"....and those are, uh, doctrinal disputes they have with the other Sevarites?"

"No, orthodox Sevarites would agree with all of those claims, but the general public doesn't know that and neither do most post-Sevarites, so it's a very effective message for recruiting more post-Sevarites.  A lot of them also have tragic stories about how they were raised in your sect as children, and ended up permanently stunted by all of the messaging about suppressing your emotions with numbers, or how they were fooled into giving away all of their gold to Effective Asmodeans, or traumatized by believing that everybody suffering in Hell was suffering because they couldn't manage to conquer a single country for you."

" - how old is my sect in Taldor?"

"About a month, according to Sevarite orthodoxy, but according to the post-Sevarites it's been hidden inside our country for the last decade.  The current outer face of orthodox Sevarism - if they acknowledge its existence at all - is a smokescreen put up by your true core followers who believe in replacing all of their emotions with numbers."

"...so the people who claimed they were... raised by Sevarites and are so weak they ended up emotionally broken by it... are making that up? Why would anyone make that up? No one would ever associate with someone who was openly that pathetic! If that's the first move of a ploy the second move pretty much has to be dying in a ditch of tuberculosis!"

"It's the redemption story that's standard for their sect.  They're claiming that they were that pathetic and are now no longer that pathetic, having been saved by the light of post-Sevarism.  Sevarism is just an extremely popular thing to be 'post', if you see what I'm saying.  Not actual Sevarism, the Sevarism that's been underground in this country for a decade, backed by multiple wealthy wizards, teaching people to replace their emotions with numbers."

"- to be clear, this situation is not my fault, it's one I inherited from my predecessor.  I've been making steady headway on it since then."

Carissa is starting to understand why you might need torture to fix people sometimes. 

"Who else."

"I suppose I'd be remiss in not listing This Part Of Taldor, since it contains many influential figures in Opparian Sevarism, but they don't have any doctrines, which is why they just call themselves This Part Of Taldor.  That is, they're people who find themselves drawn to something about the atmosphere of Sevarism, Effective Asmodeanism, and post-Sevarism, but that thing isn't any of the ideas or political positions and they aren't willing to affiliate themselves with those, but they do want to go to the same gatherings as us on a regular basis."

"Do they want to go to Hell."

"You'd have to ask them individually because they wouldn't acknowledge any collective position on the topic.  If all of them gave the same answer individually, and they found that out, some of them would probably change theirs to avoid having a collective position."

"I see. And that's everybody?"

"The Iomedaen Sevarists want to back you in taking over at least one country that Lawful Evil people could go to live in, so that if they died, they'd get better treatment in Hell, especially women who had to expose their babies and so on.  They're hoping that's much more scalable than current solutions.  Iomedaen Sevarists want as few people as possible to go to Hell, but if they have to go to Hell, they should go to Sevar.  Most of them think it probably can't work, but it'd be so important, if it was true, that they think it has to be tried.  They're led by Calpas, a supposedly reformed ex-mugger."

"Their core doctrine obviously contradicts our own, but at the same time, we try to look as close to them as possible, because that muddies the political waters for anybody trying to paint Sevarists as Asmodean or Evil."

"Have they picked a country they agree I can have?"

"Debating which territory is most of what they do during their gatherings, as I understand it."

"I see."

"And finally the Mathematical Sevarists claim to be the 'real Sevarism' and go around openly affiliating with wizards, talking about mathematical methods and other such things that offend the public... fundamentally, I'd say that it's Sevarism for people who have no political awareness and no interest in acquiring political awareness and want to feel superior about their own lack of Splendour."

"And their leader, you mentioned, is some wizard?"

"Their primary financial backer is Kurshar, a sixth-circle wizard who built himself a tower a mile outside of Oppara, and who's now famous for replying, when somebody asked him why not somewhere more fashionable, 'The land was cheaper there and I can Teleport.'  To give you some idea of what sort of man we're talking about, here."

"How pragmatic. I wonder what he's in it for."

"Not his place in Hell, I expect.  He bought his way to Lawful Neutral, and didn't even bother to hide the donations as most people in his position would."

"Well, you never know, maybe Pharasma will revoke that exemption and he'll end up in Hell and wants to hedge his bets."

"I rather think if that was the case he'd be backing us!  What he's trying to accomplish by backing the Mathematical Sevarists, I have no idea.  It can't be to make wizards look better, because the fact of wizards backing anybody will make them look bad and then wizards can't gain prestige from backing them."

"Truly a dilemma for wizards."

A blank look is replaced by sudden alarm, as though of realizing who he's talking to.  "Oh, nobody thinks of you as a wizard except for post-Sevarists!  You're a nascent goddess and, anyways, real wizards don't look as good as you do."

"Would I be right in imagining that in Taldor, mostly only wizards go to the Worldwound, as it's so far away?"