She smiles at him. "Good morning, Select Artigas." 

He motions her in. "As you may imagine, I do not have a copy of the Acts and have never read it, and don't even know if that's the ordinary place to start teaching would-be priests Iomedaean theology."

She nods. "I assume you're already writing for a copy of the Acts, and assuming Rowen Sends me I can ask him to mail over Marit's, he wouldn't mind. Do you want to start with what I know, or do you want to hear why I thought this might work, first?"

"...unless you have something germane to how I ought to conduct myself in the next half-hour I would like to know more about how you came by your guess."

"Uh, the only thing I can think of is that Iomedaean paladins never lie. I don't know if this is required for Her clerics also, because I've never had an extended conversation with one. I wouldn't be surprised if it did, though."

She sits down. "So... the thing that I told Txell last night, which is true-but-not-complete, is that there are legends of people's alignments jumping instead of changing gradually, when they had a big change of conviction in moments where it mattered most to them, and this seemed like it could have been one. From what she said to me, it sounded like maybe some of those stories are censored in Cheliax? But it does ever happen." She pauses to see if he wants to comment before she continues.

"I knew that. - both of those things, actually, and have been assuming I am also not allowed to lie now. Clerics get... slightly differently censored versions of some things."

She nods. "That makes sense. Anyways - the part of it that I didn't share with Txell and don't plan on singing from the tabletops is that I think it's very likely you were Lawful Neutral yesterday morning, and maybe have been for years. Holding the Worldwound has been, as far as I can tell, the thing you've made your life's work, and it's a Good cause, so much so that we commonly see adventurers come to the response garrison entirely self-interestedly, and wealthy nobles donate to the effort for similar reasons. Torture is Evil, even when it's Lawful, but... most of what makes it Evil is the cruelty, I think. And you don't seem like you go in for that at all - you transfer soldiers out when you can't work with them, systemically, and the result is the most functional Chelish Worldwound fort I've ever been at."

"...if it were common to become Lawful Neutral just for spending one's career at the Worldwound then at some point someone better at archery than I would notice the Holy bow didn't burden them and I have not heard reports of this though I suppose it's possible one might keep it to oneself."

"...I don't think it's common! But the way you were running fort #11 was extremely uncommon, as far as I can tell, and I think it probably mattered a lot, even if you weren't aiming for alignment when you did it." She shrugs. "I could be wrong."

"I wasn't aiming for alignment at all. Some people occasionally have a crisis about how they're going to go to Hell and will not enjoy it but I was not really the type."

Venn nods. "Yeah, that makes sense to me. If you had been aiming for alignment I suspect you would have talked about it very differently, when I asked. I still think it was... unusually non-Evil behavior, for someone in the position you were in." 

She pauses, and then continues in a softer tone. "...for what it's worth, I'm happy you're not going to Hell."

"I was not expecting to enjoy it," he says agreeably. "I just didn't have crises about it."

This gets a surprised laugh out of her. "Well, then you won't have any crises about your updated afterlife situation, either." 

"Not so far, though I might surprise myself. Perhaps I can tolerate a certainty of Hell and it's the unclarity about which paradise I'm bound for that will really alarm me."

Another surprised bark of laughter. "Outside of Cheliax, there's a type of noble who anxiously commissions an Early Judgment every week, just to be sure. Could be you."

(Venn is delighted. She knew she liked him, but she had no idea he was funny!)

"From one of the abundant Pharasmins in the area? Though perhaps someone will have luck with that any day now. Anyway. I appreciate very much the prompt to attempt to reach Iomedae, and the loss of life its success prevented."

Her smile shifts; less playful, more warm. "Thank you for trusting me enough to try it. I know it was pretty surprising."

"I was taken rather aback but it was a good suggestion and would have been even if it had not worked."

She nods. But, well, how to put this,,. "...I think it would have been a good idea for a wide variety of people in your position, just in case it did work, but... I wouldn't have suggested it, to most of them." Because they wouldn't have done it, and would have been nasty to her about it, unlike him. 

"Because... you think I was already Lawful Neutral?"

She shakes her head. "No, because it was obvious to me that you would consider it, and wouldn't treat me poorly for suggesting it. ...I think the average ex-cleric of Asmodeus would have done the opposite." The treaty does not protect adventurers from as many as several kinds of harassment.

"...have you talked to many of them? I suppose I wouldn't have been told if tremendous numbers of people were previously renouncing Him and fleeing across the border, but until recently there was not much of a population of us so far as I knew."

She shakes her head. "I am mostly extrapolating from conversations I've had with them while they were still clericed." She shrugs. "I spend a lot of time talking to people and trying to figure out how they work. ...It's one of my favorite parts of adventuring, really."

"I'm going to need to take more patrols while you're here, to spread the healing out among the nearby forts. And some after that, but then it will be more excusable to be here most of the time."

...She really wants to go with him on those. Obviously it'd be a terrible idea, so she can't suggest it, but she wants to. 

(...huh. Why does she want that? Something to unpack later, along with the pang she just felt when he mentioned her leaving.)