"You're Evil," she confirms. "I mean, I don't have the spell to read it off people, and I bet the spell wouldn't even work here because there's no system keeping track, but you're the kind of person who'd read Evil at home unless that was really inconvenient in which case they'd patiently donate money to orphanages or whatever to get up to reading Neutral. It's why I decided to talk with you. I don't actually like Good all that much. 

I don't know what I'll want, if we do this, and save the world, and I get to rule it, or whatever. I'm - suspicious - that there's something Heroes eventually learn, or eventually see - at minimum they've got to be different once they're smarter -

- but you can be Lawful all the way to godhood. People've done it, where I'm from. Law isn't actually just about it being smarter to obey than to disobey. And - and if we go somewhere else, after this, if it's just world after world after world -

- well, I think it might be as important to be a Lawful person as to be a capable one, in terms of what places want to let you in."

"That sure is what all the governments teach, but they don't actually have any way of knowing and they have an incredibly obvious reason to be biased in what they very sincerely expect to be good for us."

"Well, in my world there are afterlives that let everyone in, and they mostly suck, and then afterlives that let only Lawful people in or only Good or whatever, and they're much nicer. - Hell isn't actually pleasant but it makes you stronger and better, unlike the Abyss, for Chaotic Evil people, where you just probably get mugged and die again. And part of why Hell isn't pleasant is that it's Lawful Evil but takes anyone, even people who aren't Lawful, because Neutral Evil was eating their souls so Hell started letting those in too. 

Anyway, I don't really care if most people are Lawful because it's not like they'll be Lawful often enough you can rely on it, in a place where you can't just read it directly, but I think I do recommend it."

"I think the vast majority of people here wouldn't want any of that.  Going somewhere utterly unpredictable and unknowable when we die is unnerving, but there's all kinds of things I can foresee going wrong if you try to change any part of it.  Governments are awful enough as they stand.  If obeying the law made the difference between going to a good place and a bad place and people knew that for sure, governments could get away with so much more, because they wouldn't have to worry about people still obeying the laws no matter how horrendous the laws got."

"Following worse rules for a couple of decades seems pretty small compared to spending eternity in a worse place because your first life didn't teach you any of the stuff you need to get into a good one and then your second was the Abyss and transformed you into a chaotic evil frenzied demon only wanted by places that want chaotic evil frenzied demons to fight other hordes of chaotic evil frenzied demons. But again, I'm not going to go around caring about peoples' lives more than they bother to themselves.

How do I test which elemental affinities I have?"

"If you're the Summoned Hero you start with all six base Elements, and most people do not have six base Elements, so this is not a good thing to walk into a pediatric office and try to test where other people can see it."

"Understood. And to get any Tier-2 things, I have to use magic in combat?"

"Affinity, magical capacity, and Skills are all separate capacities that all grow from being used when there's real stakes on the line, stakes that matter to you somehow.  Arrogant and prideful people often become great and powerful, because it's easy to get yourself into situations where your pride is on the line, if that deeply fucking matters to you, like the fucking casters' tournament they have around here.  Sensible people like me have to risk our actual lives chasing unreasonably large bounties that will maybe get us killed, if we want to grow the same way."

"To start practicing a Tier-2 affinity, you've got to level up two Tier-1 affinities to where you can aspect mana two ways at once.  But even a normal kid with Fire affinity, trying to learn a Fire-starting spell, will do better after a year channeling unstructured Fire mana to warm up lunches that don't taste as good cold."

"Does the Summoned Hero usually do a lot of adventuring? I'd expect that'd lead to people dying more often than - that one undead plague."

"I assume that's why we get Summoned Heroes who can't already oneshot elder dragons with their own world's powers, so that they can still benefit early on from running a kobold dungeon and get stronger inside of our own world's system."

"Do Summoned Heroes arrive predictably, have traits other than being confused and having lots of magical power, are there spells to look for them, are there mindreaders, is there prophecy..."

"'Prophecy' is unfamiliar, mindreading sounds like not something where they'd tell us that it existed or how to get it, and spells to find Summoned Heroes aren't something that they'd tell people like me who might tell the Summoned Hero about it."

