"Yes!  Except you can get out of it if you want.  Some people like that challenge... and other people are happy not to.

"There was one woman who really wanted to be a nun, except there weren't any convents nearby in her homeworld that would accept her... so she made sure the same religion would be practiced in Villarosa and went off to be a nun there.  I think she had a satisfying time for a while before being martyred.

"Or, I heard from another angel about this one woman who was fine being a slave as long as she could design her perfect mistress.  I never heard the end of her story, but -" the angel shrugs.  "It could have worked out?"

That's fascinating and he really should ask more about the previous world-designers (discomfort, at how powerful Lila's organization is, how he can't do anything if they decide to stop playing nice).

"What's the strangest set of choices you've ever heard of someone in my position making?"

"Strangest?"

She stares into the sky blankly for a minute.  An aurora blossoms across maybe a quarter of the sky in the direction she's staring in.

"... There're so many ways to say 'weird,' but I have to mention this man who grabbed Peggy Sue and Good Ending and Ghost in the Flesh all together, and made time magic an established practice in Villarosa, and between her own machinations inside Villarosa and what she'd arranged here, just about everyone in the school ended up having memories of a different timeline!  I needed to watch it dozens of times before I understood it!  In the end, she got her Good Ending, but it wasn't anything like what she'd expected."

"Wow. Any others that went in unexpected directions?"

"Unexpected by me, or by them?"  She laughs.

"There're tons of both!"

"I'd love to hear some of your favorites."

The angel ruffles her wings and stares up at the sky.

"My favorites...  Well, I like a lot of characters who did go in the expected directions in unexpected ways."  She smiles indulgently.  "But of my favorites who went in totally unexpected directions...

"There was a girl who chose a lower-tech age and the 'Scientific Revolution' perk, and leaked enough hints that before the end people were building spaceships to vie for her hand and the Canonical Heroine's... and incidentally colonize the moons in the process.  She lost and was Exiled, but by that time she was Grand Duchess of the medium moon and had a very exciting life guiding settlement of other planets and negotiations with the Fay and Sylphs and other people there."

"And then - You saw the 'Save the World' flaw?  A lot of the most exciting people picked that.  There are several who linked their 'Dark Secret' with the Dark Lord, and a few of them who took 'Unprepared' to forget it... but there was one man who decided that she was the last treasure the Dark Lord needed to conquer the world.  Of course, he tried to kidnap her.  But because of how the magic system worked out... I think he'd planned this but I'm not sure... the Dark Lord needed to get her consent on some level.  After several more escapades, the Dark Lord ended up installing himself as Headmaster of the Royal Academy and meddling in the romance storyline!

"There was a battle, of course - but it was a tournament at the school, limited by pact to avoid hurting the students - and both she and the Canonical Heroine were meddling on all sides."

Maybe he shouldn't have asked. He's going to get railroaded into picking Save the World, and then he won't. What's the lowest-stakes story she'll accept? No, this is still the wrong goal. He should be finding ways to trade what the angel wants for more control over the worldbuilding.

"Hmm, maybe I shouldn't tell you all my plans, then, so some of it will come as a surprise."

"Oh, that would be fun!"

"... but I want you to be having a fun story too, without unpleasant surprises when something doesn't work out the way you wanted it to!  So please at least talk with me about the worldbuilding?"

Smile. "I have a lot of fun worldbuilding ideas, but a lot of them I'd like to be outside Villarosa. As for Villarosa itself, can I ask your help with something?"

Oh, that's good!  Someone whose vision sweeps beyond just one country, across the world!

"Oh!  Most people are happy with just looking at Villarosa itself; I'm be glad to see what you're doing with a broader sweep!  And - of course!"

Either most people around the universe lack a functioning sense of responsibility, or the organization happens to filter for people who would make terrible gods.

"You've mentioned that social rank needs to be important in Villarosa. I want to design a world where everyone has enough, so how would that work? Could the only difference between a noble and a commoner be that nobles can afford gold and silks, while commoners can't?"

"Yes!  At least if you're taking that by synecdoche - gold and silks, and caviar and the best veal, and human servants or fancier AI servants, and things like that.  It's normal in the Space Age for everyone to have enough to live on, and for most people to have enough for comfort.  You can certainly go farther and give everyone enough for at least some level of comfort!

"Silks specifically get a lot cheaper to make in the Industrial Age let alone the Space Age, because the worms producing them can be kept anywhere... though artificial silks are usually even cheaper, so rich people sometimes choose to wear real natural-made silk as a status symbol?"

She smooths her own skirts.  "I made these to duplicate natural fabric, but that's just because of my own backstory, and because I can make any sort of clothes by magic.  In most worlds in the Global Age or later, most people are wearing artificial fabrics... unless they have magic that doesn't play well with artificial fabrics.  That does sometimes happen."  For a moment, she grins knowingly.

"Are people usually happy, in a Space Age world?"

That's a big question.  She needs to think about it a bit.

"... Usually yes.  Much more often than in the Dawn of Progress or either sort of Archaic world.

"At least, usually yes you asked them if their lives as a whole were happy... there're certainly people who'd say they really aren't by other standards, like because they live with the constraints of biological bodies, or because some of them don't have biological bodies..."

That's good! If people weren't happy then he'd want to switch settings!

"What does that mean, to suffer because you live with the constraints of biological bodies, or because you don't have one? And what does it mean to be noble in a world like that?"

"Oh -"  She runs her hands down her sides and legs.  "Bodies get aches and pains, of course, let alone sicknesses and the sort of pains that might not heal, or that come back every month or so, and the risk of worse -"

She can smile about it a lot more now that her body works by magic at least as much as biology.

"A lot of that, you can help with magic or technology.  But you can't totally take away all of it, even in a Space Opera, unless you get to the point where a lot of people will say that it's interfering with your happiness all in itself by detaching you all too much from your body."

"I thought that maybe people could still grow old, but not suffer too many health problems from growing old, then die suddenly, usually in their sleep. And maybe they could have a birthmark, or something, that slowly fills in over the course of their life, and when it fills completely they die of old age."

"Yes!  Though if the birthmark is reliably and steadily filling in, everyone would know almost exactly how long they have to live, and..."  She spreads her hands.  "That would have so many consequences!"

"Like what?" Lila has experience with making worlds so he really ought to be getting her help, insofar as he can.