"The metaphor starts to break down at that point.  A novel-game has only a single player, who is also its reader, who is also the customer who bought that copy of the novel-game from the store that decided to stock copies.  That's not what Nethys thinks is happening with us."

"Milani and Myself did most of the carrying out of actions, at the choice points that Nethys told Us about, according to options and instructions that He left to Us.  In the game we're all inside, Nethys is the closest thing to a player, because Nethys is the one who can see the game as a game - view the alternate possibilities and decide which one to go down.  But what He saw was not exactly the one true future, and reality has been getting further and further away from any of the possibilities that He told Us about."

"So Nethys is the player.  Who's the reader, if that's not the same Person?"

"I did not understand that when Nethys tried to tell Us about it, and I would advise against you asking Him even if He could answer in mortal speech."

"One aspect I did understand is that the metaphorical book-readers - the Things that watch us, who are probably watching us right now and here - are responsible for making the novel-game real; or rather, the novel-game would be real to some tiny degree no matter what, but the Things watching over Pharasma's Creation make it more real.  In one sense, the answer to any question that asks why we're here, why we find ourselves here, gods and mortals alike, is that it's a kind of event that's interesting to Things who in observing those events make them more real."

"Well, that's disturbing.  If I know too much about this do I go mad and start trying to summon Yog-Sothoth into Creation?"

"According to Nethys, the Things-That-Watch are much vaster than Yog-Sothoth and flatly wouldn't fit inside Creation.  Any one of Them is larger than the entire greater universe that contains Creation and all of the Outer Gods we know as a tiny bubble.  The Things are not small enough, weak enough, or comprehensible enough to be the sort of entity that mortals can successfully glimpse and go mad about.  The most familiar thing Nethys could identify in His glimpses of Their continuum was an alternate universe's version of Aroden, who managed to make himself look useful enough that one of the Things copied him out of his native world and made him a fragment of the Thing's own mind to be a voice in Its deliberations.  If one of Them wanted to interfere in this realm, nothing we did or didn't do on our side of reality would make the tiniest bit of difference as to whether They could."

"Very reassuring, good to know, I'm sure I'll sleep better knowing that."

"So those are the metaphorical readers.  Are they also the ones who bought the novel-game at the shop?"

"Nethys isn't sure what bought this novel-game at the store, in the sense of Their being the entities with 'economicdemand' whose 'utilityfunctions' determined that a novel-game like this one would be stocked at the metaphorical store.  In one possibility Nethys saw that had a stat-boosted Keltham reasoning from things Nefreti Clepati was telling him, that Keltham said there was more than one Customer and more than one 'utilityfunction', combining their buying-power and trading with each other."

"At least one Customer wanted Keltham to have a romance, and is responsible for Keltham appearing in a place and time and possibility where tropes could happen around him.  At least one Customer probably isn't happy about the direction the future is currently headed for the mortals in Pharasma's Creation, and wants to disrupt the future that would otherwise come about for us; or, rather, is acting on behalf of other Entities that feel that way.  But the Customers' mode of action is complicated by how changes in Their 'purchasingbehavior' also redirect the Things' attentions from one novel-game to another."

"The - Customers - want Keltham's Civilization to get built here?"

"We can guess at least one Customer prefers the result of throwing Keltham into the mix, to whatever would have happened otherwise, or whatever the Things would have paid attention to otherwise.  They may or may not care whether or not the outcome is Civilization; They might be trying to avoid an unusually bad-to-them outcome rather than trying for an unusually good one.  They might be buying something much stranger or more complicated than that.  Nethys can't see centuries ahead with prophecy shattered, and We have little evidence about the possible long-run outcomes of the novel-game."

"Does it makes sense, in the metaphor, if I ask who runs the store that offers games for sale?"

"Those would be the Entities that contain the branching and latticed realities within which Pharasma's Creation is a tiny bubble and Outer Gods swim like pet fish in a courtyard pond."

"And mortals like me, I suppose, are just - not even pet fish, not even gamepieces, but just tiny letters on an enormous page?"

"No, actually."  The man in leather armor smiles slightly.  "You, Pilar Pineda, are the novel-game's author."

"'And then, a +6 Belt of Physical Perfection materialized within her hand'... nope.  Didn't work.  Nice joke, had me actually going for half a round, but what's the actual author-Entity like?"