"We were expecting a Summoned Hero to arrive earlier to deal with the sea of fire.  The only predictable thing about Hero timing is that they show up when there's trouble.  I figured, most people figured, that we'd gotten our Hero two or three years back, and somebody killed them, and that was it for Kekaro."

"Right. In that case, I propose that we go to some other town, in case someone noticed I was confused earlier when I was determining where I was and what was going on - I was disguised, but still, I don't lose anything by changing towns unless you lose a great deal - you teach me basic spellcasting in your magic system and acquire me spellsilver, and once I can credibly pretend to be your kind of adventurer then we do some dungeons.

In Cheliax, the normal way to solve the problem that people only level from stakes they really care about and sensible people don't care about contests is to torture people for mistakes. However, people in other places generally can't handle it. I would ideally like to have companions who can, but if in fact you can't handle it I'm not going to waste time trying anyway.

If you betray me and I survive I will absolutely torture you to death. If you decide you can't take it and don't betray me about it, we can work something out. If you make some kind of stupid mistake and tell me as soon as possible, we can work something out.

Objections?"

"Define 'betray'.  If it's something I can do without strongly deliberately wanting to, then this whole scenario potentially leans toward my exiting Kekaro and going on to wherever my next destination is, rather than risking you torturing me."

"For example, finding someone who wants to kill or enslave the summoned hero and telling them where I am. You can't betray someone accidentally, if it's an accident it's just incompetence."

"I may have further questions later, but those terms as I understand them seem acceptable to me, assuming you otherwise mean to keep me around as a Hero's Companion... which often ends up entailing, say, that you make me some incredibly powerful items, once that's easy for you.  Including the sort of incredibly powerful item that will channel mana through me and allow me to level faster than I could by using just my own mana capacity."

"I could also be bought for an amazing amount of money, but there are fewer risks I'd take for just that.  I'd have more questions about under exactly what circumstances you might torture me or somebody else, if it was just that."

"I was planning to make you very fancy magic items as soon as it's feasible. Are Heroes' Companions a magical category, or just - the people the Summoned Hero adventures with -"

"My textbook claimed unsettled debate about to what extent Heroes' Companions are a distinct function of the System that brings them here, or a pattern-worn-in-reality*, or just the way things end up working out a lot in practice."

(*) One syllable, not in standard Taldane.

Indeed not, Taldane reserves its one-syllable words for 'cow' and 'pig' and 'leg' and 'run' and 'fuck' and so on - so does everyone, she's pretty sure - and theologians have to coin new words if they want to talk about ...prophecy-related things. Carissa is pretty sure by now she's under some weird permanent translation spell and she has no idea what if anything to read into the words it gives her that aren't Taldane.

"I have no idea what you mean by that but I want as few people as possible to know who I am, and I want them to consider themselves very well-paid."

"Do things not get easier to do the more you do them, where you come from?  Because if so, I've got great news about Kekaro."

"....things do generally get easier to do when you have more practice, where I'm from."

"Okay, so the question is, does the System put Heroes where they'll find Companions, or did it just happen enough that it started happening more easily without there having been any special piece of the unknown Hero machinery that does that, or is the whole thing just how stuff often works out in practice... I'm trying to chase down cases where you say you don't know what I mean because it seems like all those cases might be important for you."

"...things get easier with practice for people, because people have the ability to learn. Things do not get easier with practice for the universe, because the universe....does not have the ability to learn. Where I'm from."

"If it rains on a mountain and the water flows down the same path repeatedly, the path will deepen and widen and become a river.  Someone with Air, Earth, and Dark affinity who learns to cast a Flight spell and who repeatedly casts a Flight spell will eventually become somebody who can just fly because that's - a kind of event that's happened a lot before.  The Flight spell itself is probably much easier to learn now than when it was first invented."

"Water thing is true in my world, Flight spell thing is not true in my world. The reason you can fly with a Flight spell is the spell, and if you don't have the spell cast, you cannot fly.  Someone might invent and share a more efficient version but they'd have to do that."