"Hello Belmarniss." You don't need to be very perceptive to notice that Tanya is upset over something. "You can finish reading, I came here so we could talk on the way to the Abadarans."

"Did... something happen?"

Sigh. It would be nice (and good) not to burden Belmarniss with it, but realistically she isn't going to be able to avoid that. "I talked to a Shelynite priest, Songbird Cuoco. She didn't really tell me any new facts, but she helped me realize - belatedly - that I wasn't talking being sent to hell seriously. That I should make being good - or at least stopping being evil - my highest priority. All the rest is - tactics - I still want to ask the Abadarans how to make money, just, in guaranteed non-evil ways, and prioritizing good over making the most money." 

"Did you figure out, like, why you're evil?"

"Not in any specificity. But - my understanding is that war is evil by default. You need to follow very specific rules and restrictions to avoid being evil when you fight a war. Apparently even on Golarion there's tension, between the rules and the desire to win the war and try to atone for it later. On Earth we didn't have a detect evil spell, we didn't have those specific rules, so it's not surprising we didn't follow them even if we did our best not to be unnecessarily evil in general."

"A compounding factor might be that, once some soldiers on either side are evil, killing them sends them to hell and that is a much greater harm to them than the killing itself, so the killer becomes evil as well and it spreads. We - didn't think we were doing that."

The Christian theory of just war (between Christians of the same sect only, of course!) teaches that, if your defensive war is just and permitted, then the other side's offense is necessarily unjust, and so your enemy might well go to Hell when you kill them. You, however, will go to Heaven for this righteous deed. In almost any war both sides can convince themselves that they are just, so Tanya doesn't see how this helps anything. Everyone who wages an offensive war has an explanation of how it's in defense of something, like the property rights of your king, rightful heir to the neighboring kingdom. She prefers the local approach: measure the harm done to all people, weight them all equally, and you'll find that no war is justified that kills a million soldiers on either side. It is, in a sense, a more democratic and equitable approach. That doesn't mean everyone will reliably follow it, since it encourages people not to defend themselves as much, but Tanya's business is only making sure she follows it.

"...it'd surprise me if Good people weren't allowed to send folks to bad afterlives but I guess maybe all the raids on drow for slaves I've ever heard of precipitated some falls from grace."

"I think it's cumulative, and I don't really know the magnitude of how much anything counts. But the act of raiding drow, or anyone else, and of taking or keeping slaves, is evil. Because it hurts more people than it helps, and by more. That seems like a very simple case, with no mitigating factors."

It's a very simple rule. Suspiciously simple, in fact, and Tanya is of course going to check and double-check it carefully. She'll get second and third opinions from other priests and other churches, read the textbooks the Nethysians recommend. She hopes the simple version is right though.

"This cannot be the standard understanding but it could be the right one, I dunno."

Oh no. "Where do you think it differs from the standard one?"

"Well, if it were the standard understanding I think people wouldn't raid drow to free the slaves? They're not keeping the slaves for themselves, it's pretty dangerous to do, and if it weren't even understood to be Good I think very few people would find it fun. I guess I could also just be wildly wrong about what people think is fun."

"Oh - no, I'm sorry, I was confused. I thought you meant they were raiding the drow to take slaves. If they're doing it to free slaves - and make them actually better off - then I suppose there's some calculus where it comes out good on net. Like I said, I don't know the magnitude of things." She just has the children's catechism simple version of 'do no harm, and then also do some good on top of that'. "That's why I don't want to make a living killing people, even if they're wanted criminals and it's in defense of others, I - can't be sure if it actually counts as good in every instance." And as far as she knows, she's not penalized for avoiding situations where she'd have to decide anyway... she should confirm that later.

"Oh. Yeah, I assume people who raid drow to get stuff to have for themselves are probably evil especially if the stuff is people. Have you considered attaching yourself to a Good adventuring party and assuming whatever they're doing passes muster? Like, you could also do something else, you don't have to be an adventurer, but you'd be really good at it."

"Of course I considered it; it would be easiest for me to quickly make a big difference in - outcomes, for anything - as a soldier. The difficulty is in trusting the difference would be to the good, there is clearly a lot of complexity involved. I can't trust any particular party to be perfectly good and not make any mistakes, and it's fine for them if they are observably cumulatively good but I should be more careful about not committing smaller incidental evils along the way. Since that's how I got where I am. I assume good people can risk it because they have Neutral as a buffer, but I can't measure how far away I am from Neutral. ...and of course I shouldn't risk dying while I'm evil, so a slower less risky plan would be better."