Tanya takes some time to figure this one out.

Does Tanya have a 'strong personal code' such that she behaves 'predictably and consistently'? Yes, absolutely! She's a career soldier with an exemplary record! ...admittedly this involves being unpredictable to her enemies, which inevitably means her commanders can't always predict her either, but she always acts within both the letter and the spirit of her orders. The Germanian Army's doctrine prioritizes goals over plans and gives even low-ranking field officers very wide latitude in accomplishing their objectives. They win by reacting quickly, flexibly and if needed autonomously on all levels of command. In other words, they invest in training superior human resources who can be trusted to think for themselves.

Flexible decision-making probably doesn't make her behavior not 'predictable and consistent'? At any rate, Pharasma thinks she's "lawful", so she hasn't worried about it until now.

Of course Tanya doesn't want to break any laws. That's, well, wrong. Laws are how people coordinate to live good lives. Without laws there could be no technology, no safety, no... anything. Criminals are still free-riding on the backs of everyone who does follow the laws. A truly lawless society isn't just red in tooth and claw but also naked and starving to death.

Something still feels wrong about the suggestion that, if she had known about Pharasma's rules, she could have told everyone up front what things she was and wasn't willing to do.

Laws are contingent. They vary between nations and over time because they are responding to different needs. Growing up in Germania, Tanya could not have actually known about Pharasma. If people in Germania had known about (or believed in) Pharasma, or for that matter if they had seriously believed in Jesus, then they would have written different laws. Tanya isn't special; no Germanian citizen wants to end up in a torture afterlife!

The counterfactual of 'Tanya in Germania except believing in Pharasma' isn't realistic, and you can reach any conclusion you want by assuming some state of (unfounded) belief in your counterfactual. Tanya wants to follow Pharasma's rules now because she is no longer in Germania and is responding to new incentives. The rule that correctly describes Tanya and makes her consistent and predictable is that she rationally follows the incentives she is actually given, just as she always follows the local laws. Living in Germania is what made her Tanya and not, say, a Japanese salaryman. Now that she is in Lastwall she might need to become someone else again, but her decision procedure hasn't changed.

So what, exactly, is she supposed to repent of?

"I would like to clarify something I might be misunderstanding before we discuss Lastwall's code. The way in which I am consistent and predictable is - not like a personal code, if that means a specific set of rules one follows. I am simply - rational. I try to make correct decisions and follow incentives, so my behavior predictably changes in response to new information and new incentives. I obey laws because I understand the value of people obeying laws, even ones that seem stupid or wrong or personally disadvantageous, value that accrues to everyone including myself." She doesn't normally say this to people! People tend to freak out when told she doesn't hold specific laws as sacred or that she needs a reason to follow the law. Relatedly, most people greatly underestimate the benefits of laws. But this is a discussion about how she's going to conform to a new set of laws, so it seems worth clarifying.

"I followed the Germanian laws because I lived in Germania. I followed any set of laws because I lived in a society where enough people followed the law to make it worth following and had done so for a long time. One where even if order hypothetically broke down, it would have been possible to believe in and worth fighting to restore it."

"If everyone in Germania had known about Pharasma and expected to be judged by her, they would have written their laws to avoid being judged harshly. A scenario where I have to tell people I won't follow evil orders is a contrived one because if those people agreed with me - about facts, not about valuing me personally - they wouldn't give such orders, or at least very much not lightly. Now that I am here I will commit to behave according to Lastwall's rules, but if - entirely hypothetically - I found myself elsewhere again and became convinced I could not be judged by Pharasma then I might stop following them. I have my own morals but they are not related to Pharasma's because until this morning I did not know Pharasma existed."

"So from my perspective I wouldn't really be committing to anything new. If placed in the same situation in Germania again I would predictably choose differently, not because of a commitment I can make but because I now have new relevant information about the outcomes of my choices. Is that sufficient for your kind of atonement?"

He hasn't properly met an Axiomite before, but the way Von Degurechaff talks is about how he imagines an Axiomite might talk.

"Rationally following incentives in a positive sum manner is a Lawful Neutral sort of attitude.  Obeying laws because everyone values obedience to the laws is likewise a Lawful Neutral sort of attitude.  I say sort of, because in a society that collectively allowed or even actively endorsed or incentivized Evil enough things, you would need some additional rules to follow to not end up Lawful Evil."

He pauses a moment.

