"Other broadly-incorrect rumors Heaven accommodates to reassure new arrivals … I'd be pretty surprised if there was just the one."

"But not that you specifically know of?"

"It's never been an area of focus for me. I could try to remember some comments, or you could find a book?"

"Makes sense. Hey, I didn't specifically optimize this question to upset you and it's not flirting either, but have you ever thought about what you'd do if you had a devil in your power and no one but you to hold you back from whatever you wanted to do with them?"

"Not really. If you assume I'm a perfect copy of my mother the answer would likely include 'pelt them with fruit that loudly and insistently communicates concepts that are anathema to their fundamental nature' but that would be an obviously incorrect assumption, I'm not even a woman. I mostly haven't been provoked to vengeance the same way other people I know have. I don't think that makes me a better person, just a possibly luckier one. My current model is that vengeance is provoked when one is opposed by something which is both somewhat effective, but also seems somewhat likely to meaningfully change in response to vengeance, and I haven't encountered much in that category. People might kick furniture they don't like, but they don't scheme about it."

"Anyway, if I had a devil fully in my power I'd probably want to redeem them, depending on how much power we're saying I have. This is not, to be clear, a process they would consider in any way acceptable, and there's arguments in these sorts of cases about whether doing so even meaningfully preserves continuity of identity or not. It's a favor to the resulting entity, and a devil's life is dominated by fear of their superiors, not joy, so there's an argument that it's in some way nice to fix that, but again, it's not in line with their preferences. If I didn't have that option I'd probably put them in stasis, I … would expect that engaging with them would be bad for me."

"The fruit thing sounds fascinating. This is a tangent but Hell's upper hierarchy's been missing for a while and it's - nice, mostly."

"If I had the fruit I'd just offer you some, it doesn't need to be thrown, but also it'd plausibly be totally incompatible with you and just seem like a generic squishy object. And, yeah, the upper hierarchy missing being mostly nice makes sense. …is that a tangent, or is it an explanation for why you asked what I'd do with a devil under those circumstances, and if not, why did you ask that?"

"That is a tangent and not why I asked. I asked because - did you know you can make angels in Hell? You can. Or I can. I think. I'm almost there, I guess something could go wrong. I've thought a lot about whether I could use her to fuck with Heaven and how I can break her afterward or instead and - I haven't thought about that situation much in Milliways yet, and I thought maybe I was missing ideas less predictable than 'more torture' and 'let them go'."

"What … is your process, there? Anyway, putting her in stasis is neither torturing her nor letting her go but I wouldn't call it, uh, interesting or fun. Maybe you could try to work together on breaking the mind-control system? You both have reasons to want that, but they're extremely different reasons, and I'm not sure if that kind of partnership has been tried before, so it could be worth checking."

"Given that I didn't bring her to Milliways she is in stasis. I have worked with angels on trying to change morality before. Just not ones who have been carefully cultivated to be incapable of achieving anything I might find at all threatening."

"Okay, so I suppose your interesting fun is in fact entangled with her being in stasis, so points to you there, I guess. I don't think there are any ideas for interacting her that spring to mind that you wouldn't have already come up with. You could … read books aloud to her, she'd probably be confused, that is an interaction which is neither torture nor letting her go."

"I have done that! I have also let her have input on the wallpaper. I'm not bad at coming up with things I'd find interesting to do that aren't torture, or that are. I had the idea that - hm - like, there's a reason why when I work with angels we all have to be people who will keep our word to each other. Some people might have feelings about that that derive from being good or evil, but the reason is actually neither. Noticing things like that is one of the things that made me hopeful about escaping morality although it actually turned out to be totally unrelated to the way I did escape it. I had just thought maybe from an outside perspective there was something like that."

"Oh, Law! That's definitely a thing. Our devils have it, our demons don't. Saira's country has materials on it you can ask Bar about, and so does my world, and I do my best to keep my word even if I really dislike who I'm talking to. It's just that … even though devils have Law, this still doesn't make interacting with them generally a good idea: I suspect devils don't occupy any intermediate space between 'does not offer enough to be worth communicating with' to 'dangerous for an untrained person to communicate with even if they can't take actions besides talking', and I don't see myself as adequately trained, so I try to avoid it as much as possible, such as by using trained intermediaries."

"Should I be insulted that you talk to me?"

"I don't think so? I think that either you're not being all that manipulative or you're doing an amazing job playing the part, and the former is a decision, not an indicator of a skill issue. You're presenting as someone who genuinely has any values besides the cluster containing sadism and status and not angering your superiors, to the point of giving off somewhat costly signals about it. And I also consider some risk of very high-skill manipulation an acceptable cost for being able to interact peacefully with people, including people who have done a lot of things I disapprove of. I'm also not sure anyone else has properly tried offering you friendly interaction, but that has been tried with devils local to my world."

"People have tried being friendly but more than half of them got out of it intact so maybe you're onto something. Anyway, I'm not sure if I do just mean Law, I think I mean the supercategory that contains Law and Chaos and the compromises people make for practicality and I think maybe more things besides."

"The entire non-moral component of approaches to interpersonal interactions and otherwise living one's life is going to be a pretty large space. I'm sure you can find lots of texts on it, though there's a tendency for a lot of people to conflate their preferred approach with goodness and you'd have to skip those writers or, uh, compensate for that."

Shrug. "I'll get to it all eventually. I was just wondering if there was something obvious I was overlooking because of all the mind control and it doesn't sound like there is. Thanks, though."

"You're welcome. I'm not sure whether to say I'm sorry I couldn't help more or that I'm glad the mind control didn't interfere with too many concepts. Feel free to ask more questions or such."