It's not that Griffie thinks it's wrong to live one's life focused on herding goats or raising children or such. Maintaining a human village is very difficult and time-consuming and generally encouraged by humans who like living in villages. But the situation where the most broader-goal-oriented person around is Vaal, and the person who seems to have spent the most time thinking about having effects on the broader world is Vaal, and the thing where Vaal is shockingly sane for people who apparently work for an evil god who wants to kill everyone, et cetera, seems to really suggest that that the next step here is talking to Vaal and figuring out whether ey can talk the seemingly sane and thoughtful people who want to destroy the world out of it.

Actually, the next step is scrying the party, specifically eir jackal Cassie (who's probably the worst at resisting scries, especially from Griffie) and trying to message her. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Griffie hopes that this is due to distance issues, or the party being paranoid and resisting the scry, and not due to eir friends being dead.

And now the next step is to talk to Vaal. Where's Vaal?

Just finishing breakfast and saying goodbye to another merchant heading in the opposite direction.

Griffie greets Vaal. Does Vaal want to explain working for Ganon and wanting everyone to die and such now that Griffie has more words?

"Hey! Sure. So, I don't know much about your world or your species - here most species that can talk can also feel sensations called pain, which are attention-getting and usually unpleasant. There are also emotions like sadness and anger that people usually don't like feeling - sadness is a normal feeling when you lose something you like, and anger is a normal emotion when someone you love loses something they like. Are you following so far?"

"I'm following so far."

"You learn really quickly! So, in general, people have experiences like those, and don't like them. It's normal for people to slowly get worse over time - like, they think less quickly, they forget things, they get weaker. They have injuries that don't heal all the way. They have more and more pain. - To be totally fair, people are working on fixing that, and I'm mostly mentioning it as something representative, not as the only reason by itself. Another thing that happens a lot is hitting babies to make them breathe. And another thing that happens a lot is people getting sick - in the kinds of people that happen to be at this stable, usually that causes pain and makes it hard to breathe and makes it hard to sleep, which people usually don't like. Basically, pain and sadness and anger happen a lot. They happen to almost everyone. And sometimes death is a useful escape but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the dead are reborn and go through all of that again and again. Sometimes instead they aren't reborn and - you can hear those ones screaming, sometimes, sort of. Not exactly like you hear a sound, but they're there. To be fair, again, they don't always scream - screaming is a thing people do when they're in pain - some of them are fine. But a lot of them are not fine. And I don't know of any way to save all of them without unmaking the world."

"Can you not interact with the dead people who aren't reborn, and if I help people fix that will you not want to unmake the world? That seems like it would both help the dead if we do it right, and if things for the dead are better then people who really hate being alive might find being dead more acceptable."

"You can interact with some of them sometimes. What're you thinking of trying?"

"In Suaal there's spells and weapons and such for doing stuff with dead people if they're still there but hard to get to? If they really want to be unmade and I have time I can perhaps learn to make a weapon to do that. Better to make them not feel things and sleep and not unmake them, so later they can wake again, I think. But if time matters, weapons may be faster."

"That... actually might be a good idea. Do - hm. There's no particular reason you'd know yet whether you'd need help most people couldn't offer you. But if you do..."

"Well, if I'm to work with you for this, I need faith that Ganon wouldn't say 'Now I can kill people even faster, ha ha!' or such. That might be costly. Even so I want that, but it is not quite trade."

He sighs. "I don't know what the rest of the clan would be willing to offer you but I definitely can't promise anything on Ganon's behalf."

"Could you stop working for Ganon?"

"I don't really work for Ganon. I avoid killing people who do, and I keep an eye out for a chance to kill the chosen hero who's supposed to try to defeat him and help the goddess preserve the world as it is."

"…right. I want to know what you think of Hylia. How 'as it is' is 'as it is'? If we have a plan to make dead people who want it be unmade or sleep, then maybe we should let the chosen hero beat Ganon?"

"I've heard her blamed for all kinds of things and it seems like she'd have an easier time stopping us without Ganon keeping her busy."

"'Heard her blamed' is a mistake. 'Vaal took my goats!' Oh, hmm, I've heard you blamed for taking goats. Also Hylia might less-painfully stop things she doesn't like if Ganon didn't keep her busy. Some gods I know are like that."

"I have heard her blamed by smart, trustworthy people. It sounds like you know a lot about gods and it'd probably be good if you talked to people who know more than I do. I just don't want to invite you to our hideout... I could carry letters, though."

"If I show I can find your hideout, then do you want to invite me? If I can't, I can write letters. Or I could say 'I will not fight people who come to me to talk'."

"I can't really stop you from offering your amateur pentesting services - that's what it's called when you go into someone's building without an invitation and then tell them how you did it - and you could also say that last thing but I don't know where you'd want to meet people... I think letters. Maybe when you've spent two whole days on learning to talk."

"I think you don't want to invite me because I might say 'I don't want to die and I don't like Ganon, so I will fight people at the hideout', so you don't want to show me. But if I can show I know where it is, then it is already not for hiding from me, so why not invite me for talking? If I'm not invited and I show up then people at the hideout may think I want to fight. We can do letters first."

"I'll talk to people. I'd also be interested to see how you find the hideout. I... think you should learn more words while I take my bananas up to Rito Village anyway, and I'm not sure if I should be suggesting you stay here, because there's usually not violence around stables, or that you come with me, so we can talk and you can see more different things, or that you try to talk to some people who really do work for Ganon, or even that you go south and try to talk to the Gerudo who hate us and will definitely describe things completely differently."

"If there is violence I can fight or run away. I think I am good at both. I would like to see more different things and talk to people who work for Ganon and the Gerudo."

Nod. "I make a habit of not telling people where to find people who work for Ganon, but I will say, bokoblins will tell you less interesting things than lizalfos. Those are the very big lizards with boomerangs. You might run into some in the desert. Or other places."

"I know where some bokoblins go sometimes. They want me to work for the person they work for, I think they said. They may not want to see me even when I can talk better. They were fighting other people, and I was not sure who was right, but I do not want people to die, so I grabbed everyone with plants and told them I would let go if they stopped fighting. …I did not know I could not talk well to people here when I grabbed them."