"Oh no, sorry, I meant the Shelynite thought it was clear. She might have been a random follower of Shelyn who decided to talk to me in their church, I don't know if it's reliable information. But I'd be surprised if it's wrong in that direction, since she recommended I enlist at the Worldwound like it was standard advice for soldiers - or adventurers."

Belmarniss thought the judge god was racist like the Taldorans? That really is evil (*) if anything is! To twist someone's beliefs and incentives by making them internalize a foreign religion which says they're intrinsically bad and will be tortured forever no matter what they do!! 

"I'm - very glad that's not the case. And I don't think well of anyone who labels whole peoples as inherently evil, whether the Taldorans or their gods. ...it's possible for a society to bring up people to be antisocial towards the rest of the world, and even towards each other" - the communists do both - "but individuals have to be judged individually, or the rule of law is meaningless." It's fine to have rational prejudices on the basis of group statistics, but surely setting people on fire forever on the strength of that is a bit excessive?

(*) Antisocial; not following the categorical imperative.

"I mean, yeah, Pharasma sucks but could conceivably suck more than she does," shrugs Belmarniss.

At least Belmarniss doesn't think it's good or right or anything like that. "She could send everyone to be tortured with no way to avoid it, that would do it. Or roll dice about it or something." Or get upset and take it out on the next soul she judges.

"Yeah. Loads of room for unimprovement. And she doesn't claim to be Good. I do think the typical person getting that many folks tortured counts as Evil but I guess she adds things up so she gets a lot of credit for creating the world and stuff."

Judgy gods never judge themselves, oh no. That would invite the possibility of sending themselves to hell! Besides, they are perfect and flawless and this is provable from the axioms of logic. 

Pharasma is at least honest enough not to claim to be good or lawful, she just demands it of everyone else. Not that that means she is fallible in her judgements, of course.

Belmarniss didn't really respond to the idea that Tanya might be putting her in danger, and she's not sure how much she should push. Not that Tanya wants her to decide they should cut ties before that happens, but that is the rational move for Belmarniss; she got what she wanted from her, help in safely reaching the city, and now she's just funding Tanya for no explicitly stated reason.

"So, tomorrow, midday, Abadarans? Anything else you're going to want me along for?"

"No, that's all. Thanks. ...do you have any recommended reading material before I try to find my own? Something that will teach me about this world, or maybe just Taldor or this city."

"That's very broad, arguably any book even the most blatant of fiction has some discernible relationship to the world that produced it. Do you want, like, history, or comparative religions, or what?"

Tanya suspects Belmarniss is being unhelpful on purpose. "Economics, industry, technology, trade, important noncombat uses of magic. Society, culture, local law, institutions, everything that goes with that... I don't have the time for a thorough education, but maybe if I skim some material I'll happen on a useful fact I wasn't aware of."

"There's a charming title called Taldans and Barbarians. I saw something called Heirs of Aroden that looked maybe like what you're after based on the first pages but I put it down because it was racist and you might also."

"I might as well look at the first few pages. Thank you." 

Tanya goes to find these two books. What do they promise and what do they deliver?

Taldans and Barbarians is full of highfalutin language about the endurance and majesty of the structures of Oppara, benevolently guiding its political possessions, and some remarkably inside-baseball takes about the decadence and doomedness of (pre-Infernal, the book is 200 years old) Cheliax because they are aping the trappings without the tradition, and some maybe politically obligatory copy about the unbroken line of Taldan emperors?, and disparaging thirdhand accounts of how foreigners do things like style their hair and train horses (to wit: incorrectly).

Heirs of Aroden is very, very human-chauvinist. It's not hard to get a sense wafting off the page that nonhumans are acceptable to the extent that they are domesticated (able to live with and in the service of humans, albeit not necessarily as property, ones who can act "civilized" may be "honorary humans" so long as not too many privileges are extended hereditarily lest their children's nature reassert itself over the decision to act like a person, i.e. a human). Examples of inhuman behavior which must be firmly suppressed include being nocturnal, cannibalism, practicing wizardry-like forms of magic without the spellbook system handed down by Aroden, druidism (there's the shadow of some kind of debate with an Abadaran in here about whether druids can exist and make themselves worthwhile through trade or if they've just got to cut it out and the author is in the latter camp), being Chaotic, living underground, worship of this list of gods popular among dwarves/elves/halflings/gnomes, infanticide, consorting with the fey, living underwater, polygamy, and having too many or too few children. It is apparently presented as a pretty strong argument all by itself that you don't see human paladins doing any of these things, though there are other objections to each. There is a footnote about how the author has been unable to confirm rumors of dwarf paladins existing.

...

None of that is useful to anyone. Well, no, it's useful in that it teaches you about the opinions held by (or at least welcome in) polite Taldane society, but Tanya already knew that! And that the rot goes on past Aroden's death among his self-proclaimed heirs. Honestly, they should look into other countries at some point.

Can she find some actually useful books? Something like... 'An Economic History of the Inner Sea, 4500-4700 AR'? 'Common Management Practices'? 'Contract and Employment Law, Introduction for Foreigners'? 'Military History of the Worldwound Conflict'? 'Taldor Sucks: a Chelish Perspective' (some cultural counter-propaganda might be useful)?