"I'm not joking.  Selecting a book to carry in your shop, reading it, even playing it like a game, isn't the same as writing that book.  Who determines which pages of the book will follow, after Nethys advises Us of His choice and Snack Service carries it out?  The player can choose the option to have Snack Service tell Pilar Pineda about the Osirian adventuring party that's going to appear in the Skymetal Sword inn.  But what actually happens after Nethys advises that choice?  How does Pilar Pineda respond?  What does she think, feel?  Who writes every word that she speaks, composes her lines of dialogue?"

"Pilar Pineda does."

"The Customers have desires about the novel-game which determine that this novel-game is a good one to carry for sale, in the store stocked by the Shopkeeper of Golarions; Nethys advises Us how to make the game-player's choices; strange vast Things watch it play out, and in watching make these events more real.  But as for the one who writes the novel-game, who crafts Pilar Pineda's every thought and word, who determines which choices by the game-player lead to which outcomes, she indeed is none other than Pilar Pineda.  And Carissa Sevar, and Keltham, and Asmodia, and Ione Sala, and Peranza, and Meritxell and Yaisa and Abrogail, and Elias and Ferrer and all of the others."

"It seems to me that these larger events had a designer who wasn't me.  None of us chose the way that - that our choices fit together to make all of this happen.  The novel-game's author had to - at the very least, some author had to arrange for particular people to end up in Ostenso wizard academy - even if I didn't get a vision myself, somebody had to -"

"The Shopkeeper does not start with a Golarion, and put carefully chosen people together by sending visions - or so I'm told.  It selected a potentiality that would become a novel-game when Keltham got added to it at a particular place and time, which then caught the Things' attentions, and the Customers care about what is made more real as a result.  You are all the authors of your own lives, but there are vastly many possible books that can be written that way.  The shopkeeper's role is to select a few of those many possible novel-games, collectively written by authors like you, to be carried for sale in its store."

Pilar thinks about this for a bit.  Not for very long.

"It's... strange.  I've been told these vast secrets, larger you say than the entire greater cosmos containing Creation, and yet I feel like I have learned absolutely nothing of use."

"One of the great truths of existence, or at least our tiny part of it, is that the deepest, highest, most hidden secrets of divinity, are completely fucking useless to everyone including the gods."

"Possibly not the part where, if Keltham's right, people blotted out of existence in one place will continue, a few myriadfolds less real, somewhere else.  That would be important if it was true.  But seeing Keltham materialized here tells Me nothing about that, however convincing the evidence may feel from Keltham's perspective.  There's only one way to find out for real, and it'll come to Me shortly."

"You're not afraid to die, die for real like outsiders do?"

"Being a god isn't much of an adventure, is the thing.  My mortal self thought like it would be a fun adventure to try for the Starstone, but he failed to consider what sort of adventures a god might then have if he succeeded.  Once you've daringly risked your divine social life on trying to score Desna and Calistria for a threesome, there's not much else courageous you can personally do that won't get you immediately extinguished or turned into Zon-Kuthon."

"I made the world a better place just by being there and choosing clerics, and it wasn't like I was suffering, so I stuck around.  But if I can do more good by dying, and possibly going on to a next greater adventure, it's not in My nature to regret that.  You don't go for the Starstone on a drunken bet if you're the sort of person who holds the same horror for true-death that Carissa Sevar holds, or Iomedae for that matter.  Nethys's notes say there are more distant Golarions where Carissa ends up as Her cleric, can you imagine?  I'd regret not seeing the future of this world, how it all ends up; but wherever I end up, it'll be someplace that can see this Golarion, so with any luck I'll still find out how it all went."

"And even if I don't go anywhere - there's so many souls every day that go to Abaddon, not just in Golarion but in all the Material planes; and so many more than that, who suffer for a time in the Abyss and then perish again.  It's not, really, like a god's true life is worth so much more than theirs.  There's more consciousness in Me than in a hundred mortal souls, maybe, but not ten thousand."

"So if by sacrificing Myself I might be able to put an end to Abaddon as it is now, the Abyss as it is now, and above all Hell as it is now - then fine, good trade."

Her throat seems to have swollen shut; she cannot speak.

"Which brings us to the real topic from the beginning.  You're here to hear your last temptation."

"Even though you already know what it is, and you already know your answer."

Her throat seems to have swollen shut, or so it would be convenient to believe.  She cannot speak, or rather, would like to not be able to, she knows she could speak but she doesn't and her thoughts are winding into a tight frantic loop of horror, no no no don't say it don't make it real let her go on pretending pretending for longer even though she already knows she knew when she came here...