Once men stop looking up to the gods, they can fly far beyond any eagle.

The song wraps. The donation bucket goes around the room. People shuffle out, mostly.

Tanya politely puts a few small coins in the bucket.

She's still not sure how to approach this. Beyond choosing who to talk to, what is she supposed to say? 'I need help not going to hell'? They can't help her and have no reason to help her over someone else. The whole idea feels absurd. For some reason every time she comes here she feels it's reasonable to ask strangers for help, but it's really not! What are they supposed to do, absolve her (unknown) sins if she says a hundred color nosters?

...she can still ask the same questions she did yesterday. That is better than wasting her time doing nothing until noon, or reading another book about the inherent inferiority of all non-Taldorans and non-humans.

She'll try to catch a hold of someone who looks likely to be an actual priest or other church member (and isn't busy).

There's the priestess who gave the sermon, who is hugging a group of small children but eventually has hugged them all enough that they are willing to leave!

That's impressive, Tanya wasn't sure that was possible! She will approach the priestess.

"Hello. My name is Tanya von Degurechaff." (She's not making the same mistake twice.) "I need - advice. Could you spare me a few minutes of your time? I'm afraid I can't promise anything in recompense." Hopefully she will say something like 'no recompense is needed, we are commanded to help our fellow men'. Tanya doesn't really know how to talk to these people yet.

"Of course! Would you rather talk here or in my office?"

"The office would be better, if you can spare the time." Talking about herself in public (again) might come back to bite her one day. "...thank you."

"You're welcome." It's over this way. "I'm Songbird Cuoco."

Tanya doesn't know how to tackle this; the best she can is blunt and to the point, like giving a report.

"I am from a country you won't have heard of. I arrived in Taldor in an apparent magical accident. Consequently, I know very little of the local gods and - culture. At home, I am a military officer."

"I was recently - incidentally - informed that I am evil. ...that I detect as evil, and lawful. Naturally I don't want to go to hell. But I don't see a way to figure out why Pharasma judges me as evil, what specifically I'm supposed to repent of, and I don't know what the repentance would look like."

"The other two ways that have been mentioned to me are, one, enlist at the Worldwound. But besides the danger to myself, I don't really understand why fighting in this justified defensive war will count as good when doing the same thing at home apparently counted as evil. And I've been told an understanding, or the right intentions, matter. The other way is donating money to charity, and while I don't have a problem with doing that as long as I have enough left to live comfortably - once I secure a job here, which I haven't yet - I assume it's not possible to measure my progress, or how much I would need to donate in total. I could stop showing up as evil tomorrow, or in ten years, or perhaps never, and the same presumably applies to Worldwound service. I would much rather have a plan where I can tell how well I'm doing, or how far is left to go. Do you have any advice for me?"

"Hm.

"So the obvious possibilities here behind an Evil reading are that your war was not conducted with consideration for its combatants' consciences, or at least its non-divinely-empowered combatants' consciences, either because it should not have been conducted at all or because your commanders did not consider managing it in that way a priority; that you have harmed someone in an unrelated way that is now slipping your mind; or I suppose that whoever Detected you made a mistake. Such as lying, which is usually a mistake. We have a regular Sunday detection of evil available, and it doesn't work for most people but if you have an aura at all it will work for you. But you're right that it doesn't tell you how close you are. You have to figure that out without magic. ...I am curious how you think we manage this for people who are not strong enough to detect at all."

That is a very good question! "I haven't really thought it through, but - I assume people who grow up here, with your teachings available and - incorporated into other culture even if they don't visit Shelyn's churches in particular, know how to live their lives in a way that predictably doesn't leave them judged as evil? And the laws and military procedures must also be designed to ensure this." Belmarniss managed it just fine without any such help, so presumably in a society that's meant to do that it works reliably. (This implies Pharasma is fine with indiscriminate killing of people by race, which - Tanya's opinion of Pharasma aside - means she has no chance of guessing what Pharasma wants from her.)

