Snort. "Nobody'd believe me."

Amused noise. "Oh good."

"So, what else did you want to talk about with your new free time?"

"That doesn't mean I won't say it, just that it'll all be jokes," she says. "If I think of a really good one about your Spear of Purity. I dunno. Do people go to Hell in good places? What gets 'em?"

He makes a half amused and half horrified face at the joke.

"It's not like anyone's keeping track, but yeah, they do. Criminals go to the Abyss, but there's plenty of things that're legal and still Evil. Slavery, in places that have it, is a very Lawful Evil – you can be Neutral about it, but it's hard. All other abuse of authority, when there's a lot of it and it's done Lawfully enough, and it's hard to prevent that. I'd call half the nobles in Taldor Lawful Evil, and it's only not more because they can donate money to Good churches to make up for whatever they're doing. War – against another country, not demons – will usually make you Evil, whether you're still Lawful or not. Ruining people with bad loans. Taking on apprentices with harsh contracts and treating them cruelly. Abortions, for women, if they're Lawful in general. Beating their wives badly, for men, and their kids, for both."

"Oh, is that why paladins don't have kids?"

"What, because we can't beat them? ...We can, just, y'know, without being angry. And I hear that might be hard."

"Well, right, and then if they run off and do bad things it's your fault, because you kept being angry all the times you should've been beating it out of them and so you stood there like a deer."

"Mhm. Honestly I think paladins who have families don't spend much time with them, being paladins, so maybe that mostly fixes it. If I wanted to marry I'd definitely need advice about the whole thing."

"So you make your wife do it and that's better?"

"If I were a regular man, it wouldn't be better, and I could hit a child in anger sometimes and make Heaven anyway. If I'm a paladin, well, I should try to just not be angry. But if I don't manage that, do you have a better idea?"

"Keeping your Spear of Purity inside the Protection from Evil seems to be working out but if you had a kid, no, no idea, I'm Chelish."

Sigh. "Yeah. I don't think the gods make paladins so they'd be good at raising children. If I ever marry it'll have to be to a woman who thinks it's still worth it."

He does look vaguely wistful about it, Protection from Evil or not.

"Does that mean you'll suck at it if folks come to you with wives'n kids?"

"For advice? ...Well, I expect I'll do all right on the basics of how not to be Evil about it, but for how to actually get along they might want an Erastilian, really. You have any of those, back home?"  They seem rather more likely to have managed to stick around than Iomedaeans, at any rate.

"...no? Being a cleric of anybody but Asmodeus or at least an archdevil was super they'll-maledict-you illegal."

"You think they really got all the tiny mountain villages and so on? Iomedaeans are easy to find, but I would've expected Erastilians to be impossible to entirely get rid of."

"If they evaded the Inquisition they sure as hell evaded me."

Snort. "Yeah, that's fair. Well, hopefully you'll get some, for the sort of advice I'm not gonna be great at."

"I'll spread the word of your deficiencies."

"An important service," amused nod.

"...You haven't got any married people here, have you? I mean, both of them? Probably some have families back home, but I can't see much call for advice about that..."

"Oh, not both of them - well, I heard thirdhand once but not generally no, it'd be families back home. But we might go home, soon. Wound's closed supposedly."

"Might be enough demons left to last us a few years. But yeah. You planning on marrying and all?"

"Nobody worth it in the world, I've just got men still getting letters from wives and kids so they know not to stop sending their pay home."

He smiles a particularly un-Chelish smile at that.

"That's very good. And that everyone can read so the letters can be happening at all, that's good too. ...Not worth whipping six-year-olds for, but..."

"Probably they should send the stupid ones home quicker."