"For the purposes of atonement, you would need to be firmly committed enough to following those additional rules enough that if you ended up reborn on some fourth planet, in a society that endorsed Evil actions as the norm, you would not simply follow that society's endorsement.  Um... Having learned new information and acting on it is fine... but I'm not sure if making your commitment entirely conditional on the threat of Pharasma's sorting would weaken it too much for an Atonement to Lawful Neutral to go through.  I think it might, especially if there is any real chance of you ending up outside Pharasma's system again?"

He glances at the Archon and the Theologian to see if they can help him.  He really isn't sure.  Being outside Pharasma's system really is kind of an abstruse hypothetical!

He turns to Rosin to let her speak first, on the off chance she can save him some marginal amount of budget (not that he hasn't already spent prolifically, as fitting the importance of this entire situation).

"Unlike many other Good Gods, Iomedae doesn't require a specific mindset relating to guilt or seeking forgiveness, but as standard for Atonement, you need to be committed such that if you were in the same situation again you would choose differently.  I've read some scenarios and case studies before... but I've not actually seen one as extreme at not only being entirely ignorant of Pharasma's system but also making commitments around potentially ending up outside Pharasma's system, so I'm not sure.  My first guess is that being willing to discard moral rules intended to meet a Lawful Neutral standard in the event you are beyond Pharasma's sorting would in fact prevent an Atonement to Lawful Neutral from going through.  Atonement is supposed to represent a God's prediction of your actions and behavior going forward..."

"Rosin's explanation and first guess are basically correct."

Iomedae has some leeway with Atonements, but if Iomedae is not very careful with how she uses it, a judgement from Pharasma could weaken the standing of Iomedae's Atonements in Pharasma's courts, which would be bad for everyone that might get an Atonement from Iomedae.

Well, yes, obviously they're talking about her continuing to follow the rules even if she finds herself in a society with different laws. That is in fact the whole point of the exercise; she's not trying to naturalize as a citizen of Lastwall. But they're describing a thing where she keeps acting as if Pharasma threatens her even if, counterfactually, Pharasma doesn't. Remove the cause for the behavior but keep the result. In other words... stop rationally responding to new situations?

Tanya very much doesn't want to do that and, more relevantly, doesn't think she could if she wanted to. How do you commit to stop being rational? She tries to imagine having made a promise in the past - under duress and for no other reason - and then having to decide, today, whether to follow through with the threat gone. Her first instinct is to rebel, to disavow any commitments made with a gun to her head, but if she forces herself to consider what's best for her -

Obviously one should keep to agreements (and obey laws and so on) even when this turns out to be disadvantageous. In normal (sane) law systems agreements made under duress are unenforceable, but the principled thing to do about that is either to refuse to make the agreement or to lie, because it's permissible to lie to someone threatening you - except that you can't lie when the counterparty can read your mind. And Tanya, empirically, is not the kind of person who would rather go to eternal torture than make an agreement under duress.

The agent who makes and keeps the agreement under duress (assume the postulate that it's impossible to make but not to keep it) is plainly better off than the agent who cannot. So she should agree, but she doesn't know how to do something like that (maybe with the local mind-editing magic?) and is coming to realize she's not even sure what it is she would be agreeing to. She still needs to find a more diplomatic way to put it than "obviously if you stop threatening me with eternal torture I might rethink some life decisions."

"I think part of my problem here is that I don't know yet what Pharasma's rules actually are. Perhaps when I learn them I'll be so impressed that I'll decide to adopt them for their own sake. Perhaps I'll discover they're not very onerous and so worth committing to. But right now I'm being asked to commit to follow forever a set of rules I don't know yet. So I'm having trouble thinking of that commitment as not being conditional or limited in scope."

"I don't expect to find myself outside of Pharasma's reach tomorrow. Except that - I don't even know, and Jon doesn't seem to be sure, whether Pharasma is operating on both of the worlds I lived on; I certainly didn't face her when I died for the first time. I don't know how I got here. It's not impossible that I'll end up somewhere else. For all I know, I could end up somewhere with a different God the Judge who will damn me if I keep following Pharasma's rules and not his!"

"The plan as I originally understood it was for me to atone to lawful neutral quickly - because I'm in danger of dying soon - by committing to following Lastwall's rules of engagement, which are simple enough for all soldiers and apply only to combat situations. And that that would be enough until I learned Pharasma's rules for myself, which apply to all of life and are more complex. If it's now your opinion that this won't work, and that I need to commit to following the full rules forever no matter what my external circumstances are before even knowing what the rules are - I don't want to say I won't do that, but I don't think I know how to do it." Hopefully this crack team of inexperienced confessors can teach her how. It would be so much simpler to say a hundred pater nosters she can't do that and mean it and they're reading her mind.