"In my home country we have - different religions, with different teachings." The correct explanation here is 'we don't have a detect evil spell', and for that matter she doubts they have Pharasma since there seem to be a lot of judgy gods around, but that will probably not be believed and if it is it might reveal too much about herself. "I don't think that our war was unjustified; perhaps Pharasma disagrees. I know I followed the military law." Which was obviously not designed for Pharasma's sensibilities, but that just means she can't identify any specific things she did that she's supposed to repent of.

Also, Tanya has just realized that growing 'strong and tough' enough to register to Detect Evil is an even bigger incentive for people to keep fighting! Everyone wants to be sure they won't be tortured! Even when the way to learn this is very dangerous and also liable to get you tortured, many people probably won't be able to resist!

"I expect if you detect Lawful you did follow the military law. And I expect if you detect Evil that the law in question was not designed to protect you from harming people without coming to a grave decision about its necessity to protect others and the ultimate path to peace and the wish for the succor and safety of your enemies wherever that might prove possible. It is naturally inconvenient for generals moving game pieces on a map to account for individual soldiers needing to think these things through, and if their society does not demand of them that they manage it anyway, they will omit to do so.

"People who grow up around Good churches do not automatically do whatever we say. It is so, so perilously easy to think that one is doing good, or at least enough good, or at least not too much evil, in the course of whatever life one feels is the only one available to lead. In a way you are lucky that your war brought you enough strength to realize that it was hurting you - although if you're so powerful already as young as you are I expect many children like you died on the way and may now be suffering from the same arrangement."

Hmm. That does sound true. The part about people skirting the rules, that is, not the one about children. Although the fact that the many mages who died were adults doesn't make it any better.

Wishing for the safety of one's enemies while working diligently to kill them is perverse. If they want safety they should surrender, or not go to war in the first place! Besides, why would it matter what Tanya wished for as long as her actions stayed the same? Killing the nation's enemies is was her job. She fervently wished for peace, but what did that ultimately matter? The other side did not wish for peace, so her only way to get it was by defeating them. You could say that, because she failed to defeat them conclusively enough, her actions were ultimately unjustified, but if ever failing in battle makes one evil then Tanya really cannot see how any soldiers would ever pass that test! That's nothing less than a demand of inhuman perfection, or possibly omniscience!

...ahem. "I do have some thoughts about that, but I'm not sure if we need to spend our time discussing it? Pharasma is the only one whose opinion matters here, and now I have to deal with the situation as it is. ...one thing I can think of is that perhaps I ought to study the regulations of the Taldan army, if they reliably satisfy Pharasma and aren't crippled in battle by doing so. And consider what they would do if applied to the war I know. I - haven't gotten the impression so far that I can understand how Taldor's laws and customs manage to avoid evil, which means I don't understand the criteria for evil. I don't think just telling myself to follow the local law will bring about understanding, but since war is a domain I'm familiar with, maybe that will work better."

"I have time for you. All of the things I spend my time on are ultimately for the protection of souls who want my help, and you have the same number of souls as any other person who might knock on the door, and one in more knowable peril than most.

"Pharasma's opinion is the one that will determine your afterlife. And you do have to deal with having lived your life as you have. But that does not mean that considering the details of how it has gone and how you think about it can't matter. Repentance is possible on the instant even for people who lack the time or opportunity to go out and enact as much Good in the world as they have come to realize they yearn to. And it consists of nothing but coming to a clear-eyed realization about wishing to have done better instead of all of the moments when one did worse, instead.

"The military largely manages this problem by segregating it. There are tasks they will not assign to paladins and demands they will not make of clerics, because quite apart from caring about anyone's soul they care about having access to healing and Smites and water; and they will give both reasonably free rein to talk to the enlisted, the way I am talking to you, to scrape up what gains there are to be made that way among the people who they do force to take on those duties. And the rulers and generals commanding the movements of their armies are generally strong enough to read, to the point where some churches consider their panicked donations a reliable feature of their annual budget." She says all this last part gravely and sadly.

