it's obvious if you understand decision theory
Next Post »
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 2000
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

In the seventh circle of Indapatta, as seen from this entrance, there are mansions, exorbitant-looking brothels.  A fenced-off garden is set about with a hundred species of flowers; a few isolated pavilions within glow to her arcane sight with silencing-magics, though they don't quite look like the Avistani standard version of that.

Nothing that looks like an Avistani temple, at least not to her immediate vision.

Following the innkeep's directions will take her down a long, slightly curving, wide road from this entrance-gate, tracing the inner edges of the seventh ring of lotus petals.  Probably not the fastest way to get to her destination, but plausibly the simplest way if you didn't want somebody to need to follow even more turns.

Permalink

She doesn't actually mind sightseeing, though she suspects Ri-Dul does. Maybe after she does this she should do some magic item crafting with him to show him she's competent and not just a charlatan.

Permalink

Ri-Dul doesn't look bored, but doesn't look like anything particularly not-bored either.  "First time out of Cheliax, excepting the Worldwound?" he says.  "And of course that brief trip to Osirion."

Permalink

"And Hell. I haven't done a lot of tourism on this plane, though."

Permalink

"Don't expect the rest of it to look this nice.  Only a few places.  I do highly recommend Quantium; there is not much to Nex, but what there is, is lovely."

Permalink

"I want to visit Nex after I have talked things through with Keltham and am qualified to feel smug about how we handled our differences much better than Nex and Geb did theirs."

Permalink

"I do believe that is literally the lowest bar on a successful relationship that I have ever heard of, and I hope you'll forgive my frankness when I say that I wish to hear no more of it."

Permalink

That's an impressive degree of incuriosity, given the stakes. Which of course he has no idea of. Because they've hidden it from him. 

Whatever.

Where's the temple of Irori.

Permalink

They do appear to be entering the more religious section of the seventh circle, now.  It is theoretically equal in social rank to the mansions and expensive brothels, but you have to go through a gate to get there, one that looks like it would be rather more guarded going the other way.  There are no beggars in the streets here either, no urchins, but also not quite the same quality of carefully tended garden as was in the sixth ring.

It is known even in Avistan, to those Avistani who have learned anything at all of Vudra, that the Master of Masters is to this empire as Asmodeus to Cheliax, in the sense of not being thought mightier than Pharasma but understood to be preeminent god of this land and its pantheon.

If Sevar knows that much, she may correctly guess that the elaborate many-tiered building looming above all others in this lotus petal is dedicated to Irori.  Plausibly, continuing to follow this road and taking a right, as directed, would take her there in time.

Permalink

Also she can fly.

Permalink

She'll attract much attention that way, obviously, though not of an obviously dangerous-looking sort.  Fewer do fly about these streets than in Absalom.

In almost no time at all, then, she's before an elaborate many-tiered building that has been decorated, but not weakly.  There is nothing about this building that is thin, pretty in a way that is fragile, all ornamentation is wrought in metal and thickly enough that you could envision a hurricane sweeping this temple and leaving it essentially unscathed.

In the outer courtyard of what appears to be the temple's entrance, there is a tall statue of Irori, such as Irori is now reputed, this long time hence, to have appeared in his mortal life.  You must look hard to see that he is muscular beneath the simple robes he wears.  He strikes no pose.  The statue is clad in metal, and colored as some metals may be colored by searing flame of carefully controlled temperature.  It is colored, this statue, but not with paint that could be worn away by time or hurricanes.

(Obviously, those who truly understand Irori would consider this immense foolishness even so, but some effort has been made to annoy them less.)

Whatever business the many people in this courtyard were about will be negated by Carissa Sevar flying here, followed by Ri-Dul a respectful distance behind her.  Some gape openly, some do cast her more measured and dignified glances.  At least one of the people gaping at her unabashed looks like she might be a senior monk.

Permalink

She'll land at the base of the statue.

 

Senior monk it is, if she can correctly identify monks. "I am seeking the dedicates of Carissa Sevar, whose faith, I have been told, is asked to operate subject to the guidance of the Irorian faith here."

Permalink

"I wouldn't call it guidance.  More that our faith was asked to take responsibility for permitting such as is to be permitted.  As such, I'll ask you why you seek them, and also, I'm curious what brings you here out of Avistan for it.  I'd thought Avistan the center of Sevarism."

Permalink

"I am Carissa Sevar. Everyone goes to the same Hell, so I don't see why it should be a faith of any specific nation."

Permalink

 

"Well.  I was going to send you about your way with a younger monk to guide you, but you know, why don't I go with you along the way, and ask a number of questions I'm suddenly extremely curious about.  Whose answers, I'll warn you, I've no doubt I'll be repeating to a number of others."

Permalink

"You are welcome to accompany me, and to say anything you heard of me to anyone who'll hear it."

Permalink

The monk turns about and heads out from the courtyard, striding at exactly the quick speed that Carissa was flying when she came here.

"Are you a renunciate priest of Irori, to start, and do you also say as much in Avistan, for that rumor is recent and seems to me suspiciously chosen for Vudra."

Permalink

"It's true, but I've never said so save in Dis itself; other powers have intervened to take word of me around the world, and I imagine they chose the words that would be most persuasive. I do not know them to have spread anything false."

Permalink

"That sounds like it must be part of a fascinating story.  Do you also attest that you have a compact with Asmodeus that gives you all souls pledged to you out of Creation, if only you can conquer it?"

Permalink

wait how do they know

Permalink

- well, Cayden could've - just told someone - there's all Aspexia's and Abrogail's desperate efforts at secrecy confounded -

Permalink

 

 

"Do you, Carissa Sevar, conquer territories or hearts in Hell's name, be you fairly judged by Hell's Prince to be the most prime mover in such conquests, such unsold and unclericed souls from those lands and peoples as enter into Hell calling your name, in death as they called it in life and did you and Hell more service than disservice, shall pass into your custody or the custody of those in Hell you name your slaves or allies;

and when you have conquered three-quarters of Avistan all such souls out of Avistan shall be yours as well; when three-quarters of Golarion is yours, all such souls out of Golarion; when three-quarters of this plane is yours, all such souls out of this plane; when three-quarters of Pharasma's Creation is yours, all such souls out of Creation; while Hell's dominions of those lands and peoples last; and all this be annulled should you fail finally after death in being acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power, or should the yield in strength and wealth from those souls granted you be less than He accounts as ordinary from His subservient Powers of Hell; or should the Prince of Hell fairly judge you to have entered His despite in death or life," she says, with the (accurate) air of someone called on to recite these precise words frequently. 

Permalink

"And the foremost principle of your doctrine is the anathema of any soul being destroyed or ending; you promise mercy to your followers in Hell foremost because you fear that otherwise they might seek destruction in Abaddon."

Permalink

"....huh. That's not, descriptively, all that false of me, but it's not at all how I'd make the core argument. First of all, there's no mercy in Hell, and no one should go there wanting it; I can make them stronger, better, more capable and more alive than anywhere else will make them, and they should come to me for that. Secondly, the way I'd make the core argument, is:

outside places like Cheliax, who goes to Hell? Who do you think of as - the prototypical example, of a person you'd be unsurprised to learn found their way there, after trial?"

Permalink

"Someone who thought themselves aimed for Axis, but who greatly deluded themselves, as mortals do, about how Good all their actions would be judged by Pharasma to be, at trial.  Perhaps because they thought they had reasons.  Perhaps they did have reasons but not the kind Pharasma cares about."

Total: 2000
Posts Per Page: