"Thank you," replies Allegra, and then turns to face Magnus with a confident smile, striding into the room and looking for an appropriate piece of furniture to lean on while she waits to be told to sit down, or whatever's going to happen next.

The basic layout of the office is identical to the Conradian one, with the same bright light, although there are potted plants placed thoughtfully within the office. It seems that they're real. Magnus is wearing similar robes to Rendon in structure, although with a rich violet color. He has the same headband as Rendon too. There's the lingering smell of incense.

He stands and greets her. "Good morning, Allegra Highspire. I am the High Priest of Damian, Magnus Sundheim. Please take a seat. Help yourself to whatever you like."

His table has been cleared of items, and instead, there's breakfast food. There are scrambled eggs, ham, toast, coffee, thin pancakes with syrup, and coffee in cups, with a small jug of milk and a container of sugar.

It seems that what Felicia said is true: his face has no wrinkles or blemishes, with great bone structure; his body is muscular and fit, from how the robes hang on him – he's the picture of health and beauty. When he smiles, his teeth are white and shining. Regardless, there's the sense of something sinister about him – the same sensation you get when looking down at a cliff and feeling the urge to jump down despite yourself. There's a feeling of creeping doom or unnerving presence that Rendon totally lacked; Rendon was grandfatherly and friendly.

Allegra's eyes widen in genuine delight at the breakfast food, that all looks so delicious. (Normally, if she'd been told someone likes playing with people, she'd assume it was a test or drugged food or something, but the Remove Fear is crowding out that kind of paranoia right now.)

"Thank you, you've somehow picked out all my favourite things," she replies, loading up a plate with scrambled eggs, pancakes, ham, and a token slice of toast before taking a seat.

With the effect of the Remove Fear on her, the general sinking feeling around Magnus doesn't really feel much different from the background dread she's been feeling ever since she dropped into a prison cell.

He sits down and takes some food of his own.

"I'm glad. One of Damian's tenets is that you ought to experience pleasure in all its forms, and what is better than tasty food?

Your hair is great, by the way. The style suits you. How are you liking things so far in the Bronze Orchard? Has it been a comfortable stay?" His tone is that of an old friend catching up. It's really quite surprising how quickly he managed to transition to that from the formal tone he started off with. His demeanor and movement seem to change seamlessly along with his words.

"What parts of it have you visited so far?"

Allegra tries to recall her poise lessons on 'eating daintily while making conversation', which she did have extensively as a child, although she's never been particularly good at it.

"Thank you - it's really to Felicia's credit. Everyone's been almost suspiciously nice, and the beds are amazing. I haven't had much chance to wander around, just over to Rendon's office, the dining hall, and a quick trip to the item makers and the armoury hatch." She returns his chatty tone while attempting to assemble a good chunk of toast and egg to eat while he responds.

Ah, yes, he recognizes the style now. Felicia sometimes wore that too.

He tilts his head slightly and flashes a wicked smile.

"Suspiciously nice? How so?" he asks, the tone of it friendly. He licks his teeth.

"And yes, the beds really are amazing. One of the Damianite wizards figured out how to attach the resizing enchantment wondrous items have to furniture without breaking the bank in terms of necessary spellsilver. It's great, isn't it?" He makes a show of leaning back into his chair before eating some more of the pancake.

"Well, I did start out by inadvertently trespassing and getting dumped in a prison cell, and then Conradia told me that you were all 'chaotic evil', but once it was clear that I was happy to cooperate with magical research, suddenly it's all people falling over themselves to do whatever they can to help me settle in, and everything's very neat and tidy," Allegra explains. She considers mentioning about the fitness tests, but she doesn't want to look desperate at this stage of the conversation, it's all quite nice so far and also she wants to eat this delicious food before something happens to prevent her. She also snuggles appreciatively into her chair, demonstrating that she's totally used to the enchantment by now (she isn't entirely used to it, but 'pretend you're perfectly comfortable with the thing that is happening' is something she has plenty of practice in). "It really is. I don't think I've ever encountered furniture this comfortable."

"We are Chaotic Evil, though. Do you understand what that means, Allegra? Did Conradia explain? She didn't lie or misspeak. We are just the worst sort of people. We're appalling, repulsive, horrible people. You really should be afraid and disgusted by us." He smiles innocently. He takes a bite of food.

"What was life like in Urizen? Your daily life, I mean. I've always been interested in the small things – how commoners lived, rather than nobles or great heroes. I think that's a much better way to find out what a group is like, rather than looking at only the most prestigious members thereof."

"No, she didn't explain a thing," replies Allegra in kind, continuing to maintain a cheerful demeanour, "although at the time I was mostly concerned with not dying in the next few minutes, so I didn't exactly ask. I'm also not sure what a 'demon lord' is; 'demon' sounds to me like a pejorative for a kind of Herald, but I've heard this doesn't quite line up?"

"I mean, I was something of a hero," she continues. "Most people live in their Spires - basically like a wizard's tower, but generally with an extended family rather than just one wizard - and do some kind of research, or maintenance work. We have magical servants - ushabti - for all of the everyday work that most 'commoners' across the Empire spend their time doing, so everyone is working on some kind of project, whether it's keeping their Spire's magic going or advancing the boundaries in something - not necessarily magic, we also have terrace farmers and llama breeders and mines and all that. The land's not all that productive, mostly mountains and jungle, so quite a lot of our food is imported anyway; other parts of the Empire are much better at farming."

"Right, right. Conradia is very dangerous, after all. If her green Disintegrate ray hit you" he makes a pointing motion and a popping sound, "then you would have been rendered into a pile of fine dust. Let me give you a little theology lesson – I'll return to the topic of Urizeni life a little later. 

Chaos represents unpredictability and refusing bindings. Evil is self-concern, harming others, stealing from them and all that. Chaotic Evil means doing what you want without regard of how others might be affected. Most Chaotic Evil entities are destructive, and, we are that, but I think that the others give the alignment a bad name. We represent Chaotic Evil done not-dumbly: we are only Evil outwards, not inwards. That's why we treat you very well – we consider you to be a part of us. At least, for now.

Demons are outsiders who come from the Abyss, the Chaotic Evil afterlife. When you die, Pharasma sorts your soul into one of nine afterlives, and if you go to the Abyss, then you turn into a demon after some time. A demon lord is a demigod that resides within the Abyss, and is able to control demons to their service. Does that make sense to you? Do you have questions?" He speaks like a kindly teacher.

If he was hoping to get a rise out of Allegra about the disintegrate thing, he'll be disappointed; Allegra's basic assumption about the world has always been that anyone can basically kill her any time they want, and the trick is making them not want to.

"Right, so - you are essentially, here, signing up with a demon lord in advance to get a head start on that?" she asks, with the intention of looking intelligent. "Staying 'part of you' certainly seems like my best move. I'm still not sure what an 'outsider' is - where I come from, we reincarnate. Most extraplanar creatures I know of are what we call 'heralds', from magical planes, and started that way - although humans can turn into them if we end up in their planes for any reason, so I guess the demon thing is the same kind of deal, except Pharasma fishes everyone out of the Labyrinth locally and sticks them into a non-Material plane?"

"Wow, okay, let me back up. You are from outside Pharasma's Creation, after all." He makes an exasperated gasping noise.

"It's best if you ignore how your world's afterlife works, since, now that you're here in Golarion, your soul is probably under Her jurisdiction now, so long as you remain here. When you die, Pharasma holds a soul trial for you, where it is decided, based on your actions and thoughts in life, which afterlife you are deserving to go to. There are nine. Going from Lawful to Chaotic, we have Heaven, Nirvana, and Elysium for Good; Axis, the Boneyard, the Maelstrom for Neutral; and Hell, Abaddon, and the Abyss for Evil.

After your soul is so assigned, it becomes an 'outsider' by the process of internalizing the ethics and energies of the place: outsiders are not human and are immortal, and also always express the alignment of their afterlife plane. They're much less malleable and changeable than mortals.

The Good afterlives are generally good, but the Evil afterlives are awful. In Hell, you are tortured for eternity by Asmodeus and His devils, in Abaddon your soul is eaten by daemons, and in the Abyss, you fight with other demons and probably die. Generally not a good time. I'd rather wander Elysium and its infinite wildernesses.

This creates an awful dilemma, see: what if I want to be Evil and do cool fun Evil things while alive, but also don't want to die the true death in my afterlife or get tortured forever and ever? That's where Conrad and Damian come in. They have a very nice and pleasant Abyssal realm, unlike the general awfulness of the Abyss. I can show you if I ask Rendon to Scry.

Now, ordained people – people who are chosen specifically by gods because They want them to advance their interests in the Material Plane, and because their soul is of a very pleasing shape to Them – are already destined to go to their gods' respective afterlives when they die. But for those who are useful but somewhat less pleasingly shaped, there are soul contracts, which is like being-ordained-lite – it permits you to go to Their afterlife in exchange for your mortal service.

By 'pleasingly shaped', I mean that your values and thoughts are particularly aligned and agreeing with Theirs. For Damian, He is the god of exploring and experiencing the wide range of positive experiences available to you, so he selects people who are indulgent and discerning and honest about their desires.

Following Him means that I get to have a pleasant afterlife while still getting to do everything I want to do here in this life. I do so love escaping the consequences of my actions. Don't you?"

"I mean, who doesn't?" she replies, trying to work out what to say to the pile of information. "Outsiders still sound like heralds to me, that's exactly what getting dumped on the wrong plane will do to us, assuming we survive the process."

She takes another bite of breakfast and savours it, meaningfully.

"I could definitely get used to some positive experiences," she smiles. She's not definitely flirting, but she is certainly doing the thing where she is extremely plausibly deniably flirting; in her experience, guys who go on about 'the wide range of positive experiences available to you' generally mean 'sex', and it's not like she'd mind.

He chuckles. "We have many positive experiences on offer. Have you tried praying? I assume Rendon talked to you about it. Who knows, you might actually become a cleric. Then you could become a mystic theurge like him – an otherworldly mystic theurge."

He eats more before continuing.

"Let's take a break from boring theology. So, you were a hero from Urizen? Were you popular? Apparently you ran away from your parents. Why? And I'm curious about your ushabti – it doesn't sound like they're slaves, and more...magical constructs?"

"Rendon mentioned prayer, but didn't exactly encourage me to do it," she replies. "He did say I could stick around and watch him pray, but he was just totally motionless and silent, and also I wanted breakfast." She eats a little more breakfast, just to punctuate the sentence.

"Our unit was pretty popular, we did a lot of extractions from the Druj, everyone likes a heroic tale of infiltrating a bunch of torturer orcs and smuggling out high value prisoners. It's a fun puzzle and I quite liked the adulation, but not exactly the most comfortable line of work.

My parents wanted me to be a musician; there's a whole school of magic where I come from around abstruse mathematical properties of musical scales; that was, uh, not my thing, so once I was old enough that people wouldn't just bring me right back to them, I left.

Ushabti are magical constructs, yes; I don't know if the background magic is high enough here to support them, I know they don't work in other areas of the Empire. I know the basics of maintaining one, but I've never built a whole one from scratch. There's a whole range, it's a huge field - right from very simple ones that just do one movement over and over, to ones that can do a sequence of tasks and basic collision avoidance, to ones that can do really complicated things like take dictation and serve drinks. They're pretty fragile, strong enough to do farm work and mining if they're built that way, but it doesn't take much violence to turn them inert."

"Yes, that's the most common form of prayer. Prayer is the process by which you focus your thoughts on your deity to connect with them. That is, however, the only necessary component of prayer, so it is totally possible to pray while doing...other activities." He smiles. "It's just harder."

"Mmm, well, see, we are kind of the torturer orcs in this scenario. You've heard about our prisoner keeping habits, haven't you? Though we take care not to capture anyone high value if all we want to do is torture them. It's not wise.

I'm sorry to hear that. Funnily enough, we have totally failed in attracting any bards to our church. We have people who have musical talent, but not anyone who's a professional bard. Then again, our church is young and small. It's only twenty four years old – younger than me by half – and we only have about five hundred people. 

Yes, that sounds just like our constructs."

He eats some more before continuing.

"What motivates you, Allegra? What makes life worth living?"

"I haven't heard much about your prisoner keeping habits," admits Allegra, "other than the Conradians think they're frivolous, but the Conradians think shampoo is frivolous.

Anyway, you are much more interesting than the Druj - they certainly haven't learnt the bit about not taking it out on each other."

Hmm. What does motivate her, anyway, and what of that should she tell him? She doesn't want to obviously hesitate, although fortunately the food is good for plausible deniability there.

"I pretty much find life intrinsically worth living?" she replies. "I haven't found anything that makes me want to stop yet, and not for lack of being in situations where that might be expected. I like - interesting things, new things? I'm mostly used to being motivated by survival, honestly."

She has thought about some of the implications of saying this next thing, whether he'll take it as a challenge, but the Remove Fear is buoying her up and Felicia did say he liked confidence.

"I can find something to enjoy in just about anything, really - that's who I am."

"Aww, you shouldn't malign the Conradians so much. Our tenet against harming others of the church is something that came about because of them. We are separate churches, yes, but our churches are joined similarly to how our gods are joined in their relationship. Conrad is very tribal – he has a very strong us-versus-them mentality – so he values that all members of the church be treated nicely, but that everyone outside not be afforded this same treatment. We have adopted this tenet as well as part of our compromise for living together."

He makes an expression of fake shock and covers his mouth.

"Really now? You can find something to enjoy in anything, you say?" He draws out that word. "Even in the fire and lash of Hell?" He smiles.

"I just finished praying earlier, but...it might be an edifying experience for you to pray. I...think that you're more aligned with Damian than you are with Conrad. Would you like to try now? It might actually be easier while you're eating."

"I mean, I haven't tried being in literal hell," replies Allegra, "but pain can be interesting as long as it's not, monotonous?" 

Recovery is always the worst bit, but they did say they had some magical healing here; hopefully it's just as nice as their magical invigoration.

"I can give it a go; it sounds a lot like the mental motion of calling forth a Virtue aura, just a different set of emphasis. Sorry, that probably didn't mean much to you."

"Mmhmm, we do have magical healing here too. Cure Light Wounds will set you right. And I should tell you Lesser Restoration invigorates the whole body." He laughs.

"Alright. It's important not to be distracted during this step. I'll prompt you on what you should be thinking." His voice becomes a little more serious.

"Damian's concept is usually thought of as 'pleasure and beauty', but it's a little more complicated than that. In particular, it is impossible to truly grasp the entire concept of a god, because gods are much more expansive than humans – it is the same reason that receiving visions from gods usually results in headaches. Damian is an ascended human, though, so the vision backlash is greatly reduced: He maintains a human aspect of himself that He can use to communicate to us, something which the ancient gods lack.

As you chew the food now, pay attention to the taste and texture of it, and which parts are pleasant and unpleasant. Yes, you are able to sense the taste of the food, but are you really tasting it? Think now of blind people who learn to navigate based on touch, memory, and sound. Their touch, memory, or hearing is not supernaturally sharper than us, but, through practice, they have learned to become discerning to the subtle variations in pitch and echo of sounds, and to the ridges and textures of different materials. They pay attention to them in a way others do not. Damian asks of us to taste – really taste – when we eat something, to carefully separate out the different miniscule sensations that then come together to form a sum greater than its parts, and not to analyze such sensations dispassionately, but seek them out and immerse ourselves in them."

Oh, she can definitely do that. She'll close her eyes and absolutely lose herself in teasing out the individual sensations; it's much more relaxing than trying to engage in a battle of wits with Magnus for her life. She loves just doing this when she thinks she can get away with not paying attention to her surroundings, and right now it seems like it's safer to dive into the individual sensations than continue to keep a wary eye out, which is... nice.

There's a sensation like falling, and then – 

Allegra is now standing inside a pavilion in a garden in the height of summer. The pavilion has delightfully scented flower bushes surrounding it. The pavilion itself has a varnished wood floor, and the inside is painted white. In the middle of the pavilion is an octagonal hole or depression that's shaped sort of like a bowl or a pool, except the inside is padded like a sofa, with cushions strewn about.

On the side opposite Allegra, there's a Chelish man lying on his side with a large linen cloth or blanket draped carelessly on him. He is, just like Magnus, unbelievably handsome, although he appears younger and of a slightly different ethnicity. He doesn't appear to be wearing anything else other than the linen.

"I was wondering when you'd come talk to me, Allegra. Come and sit," he says, and suddenly, Allegra is now standing just on the edge of the hole.

"Or lie down, if you want."

Okay. This... sure is a thing that is happening. Maybe the food was drugged.

Anyway. If she's trying to do this right, she should probably not just sit on the edge of the hole. Not taking her eyes off the man, she lies down. The whole 'jump cut to the edge' thing made it abundantly clear that 'running away' wasn't a thing that was going to happen here, anyway, so it's really no more vulnerable than sitting.

She feels the absurd urge to apologise for being bad at this, but that is very obviously the wrong move, so she just waits to see if he's going to ask her something.

He turns on His hips and sits up, crossing His legs at the knee. There's now a pleasant breeze flowing through the place, carrying the scent of cut grass and sweet summer blossoms.

"Congratulations on receiving your first god-vision. You know, many people don't get one in their entire lifetime, but I'm generous like that." He looks incredibly smug.

"You really are from another world – I've never seen anyone with a soul shaped like yours. It's quite delightful." He stares at her like he's peering at her soul, which, well, he is.

"The food was not drugged. If I wanted to have you drugged, we would have done that a long long time ago. Put some faith in us." He makes a face of mock offense. "If I tried doing that to you, Conrad would pout at me."

Conrad is stuck between a rock and a hard place: He refuses to work with anyone who isn't personally loyal to Him, but He also doesn't want Allegra to leave because who wants to let the wizard who knows an entirely new school of magic go? Which leaves Damian to take care of it – He's more amenable to...shenanigans, and to people being less-than-perfectly loyal. Oh, if He wasn't in love with Him, He would have totally abandoned Him a long time ago.

"No need to apologize, my sweet. I probably should have waited before giving you a vision, but I just couldn't help myself. I wonder what would make you feel more assured of your position here. You seem terribly anxious, you know. Is it the shampoo? I'll make sure you'll have all the shampoo you could ever want." He laughs.

Okay, so, he's reading her mind. That shouldn't be all that surprising? This might all just be a figment of her imagination to start with, and that would definitely read her mind.

"You might have done it in a way you thought was beneficial," Allegra points out. After all, drugs that induce a vision are her own religion's highest rite, and liao dreams are another popular sacrament; it makes perfect sense for other religions to use hallucinogens.

"Relaxing hasn't exactly been the best plan for staying alive so far in my life," she admits; he's reading her mind anyway, he was going to know whether she said it out loud or not. "Is Magnus going to know we had this conversation? He seems to be pretty keen on assuring me he's dangerous, and I know Felicia said he liked confidence, but 'I had a polite chat with your god' doesn't sound all that convincing without proof." It is pretty relaxing to just be able to say the things that she was going to be worrying about anyway.

"I feel like I should be trying to impress you, but also that you would probably just laugh at that," she offers.