The military allows empowered clerics to be conscientious objectors, because otherwise the gods won't give them valuable spells, particularly healing. This is rational, for the army and for anyone who manages to become a cleric, but. "So even though they're all fighting for the same cause, making the biggest contributions they can according to their specializations, knowing what everyone else is doing, Pharasma thinks it's - bad to kill people but fine to heal soldiers to enable them to continue killing people? And - the generals often end up evil, often enough to predict it, and yet they keep doing it." Generals can, technically, be conscripted, but presumably not the rulers, so - "they're making a huge personal sacrifice on behalf of their country. And that implies it's almost impossible to fight a war without doing evil? Or at least, that if only one side does it, it will reliably lose against those who don't."

"If all war is evil, or at least all the most efficient and winning strategies are evil, that would make more sense to me than that our own war was uniquely bad. The simplest morality is the one that says you, personally, must not harm others, even to prevent a greater harm like defending your nation. It's not stable, people who are willing to be violent will just - take over everything using violence - but is Pharasma judging people like that? I got a different impression from the person I talked to earlier, but either or both of us could have been mistaken."

"...Pharasma has likes and dislikes but these are not precisely the same thing as things she judges to be good and evil. If Pharasma wanted to be Good, or for Good to prevail, she could arrange that, and she doesn't. I believe that probably does not matter to your situation, and it is a common enough simplification, but in case it is part of some misconception you have due to being from very far away I do want to mention it.

"I don't believe that all war must necessarily be evil. I think the Shining Crusade at least after Iomedae was appointed to its command was conducted overwhelmingly nonevilly, and if you are determined to be a soldier evermore I would send you to her people. It was and is a specialty of hers. In principle the Worldwound defense could be the same but in practice it is making too many concessions too carelessly to achieve this standard and Chelish soldiers die there and go to Hell every day, and who knows how many Mendevians and itinerants whose commanders are at least not actively trying to send them there. Again, if you were planning to go to the Worldwound I would recommend you the purest available concentration of empowered and thus verified Iomedaeans available as compatriots, the Lastwall-managed segment of the border.

"You talk like a Lawful person who is trying to make Law serve the function of Good. It can't. Law is a fine thing but it is a different thing. An explanation of why it isn't stable to refuse to harm people is an appeal to Law, and you are already Lawful and don't need to further convince me, or Pharasma, or anyone, of that."

Of course God(dess) the Judge doesn't just arrange for everyone to be Good! Then she wouldn't get to judge anyone, and the saints in Heaven would be sad without seeing people in Hell. And it would probably take away free will or something.

"I don't want to continue being a soldier! Assuming I can't return home. I was a soldier because I had to. I don't know that any war here is justified, I don't yet own any country here my allegiance, and I would be placing myself in risk while expecting to go to hell if I die. Even if Worldwound service were a guaranteed way to stop being evil I would have to weigh that against the possibility of dying too soon, and you say it may not even be as good as that."

"The instability isn't about law. It's a kind of mathematics, it's about - outcomes. If you want there to be less violence, and fewer people hurt, the best way to achieve that is for people to be willing to meet violence with violence. Ideally, the threat of counter-violence does most of the work. Being visibly strong works, having allies works, reliably defending your interests or the law works. Telling people not to fight back just ends up with many more people hurt. If nations are allowed to conquer their neighbors, who surrender rather than fighting back because they don't want people on either side to be harmed, the conquering nation will become stronger and use its new resources to conquer someone else, and they will oppress their new subjects. Individuals, or bad rulers, will take other people's property and deny them rights. They will keep doing this, and harming people, as long as it's profitable for them to do so. A theory of good can't work if it requires everyone to be good and falls over the moment an evil person shows up. ...if everyone was smart and rational then just the desire to avoid hell would be enough, but that clearly isn't working and never has to my knowledge."

"Obviously none of this matters to Pharasma. Maybe none of that logic matters, because in the face of hell we should all rationally prioritize our own afterlives even at the cost of having property or independent nations in life, or indeed at the cost of our lives. Is that being good, or is it just avoiding being evil? ...I'm sorry, I - got too worked up. I did not mean that sarcastically. I really don't understand how people can help others and do good things without - acquiescing to the existence of the military and police." The military that guards your borders, and the police that keeps your streets safe, while you sing pretty songs about the joy of colors.

