment, and sometimes you need the first thing but I think you're always better off without the second."

For a long moment, Leareth has no idea what to say. 

"...I think that in - the kind of world that I wish to build - then caring in the long term as well, 'attachment' as you put it, would - also be good, and safe? - I cannot say I have ever found this to hold for myself, though. Because the world that I wish existed does not, in fact, exist yet." 

"Sure, fine, maybe some day in the perfect future where we build the gods it'll be a good idea for people to be attached to one another."