"I think I should emphasize, Pharasma doesn't have a single coherent set of rules.  She has court proceedings which have various precedents established that are then argued about by representatives of each afterlive, and some of the precedents are at least moderately contradictory." 

And also Pharsama is sorting souls, not trying to hold them to rules, but that isn't the point he needs to emphasize right now.

"Lastwall has, through Iomedae's efforts as a mortal and subsequent centuries of study, determined rules sufficient that its soldiers can be Lawful Good, which I should maybe emphasize is relatively unusual for most armies and soldiers across Golarion's history.  Lastwall's rule's of engagement are simple enough for its common soldiers to follow and even directly memorize, but that assumes its soldiers are operating in a Lawful Good framework with particular standards of illegal orders and commanders who themselves are trying to follow those rules.  The rules are moderately more complicated for commanders, and if radical new technology or magic shifted how battles worked, Lastwall as a whole would need to invest substantial effort into figuring out what new rules would be sufficient for soldiers and commanders to be Lawful Good."

"So yes, it was perhaps overly optimistic hoping that Lastwall's rules of engagement could be directly applied to you, but you were looking for a single unambiguous set of rules you could quickly commit to following so that was our best bet for a starting point.  And you shouldn't commit to following rules before at least doing a cursory review of them-"  that is kind of unlawful, if not outright insane, he assumed obviously she was going to at least read them over once, but he shouldn't say that to her.  "-I don't even think an Atonement would go threw if you did not at least do a first read through the set of rules you were trying to commit to as part of the Atonement."

He thinks a moment, takes a breath to calm himself, and then continues.

"Maybe we should take a step back and try to better explain the Good-Evil axis to you?  And when actions count as Neutral?"

Von Degurechaff mostly seems to get Law, it is just that under the thread of torture she is strategically willing to give up her Law.  But she seems to keep trying to reframe Good and Evil into a matter of Law.  Which isn't that bad of a mistake, many people could probably get to an acceptable eternity with such a mindset, except she is Lawful Evil and wants to Atone to Lawful Neutral.

Oh wonderful, their god the Judge isn't bound by her own precedents. Probably she's so omnipotent that she can't be unable to contradict herself, or it's wrong to question why she isn't following clear laws or something.

"Obviously I was going to review Lastwall's rules before committing to them! I was referring to the apparent requirement to commit to Pharasma's rules before I understand them, but now you make it sound as if it takes a nation's worth of theologians centuries of research to figure them how they apply to a novel situation? How am I supposed to commit to not doing evil in novel situations if I can't figure out what that requires?!"

Actually! "Jon, what about the suggestions that Morgethai use orb technology against Cheliax, or that I help Terendelev against the demons? This is radically new technology - and magic - does this mean you won't be able to use it without, uh, theological research," at least it sounds like they're researching actual court cases instead of the ineffable mind of god "or that I shouldn't let Morgethai look at the orb because spreading novel weapons technology might be evil and you can't even tell?" Sharing orb technology was meant to save her from dying but if it also makes Pharasma torture her when she does die...

"In Lastwall's case, at least, we would be careful with the rollout of the technology and how we implement it.  Like if we were suddenly able to wipe entire orc warbands out from extreme range, we would have an extensive review of how we currently distinguish targets.  Orcs only bother to separate noncombatants as is convenient and high level wizard magic that can match your destructive power is in limited supply, so we previously had a rather conservative policy..."

"But in general, it is possible to develop a decent intuitive sense for moral boundaries and rules?"  He would say most humans have one to start with but he doesn't want to offend Von Degurechaff.

"As to the effects of distributing the orb technology... at such a level of indirection it would mostly be the net effects on your alignment?  To use an extreme example... in the case of Morgethai distributing the technology to Andoran, if any Andoran commanders use it to wipe out Chelish cities, they would count as Evil, but if the overall result is that Cheliax is free, for your alignment, you would probably come out net ahead on the Good Evil axis?"

"Our current plan is to call someone from heaven who should have expertise on the alignment and sociological implications of Tanya sharing various technologies."

"Right..."

He is reminded again this situation is really outside of his skillset and experience.  He's said that to Von Degurechaff once, but he should say it again and apologize for it at some point.

She is really excited to get to hear about the theological implications of new technology.  But it is unfortunate they have to charge such an expense to Heaven in the first place if theoretical theology got more commune questions allocated to them and more budget for calling outsiders maybe they wouldn't need to call an outsider to share knowledge that is likely very expensive to Heaven.