"Applying mathematics to this kind of thing is a Lawful-person sort of thing to do. That doesn't make it wrong, but it is not, so far, steering you well, you are attending to Law at the very evident cost of your Goodness, and if you can break out of the frame long enough to see that there are other ways to approach the world this might serve you. Or perhaps you should just try to be Lawful Good. Heaven is good for those who go there and falling short gets you Axis, which is also good for those who go there. But you came to the Shelynites, and we seek the Good and purely the Good.

"You're talking about countries, and math, and threats, and profits, and stability, and rational self-interest. You have not once in this conversation wondered - at least not aloud, to me - what has become of any of the people you harmed in the war. You have not, in spite of your tendency to be defensive about how brilliantly you have damned yourself, told me about one single specific person who is better off because you were born."

...Belmarniss did tell her to try to consider other viewpoints, and to remember that she might be wrong about thing. And Tanya is trying, but -

"The people I harmed in war - directly - are mostly people I killed. You're saying I should... consider some of them might have gone to hell, and that is too great a price to make them pay whatever their crimes against me?"

What would have happened if Germania had somehow (ridiculously) surrendered instead of fighting the war? If it had surrendered to Legadonia, in the very beginning, or at least opened peace talks instead of counterattacking? And all the Germanians, military and politicians and the ruling family and the people had agreed to this? 

The Francois would attack them, of course. They did it as soon as they saw an opening, and that opening was Germania winning against Legadonia, just because they didn't win quickly enough.

So what if they surrendered to the Francois too? Well, presumably the commies would be next, racing to bite off the eastern provinces while Germania was busy being conquered in the west. 

If they just - disbanded the army, declared Germania an open country, fuck, disband the government while you're at it. Just have everyone peacefully till their land. The Francois and the Legadonians would negotiate some agreement to divide the western half of the country between them, and the commies would take as much as they could without fighting the Francois. Some number of Germanians would die, certainly; armies are not gentle when they conquer a hated enemy, even if there's no army to oppose them. Between a quarter and half of the population would be enslaved, all landowners and nobles and priests and educated people in the East executed or sent to labor camps. In the West, too, the industry would be plundered. And then there would be a temporary peace, while the great powers digested their gains and tried to figure out the best way to conscript the miraculously pacifist Germanians into their armies for the next great war to be fought on formerly Germanian lands.

It's possible to argue - to imagine - that fewer Germanians would die, in the end, than have died fighting the war that Tanya has lived through. If you optimize for the metric of fewest deaths, even without taking the other nations into account, and if you don't care about the quality of human lives in comparison, then that is a rational conclusion to make. 

Of course it's not stable. The next generation will be reeducated, terrorized if necessary, and conscripted into armies that are no longer Germanian. You need to die to achieve pacifism on the scale of a nation, and so do your children. But your only concern is for the fate of your soul, so that is not a problem. You're a model Christian, the kind that takes sermons not just seriously but literally (and also the bishop hasn't been paid to sermonize for the war). You're not even optimizing for the fewest deaths, or the least harm done by people to other people. You're just optimizing for nobody going to hell.

This is a very simple model, with very simple rules. Well, no, actually the rules are unknown and probably complex, because Tanya still doesn't know what Pharasma wants in any specificity. But everyone rational wants to avoid hell. And if it's the rational people who manage to avoid it, well, that's everyone else's problem, isn't it?

The only price is admitting you never cared about anyone or anything else except personal survival. And you knew that all along, didn't you.

"There are many people who are happy that I was born. People whose lives I saved in battle, over and over again. People I trained, who got to live because of it. People I served, whose plans came to fruition because I was a good subordinate. Countless thousands of soldiers who begged for me and mine to come save them on the battlefield, who rejoiced to see us in the sky. Everyone in the homeland, who got to live one day longer because I was fighting to defend them."

"Their names don't matter. Because they, and I, were wrong. I was not helping them. An earlier death, a worse performance as a soldier, might have spared them from hell. I should forget their names. I know better now, and I cannot help them any longer."