She can find A History of the Worldwound And Its Crusades! And An Introduction to the Theology of Finance! And The Failure of the Age of Glory! And In Defense of the Apprenticeship Model Contra S. T. Q. Regarding At Will Employment! And A Subsidized Public Listing of the Insurance Rates of Assorted Nations And Public Figures Courtesy of the Church of Abadar!

Excellent. Tanya will skim the first chapter or two of books that look interesting and decide whether to read them in full.

History of the Worldwound and its Crusades: potentially promising!

Theology of Finance: bleh, but if the Abadarans operate this way she should probably know about it if she's to make any deals with them.

Failure of the Age of Glory: does it contain anything that's not about theology and the social implications of Aroden's death that are now a century in the past?

In Defense of Apprenticeship: probably not very useful without having read S.T.Q., and she's not interested in a deep dive on the subject anyway, so she'll put it aside for now.

A Subsidized Listing: ...they publish the insurance rates of public figures? Do they give them a discount for revealing this information? Won't publishing to affect the correct insurance rate, or something? Tanya is curious, but she can't see how knowing these rates will be useful to her, so she'll skip this one.

So, a brief introduction to the Worldwound and to financial theology?

The Worldwound is a portal to the Abyss. It opened around when Aroden died and this was widely considered bad. Areelu Vorlesh was involved. There have been four Crusades aimed at the following strategic goals, orchestrated by the nation of Mendev under its apparently immortal somehow queen Galfrey. So far the world is still around, but the region is not doing amazing and the defense requires coordinating with e.g. infernal Cheliax and mysterious suspicious witches. Here are historical figures and minutiae relevant to this.

This book doesn't have as many details as she'd like but there are recognizably armies and fronts and supply trains and other logistics!

The demons have much more or cheaper teleports and a specialized defensive line is built to stop them from overrunning the planet. That is possibly the scariest (military) thing Tanya has encountered so far; an entire army that can (individually) teleport obsoletes pretty much everything. She really doesn't understand how they were stopped (or fought at all) before the defensive line was built. Cheap teleportation is an instant win condition! Presumably the book omits some crucial details, which might be legitimate military secrets but they cast the rest of it into some doubt.

The sizes of the armies involved are pitifully small. Even with a low population, if you mobilize for total war you should be able to do better than that. Maybe most of the power lies with the few mages and extra-tough people, but if you're bothering to raise a normal army at all, why not make it ten times the size? Can they seriously not equip everyone with pointy sticks? Or import enough food from countries further away? Maybe they have a big problem with logistics that Tanya isn't aware of, she's pretty sure Earth was better than this even before the internal-combustion engine.

This is all interesting but not directly relevant. The front hasn't moved much since the defensive line was built in the second war decades ago. The last big attempt to shift it failed with catastrophic losses on both sides, as armies were thrown into the meatgrinder for over a decade. Now they're just doing patrols for ground enemy incursions. That sounds like easy work but Tanya knows better than to believe that.

What about the financial theology?

The book seems to be written by an earnest young Abadaran cleric who wants to make it really clear that you can in fact totally trust the bank of Abadar with your money and thinks the best way to do this is with case studies of every weird situation he could find where someone did, or did not, get the money they were expecting after it came out that they violated loan terms, lied on applications, did everything right but suffered sophisticated identity theft, ran into bad luck on their business ventures, joined a cult, defamed the Church, etcetera, all with the principles underlying the decisions and the process by which who made those decisions was chosen carefully laid out.

That would be much more useful if it were written by or attested to by someone who wasn't working for Abadar! Unfortunately, Tanya isn't in a position to do a literature review. ...wait, but there are librarians here. Can she find one to ask whether there are any books arguing against these claims or presenting the Bank of Abadar in a different light?

(Also, there doesn't seem to be any theology in it? Presumably they have more theology than 'you should trust us'? Not that Tanya minds.)

Well, the underlying principles are described in fairly spiritual language despite being grounded in numbers and business sense throughout.

The librarian says that there is unfortunately censorship of Hellish propaganda so they don't have Mammonite books but they have managed to win the legal argument to stock a complaint from the church of Razmir about the Abadarans! She should read it right now in case that changes!

...if the only complaints about the Bank are from two other churches then either they are a very upright organization or, possibly, most intellectual activity including book-writing on Golarion is done by or on behalf of churches. But sure, she'll read it, or skim it anyway. What does the church of Razmir have to say about the Abadarans?

Those damned Abadarans all up and left the country when god-king Razmir (CENSOR'S NOTE: RAZMIR IS NOT A GOD) expropriated the banks for perfectly good god-king reasons (CENSOR'S NOTE: RAZMIR IS STILL NOT A GOD), leaving the country without banking services!

...does it say what his perfectly good reasons were?

He needed the money. For god-king projects. (CENSOR'S NOTE -)

A government can expropriate private property, but it shouldn't be surprised at the natural consequences of doing this to a large multinational corporation. If that's the strongest anti-Abadaran claim, then either they actually are trustworthy or all the legitimate complaints were blocked by the CENSOR. Anyway, she's not going to deposit any money with them, although how they handle it is obviously very important and indicative.

As long as she's talking to the librarian, she might as well ask about the Worldwound. The book says the demons' most terrifying quality is their ability to teleport, and the defense effort would be doomed if the Wardstone line were to fail; this seems very intuitive to Tanya. So how were they stopped during the thirty-odd years before the Wardstones were emplaced?

(The librarians might not be very interested in military history, so she'll try to present as a question about magic.)