That's good, except she has no idea how he arrived at that conclusion. Well, that's what experts are for.

Still, Tanya needs to make good use of her time and this isn't getting her anywhere. "I don't think we can make progress on my atonement before I understand the rules better. I assume I need both the good-evil overview and Lastwall's rules for military conduct, so please start with whichever seems better."

"We brought plenty of books relevant for military conduct, but I am now thinking we should start with a more fundamental primer on Good and Evil... which we didn't bring any books for.  Do you mind if I step out to see what their library here has?"

He also kind of wants a few moments to think and pray.

Agnew is eager to help "I can start with a basic overview while you look for an appropriate book?"

"If that is acceptable to you, Von Degurechaff?"

"Please do." Tanya doesn't understand far too many things to try to override their decisions yet.

"Okay... to get to fundamentals... do you have a bad feeling when you see people suffering or unhappy and a good feeling when you see people happy or fulfilled?"

Most people do, but Von Degurechaff might be one of the few that don't, with the way she frames everything as Law.  Although, Von Degurechaff does seem socially aware enough to know if she is unusual in that way.

"Your answers here are confidential, I can discuss the exact oaths and commitments of our duties acting as your confessors if that would make you feel more comfortable to answer completely and honestly."

He leaves to go get some books.  What is an effective primer to explain to someone that is missing some details that even many children grasp about Good and Evil instinctively...  Well at least Theologian Agnew seems to be making a good attempt at it.

...yes? People being happy is good because she usually wants them to be happy, it's to her benefit for everyone she works with to be happy and not suffer, and more broadly being happy is a proxy for people getting what they want and if everyone tends to get what they want that means Society is working correctly and so Tanya is likely to get what she wants, being an ordinary member of society who wants ordinary things...

...well. "I don't have a bad feeling when enemies I'm fighting are suffering, that would be - very unproductive and miserable. I do, generally, feel good when I notice everyone around myself - everyone who's not an enemy, and especially people I know and work with - also feeling good. Because - we have most goals and desires in common, the same things tend to make us happy, so if any news that's good for them is likely to be good news for me. And part of my job is to make both my subordinates and my superiors - not happy, exactly, though being happy is fine, but it's my job to make them pleased, and so it reflects well on me if everyone around me is pleased. ...obviously this is 'all else being equal', there are more important things than for me or anyone else to feel happy, but being happy is a great proxy for things going well in general and of course high morale in itself raises productivity. This generalizes to people who aren't directly related to my work. If most people are happy and not suffering that implies good things about society, on many levels... should I go on?" Tanya isn't sure where this is leading up to.

"Thank you, I think that is enough for me to get a general sense of where you are coming from.  To keep asking basic fundamental questions.  Do you have the understanding that sometimes society's rules can be orthogonal or even counterproductive to actually reducing suffering or helping people find fulfillment?  I can give examples of societies on this planet if both societies of your worlds don't bring any example to mind."

"If we mean societies in general, ignoring the ones I've actually lived in, that's very obvious. For example, slavery, serfdom, communism, inequality of the sexes, nobility versus peasants and other kinds of subjugation of large groups of people to the benefit of others obviously cause suffering on net, because these systems aren't even trying to make everyone well-off. ...I suppose if you define society to include only those people who benefit from the rules, just as one country might benefit at the expense of another country it conquers, it might seem less clear. But if the relevant society is everyone living according to a set of laws or rules, then obviously societies can and often do cause suffering to many people subject to their rule. I do not mean to claim that Germania or Japan are by any means perfect societies, just that their faults are - smaller and less obvious."

"Okay, that works.  Can you imagine a component of decision making aimed at achieving reduction in suffering or increase in fulfillment of people that is orthagonal to, or at least independent of, rule-following, acting on the social consensus, and/or personal incentives?"

"There are people who act to make others well-off. For example, those who work in or donate to charity, like the nuns who ran the orphanage I was in. This is confounded by philanthropy being socially desirable, and also by religions promising rewards in the afterlife for people who so act, but most people aren't rational so the way they do it is by just - wanting those things in themselves. Feeling good when they help others, like you said."

"I'm... not sure I can imagine a component of decision-making - whatever the aim - which does not stem from either rational calculation or from feeling instinctively good about it, which is a kind of self-interest? I'm not a moral philosopher and I'm sure my understanding of this is inadequate compared to people who've spent serious time contemplating the subject." Tanya doesn't like where the conversation seems to be headed but she has to let it play out.