"Abadar would almost certainly sell us information about industrial processes if it were permitted for Him to do so."

"Is there a known reason why that prohibition is meant to be protective of mortals?"

"It might be a concession as part of a deal that was overall beneficial to mortals but I think if it were, in itself, beneficial to mortals, then Abadar would be handling your arrival here very differently."

"Because Abadar cares about mortals' welfare?"

On reflection, when Keltham was casting out his thoughts, seeking the god-of-Keltham, he did not, in fact, specify that his god should care about any such thing, only the forms of Coordination.

Keltham, at that time, had not thought much of being told to care about other people, rather than just trading with them honestly.

"Abadar cares about trading fairly with mortals. What we do with our share of the gains from trade is up to us. He's the god of our having more resources and more capacities, not of us employing them in any specific way. But, if He had some way that was not very costly to Him, to make us much better off, He would do it, anticipating that we are the kind of people who, when we've grown up, when we're richer and stronger, will repay Him the favor, as the fair-trading gods do among themselves."

"But he's not, like, sad about people going to Hell."

"I would assume that He objects to most instances in the real world of people going to Hell but if people, fully comprehending what Hell is, decide to go there for some benefit to them, and get the promised benefit to them, I wouldn't imagine He objects to that, no. Nor do I."

"Why would he object to most instances in the real world of people going to Hell?  Because everyone ought to go to Axis, and not Hell or Elysium?"

" - no, because they're not making an informed choice and if they're promised a benefit they might not receive it. Elysium is fine, why would Abadar object to people going to Elysium?"

"From Abadar's perspective, what if anything, in this regard, differentiates going to Hell from... let's say, getting sick and dying of a painful disease?"

"Your question seems obvious enough to me I wonder if I'm misunderstanding it. Abadar prefers, for all entities which have values and priorities, that they deal fairly and be dealt fairly with; that they prosper through creating wealth, and have more resources with which to attain what they value. If an entity prefers not to get sick and die painfully, which nearly any entity would, then presumably they'll expend some of their own resources on preventing that, and if they didn't prevent that, they didn't have enough resources, and that's worse than the world where there was more abundance. 

If an entity for some puzzling-to-you-or-I reason preferred to get sick and die painfully, or had lots of resources but didn't disprefer getting sick or dying painfully enough to spend the resources on that instead of on other things they valued more, then that's - fine? It is no concern of ours, if other peoples want other things, so long as they're the kind of people who deal fairly; in a sense that's why dealing fairly is so important, because it permits us to grow wealthier alongside entities very alien to us with concerns very different from ours. 

If an entity dies and goes to Hell because someone falsely told them that Hell was a really nice afterlife where they'd have a lovely time, that is anathema to Abadar. If they die and go to Hell because someone truthfully told them that you go to Hell if you murder lots of people, but they really wanted to murder lots of people, because they valued the products of those murders more than they disvalued going to Hell - fine. If they die and go to Hell because they want to - fine."

"Well, Iomedae said that Abadar wanted me to explain what - I was thinking - back then - when I contacted Abadar without having any idea who I was reaching out to.  Roughly, that, but with math.  And I owe Abadar, so I'll get that done.  It's not something I can do in a day, but I'll get it done."

Breakfast is gone.  Keltham doesn't really remember eating it, but there was food on his plate and now there's not, so he must have eaten.

"If we call it here, did you get your money's worth?"

That still matters a lot, to Keltham.  It's just that other things have started to matter too.

"- yes, I did." He looks troubled. "There are many Lawful Good followers of Abadar, Keltham. A common reason, among humans, to follow the god of trade and prosperity and fairness, is because you want the world to be better, and you assess that trading with Abadar will give you resources you can use to achieve your own ends. Abadar sees that, and approves of it in us. Wealth means - fewer dead children, fewer suffering people, fewer people going to Hell - which looks like much less of a good trade, when safety and wealth and power can be attained in other ways."

"Other people joining this multiagent dilemma just have to consider which side they can most benefit given their comparative-advantage and who they should make a little stronger.  I'm trying to figure out what the final gameboard should look like when it's over."

"I suspect I already know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyways.  In all of the negotiations between gods, that decided all this setup, was any representative of humanity - of the mortals - ever invited to the table, without their having become a god themselves?"

"I doubt it very much. We, uh, wouldn't actually understand what was going on, and we'd be damaged by attempting it. It's the awkwardness inherent to Abadar's efforts to trade with us; He tries very hard, but actually cannot meet the standards of mutual comprehension and legibility that gods have among another. There are similarities to trying to do right by your two-year-old, or your horse."

"Sure.  There's one god of cooperating with agents who cooperate with Him, even if those agents can't understand Him well enough to make their cooperation conditional on His cooperation."

"And then, to the other gods who were never human, we're just a sort of object that they can arrange in ways that suit their utility function."

"We're like that to all of the ancient gods, really.  It's just that Abadar's utility function is about unconditionally treating agents the way you'd treat them if they actually could negotiate with you."

"Most everything out there in the universe is going to be very, very alien to us, and have no concern for us as we have none for them. Trade is - a way to have wealth and abundance and mutual benefit even though that's true.

....also I think the ancient Good gods do care about humans more than that summary captures, but I'm not really an expert on the ancient Good gods."

"I wish, alongside a lot of other wishes, that I could from dath ilan bring in a few hundred thousand novels from the Trade With Aliens genre.  I think you'd enjoy them.  Though you'd probably disagree some with dath ilan, about where the average author draws the line about 'aliens you should not trade with'.  It was a Lawful Good civilization, not a Lawful Neutral one."

Different authors drew that line in different places, as produced millions and millions and billions of discussion-board comments about whether a line was being drawn in the right place.

Keltham can't recall hearing of any books about whether to trade with Hell.

Well, to be fair, if that did exist in dath ilan, it would be far in the depths of the Ill-Advised Consumer Goods shop and Keltham wouldn't have heard about it.

"I need to find somebody who indexes the palace library and then do a lot of sporadic reading, on topics including ancient Good gods.  Possibly see you around, I don't know how long you're staying for - you're usually in Absalom?"

"Yes, though it's not a long trip, you wouldn't have to pay me much to make it if you want me specifically again. My actual specialty is in strategies for land reform, likely not relevant to the most immediate of your plans."

"Civilization's end-state was to charge an annual fee for the value of the land before it was improved, or for the scarcity value of underlying resources being extracted if those resources were scarce, which conceptually was the rent of everybody in Civilization and in practice was used to run Governance.  I was pretty upset as a kid about how it wasn't just being paid to me directly.  If you want to know how the pricing schemes worked, I can describe them with another five minutes I'm happy to take.  If you already know where you're going and the big problem is getting Golarion there, I can't help as much."

"I'd say getting Golarion there is the harder half of the problem but I will definitely take five minutes of your time to explain the details of how that's implemented, if it's on offer."

Doesn't require much thought from him, if he's talking to somebody who already knows some of the math.  Everybody in dath ilan knows how this works and why.

Then Temos Sevandivasen will depart this meeting practically glowing with delight, despite all the concerning stuff in the middle there.

Keltham does remember at the last minute to quickly inquire, before he goes, about Asmodia's warning that he needed to ask about early, that it was illegal here to say some things about the Pharaoh.  That seems like something it might be wise to ask somebody from Absalom.