"Our commanders didn't know the war would do that. They would not have done everything they did, if they had thought it would lead us to hell. They - we - thought the only way to peace was through victory in war. There was no way for us to know any better. But that doesn't matter either." Not to Pharasma, and therefore not to Tanya.

"I regret that now. I would not have done it, if I had know the consequences. I won't do it again."

"But. I still need to learn what, exactly, I should and must not do." 

"This life matters too. If you killed me right now I would go to Nirvana, a bit early but not in the long run any the worse for wear, and you can guess this about me quite reliably because I'm a cleric, and it is never impossible that something terrible might happen in the remainder of my life to change that; and it would still be an Evil act. Keeping someone alive one day longer is almost always Good - if you know why. Killing someone who will go to Hell is not Evil - if you weight it correctly."

"...I don't understand. What are you weighing, against sending someone to hell? Saving an even bigger number of people from the same? Of course killing you for no reason would be wrong." Even Tanya can understand that much.

"To defend their victims. This is to be clear not, generally, a Shelynite specialty. I would very badly like to defend the victims of the wicked; but faiths have specialties and ours is to give people second chances. So I am not saying it is especially Shelynite to go crusading against the wicked to protect those they will harm. I'm saying only that it isn't Evil by itself, though it is often found in company with Evil because people are not good at arranging themselves to do harm and endure danger and witness atrocity without slipping.

"But if you are assailing the wicked to defend their victims you are safest in your Goodness when you most firmly have those victims in mind. It is not enough that they exist somewhere. A highwayman who kills a traveler for his money might by luck save the traveler's children from years of intolerable abuse and this does not exonerate him, when he was ignorant of it and would have done the same to a loving father. It is sometimes, if you are lucky, enough to think about those you protect only once - that someone chooses a Worldwound posting over another has something to do with the harm demons offer even if all that is on their mind ever after is the cold and the rations and the stress. But I think when Iomedae led the Shining Crusade and was throughout it all a paladin, who must never commit even one Evil act, and not only that but a high-touch commander who was not sequestering imagined-necessary Evils in less blessed corners of her army, she must have had in her thoughts at every moment the precious lives she was buying with every swing of her sword.

"But you do not want to be a soldier again. And that is very wise. It did not work out for you before, it does not work out for most people, and there are precious lives to nurture and keep safe without a sword in hand, always."

Ignore the Iomedae myths for the moment. Forget about armies and commanders. Start with something simple, to check that Tanya understands at all. The simplest possible scenario. "Suppose someone tries to kill you, and the only way you have to fight back is also potentially lethal. You know you are good; since they are trying to murder you, they are likely evil. Then it's better to die than fight back, because you'd be going to heaven - sorry, Nirvana - and they would likely be going to hell if you killed them in self-defense. Of course it would be even better to have non-lethal ways to stop them, and your death may also harm others - like children - this is only a toy example. Do I have that much right?"

"I could work some job that directly helps people without harming anyone. Like - firefighter? Or evacuating people, or something. I'm sorry, I don't think I would be any good at that in particular, it was just the example that came to mind. Or I could find a high paying job and donate most of the money. I still don't understand how to - disentangle what I'm doing myself, from what I'm enabling and assisting just by being part of the economy. If the Abadarans tell me I'd earn the most money by - introducing some technology from my homeland, like better communications or shipping, which isn't harmful in itself but which can be used by an army as much as by civilians, how can I know if it's better to do it or to refrain? If I earn a lot of money, and pay a lot in taxes, and the taxes go to fund a war as well as orphanages, and I know the war is happening, should I stop? Should I protest the war, or strike, to try to compel the government to stop it, or even rebel over it if it's bad enough? What is the difference between what I do myself, and what happens as a predictable result of my actions? Between action and inaction?"

Tanya needs to know the rules. Personal freedom is the freedom to walk your path knowing the consequences, the freedom to choose between that which is permitted and avoid that which is forbidden by the rules of the game. If you're unsure about the rules you have no freedom because you dare not make a wrong move. If you don't know the rules at all, you act to discover them. If you can't even do that, and you still know there are rules out there in the darkness with infinite punishment on the line, you are paralyzed into inaction.