She spins one up. Brass stand and all. If you pay attention to the optics and know how reflector scopes work and are her, it totally works! Should be about 50x magnification.

"Go ahead'n try it. ...Halfling ships?"

She has a sudden rising dread about that.

"Cheaper to crew. Lower wages, smaller berths and provision-stores, more room for cargo. That's how Leroung made their fortune," she says absently as she studies the telescope and tries it out. "Worse odds against pirates or monsters, but most ships won't survive hostile boarders even with stouter sailors."

"I've never seen a design like this. You look in the side, not in the end? Oh! That's a Jeggare flag, to see that at this distance..."

The merchant jots that down in a cramped script, only taking her eye away from the aperture to dip quill in ink.

"How much to get a real one of these telescopes?"

Oh phew! Not slave carriers!

"Man, I'm not a smith. You'd need... Fancy mirrors and stuff..."

You know what, better set it to pop if it's disassembled too far. She tweaks it so. Merchant and potentially valuable information and all. Are reflector scopes not known here?

This is Golarion. Everything can be found here — it's just not evenly distributed yet.

The merchant makes a distracted noise of disappointment, and adds another note on how close the load line of the Jeggare vessel is to the water's surface.

"I'm not from Korvosa and not used to how the markets work locally. Shipping would be far cheaper than overland due to economy of scale? That being why cities tend to be on coasts. For bulk goods at least, I'm imagining really high value like magic items get personal couriers or teleporting."

"That's the gist of it. Shipping is faster and cheaper, and any monsters on the way tend to move on instead of digging in like bandits and needing to be cleared out for passage to resume. You hear about schemes for bulk teleportation, or flying goods by air, but they all tend to involve putting a lot of trust in whoever's doing the teleporting or flying. Mere merchants like us can't do much to stop a rootless fifth-circle caster from stealing the whole shipment if they so choose, not like a vessel or caravan with dozens of staff who have friends and family at each end of the route they'd have to leave behind."

"And I guess fifth circle Abadarans and the like are thin enough on the ground and have enough other stuff to do. Maybe mention it to them though."

"They're the sort you go to when you do need to send a magic item or a letter fast, but as you say, they're in high demand."

Scratch scratch scratch, is that one of the crew vomiting over the side? A quarantine would be valuable information - no, that's a seasick gnome, they must have bought passage.

"D'you happen to know where's the best place to get good coffee, and maybe spices and such? I'll leave you be after this one, and the 'scope should last-" She gauges the energy she put into it. "-Bit under an hour from now, maybe less if you move it around a lot."

"You'll want the Green Market in Southshore. The Arkona shopfront - their crest's a black and white shield with a gold dragon on it - can sell you most spices, and for thilieu bark there's a few rival Varisian vendors."

"Gotcha. Good luck with your spotting."

...Back to the temple of Sarenrae. Some of the gods mentioned during her sleepy rambling questions sounded distinctly not Light, and the Good/Evil thing is... Well, it's probably more complicated than it sounds. Or at least more alien. She should talk to at least one priest across some of the spectrum.

The Sarenite temple is less busy after the noon channels have passed, but still not exactly quiet. The red-haired halfing is there again, and seeing that she's not picked up any injuries in the past hour or two he gestures for Weiss to wait a minute while he continues seeing to a mother with a loudly bawling child. 

Shortly after, he returns, and invites her to walk with him down a pillared marble corridor enclosing a sun-drenched internal garden.

"You had questions about the gods?"

"I'm from... Very far away and I don't actually know much about the ones people are following here and want to know more! Which ones are worth looking at, and what they teach, and maybe how I can help. Sarenrae seems kind of like Ilumine to me. Ilumine is- Everything can be okay. Things can be better. You can heal, you can repent. You should hold out hope and try to make things better. And dreams."

Things she ignores herself, sometimes, really.

"You must be from very far away! Ilumine does sound like Sarenrae. Our goddess teaches patience and compassion and forgiveness, though we are also expected to stop those who refuse redemption."

The walls lining the garden have relief sculptures on them, depicting many of the gods of Golarion. He points out Sarenrae in the Neutral Good area, a goddess with feathered wings and burning hair, bearing a scimitar and the sun shining over the pastoral landscape of Nirvana. 

"As for the domain of dreams, that is associated more with Desna, who presides over the night sky and all free travel beneath it, dreaming and waking alike."

To the right, the carved sky turns to a starry night, a butterfly drifting among them over the wilderness of Elysium. 

"Oh, Erius covers travel and he's otherwise a lot like Abadar." She giggles a little bit.

Nice art.

"I asked people to donate 'to the needy' yesterday- In exchange for protecting the docks- And from what I heard they seem to have all chosen this temple. What do you do with donations?"

"Travel is a domain of Abadar's as well! It is said that the overlapping concerns of the gods reflect the commonalities we all share."

(Abadar is represented as a richly-dressed bearded human standing at the gates of a vast city bearing a crossbow and key. The temple was constructed prior to the Third Age of Osirion, and so he is depicted as Taldan rather than the modern Osirian style.)

"Even the Evil gods share interests with the gods of Good, and through those interests even they may yet be redeemed in time."

(This position is not entirely orthodox, but the clergy of a city with such strong Chelaxian influences will tend to have a more expansive view of forgiveness by necessity.)

"There are some wealthy donors who support the upkeep of the temple as a whole, so that we can keep hosting priests and sharing channels. Your donations will generally go towards feeding the hungry, treating the sick who require more than a channel to cure, and otherwise helping those who lack the coin to look after themselves and their loved ones. In doing so, we alleviate the desperation that can compel hearts to Evil deeds. In times of plenty, when there are less urgent needs, some of the donations we receive may go towards stocking up on scrolls and potions, to better respond when crises strike. And in dire times, we may commission parties of adventurers to strike at sources of problems that ail the people and are beyond redemption, like plagues of the undead."

"Not a bad shape of things. There's- It's not centrally my thing but someone has to try and- Yeah. It's good that someone is, and they should- You should have the money you need to try. Um. I think I'm interested in talking about - the shape of good, and also of law and chaos - I'm going to pay an Abadaran too, and maybe find someone chaotic if I can, get perspective. We don't really break things up that way on Tirra, law and chaos and good and evil- There are the Light Gods, who are generally useful and generally more Good than Evil and run the gamut on law, and there are the other ones, which you don't think or talk about too much."

"It would probably be better if people didn't pray to the Evil gods," the halfling agrees. "Scripture is unclear on whether it strengthens them, to call out for Asmodeus for advancement or Lamashtu for release from nightmares, but it is generally held that in praying we make ourselves more like the recipient of our prayers to draw their attention towards us, and that alone is unwise."

Each of the gods are pointed out in their own domains on the mural. This walled garden has a place for them too.

"Good and Evil are the more intuitive scale of Pharasma's sorting. Everyone has inside them an instinct to care for others and see them flourish. Even if they have been taught to treat it as weakness or only grace their closest loved ones with it, it is always there, and through doing good we can nurture it in others. Nirvana is for everyone.

"As for Law and Chaos, the Abadarans will have a different perspective, but Sarenrae is positioned between the two extremes because of what they represent for redemption. Law is discipline, that resolution to hold to a course that both the Abadarans and Asmodeans share. But as they show, that commitment can lead in very different directions, enriching oneself or tyrannizing others. 

"Chaos, on the other hand, is change and flexibility. Desna and Calistra do not inspire us to constancy; dreams and vengeance are both unpredictable, and they invite us to reconsider where we are in our lives and what we tolerate, to choose in the moment to do something different. You can find shrines to them in the Pantheon of the Many."

He gestures south for that temple, then out towards the harbor. 

"Good is not so simple that we mortals can simply decide on a rule of 'always be good' and leave it at that, and nor can we live with no rules at all. Like a ship's pilot, we must always check ourselves for whether we have gone astray. When we find that we have, we must change our course to make up for it, and hold ourselves to that change with discipline, whether that is giving up a pesh addiction that was driving us to crime or resolving to treat our step-children with more kindness. Even Sarenrae has erred, and realized, and changed herself, and held to that commitment. We mortals are no less imperfect than the gods."

"It's a really weird way to think about things, to me! We don't categorize it like that. Though the sorting brain that likes to sort things into boxes is trying, now... Erius is for sure Lawful and Tamamo is definitely Chaotic... She's all about the whims and luck. I'm not sure if Erius is Good or not. Or Tamamo for that matter. And of course morals and ethics aren't simple."

She suddenly goes sober.

"Yeah... I've fucked up in the past. I mean, I've been around for a while and- It sounds stupid to complain about being powerful, but it's not always a good feeling, your mistakes and inaction hits harder, you're a bigger lever. And I can not just - instrument myself for maximum saving people everywhere always. Got a bunch of people killed by accident a couple times. Sneaky fucker with life drain, oopsed a revolt that got messy."

The lay priest takes a seat on a bench and invites this powerful adventurer from a distant land to sit as well.

"Would you like to talk about what happened?"

"Sorry if I'm- It's just-" she waves vaguely. And starts pacing.

"Count Rosewell was using dirty tricks and general corruption to put people in debt, then taking them as debt slaves. I- The whole plot kind of got away from me very fast. There was a lot of anger built up."

She probably came here via Cheliax, maybe because of the fallout from that, the halfling notes. He makes a thoughtful noise.

"It sounds like it would be a difficult situation for anyone, with or without the power to intervene."

"Yeah what I should have done is call the fucking Duke or Inquisition down. Gather allies, convince people of the problem. But I was younger. And believed the story of- The heroic rebel who makes everything better when they take up torch and pitchfork and toss down the tyrant and everyone cheers as the curtain comes down. So what I actually did was raid the mining town and start a riot, then lead said rioters back to the county seat and start another riot- Guess what? Soldiers stab rioters! And rioters beat soldiers to death. Even when I was trying for nonlethal. I figure the whole mess got about two hundred people killed by the end."

Sigh.

"I don't know why I'm rambling about this... It does stil bother me, I guess."