"There are plenty of more amoral druids. I just usually don't run into them."

"The good churches are absolutely helping. Other nonevil churches also sometimes help. And yes, they are different organizations spread out across different cities. Some churches do have high priests, but it's a lot of work to make sure every cleric actually is aware of what the high priest says, let alone actually listening. Travel is expensive, especially intercontinental travel." And Griffie's party wizard is trying to fix that, but the social implications of that have not been fully explored, and everything will plausibly blow up before they are.

"Anyway, the problem is that if the good gods were more interventionist, the evil gods would match them, and then if everyone kept it up we'd have a godwar again, and the last one went extremely badly. We did get a plague god and one of their favorite diseases killed, a while back, but it was a complicated project that required a lot of secrecy at the time."

"As for water: clerics and druids get a spell called Create Water as an orison, meaning that if we prepare it, we can cast it as many times a day as we want. The water only persists if someone drinks it, but people drink a lot of water, so it's still pretty useful. This isn't an ecological problem because the gods constantly have to add more matter to the world to make up for stuff that gets annihilated anyway."

First thought: she would love to believe they're simply good but incompetent, but more probably they don't actually care enough to do anything more than look sad and make speeches. Still, she'll take it, that's still extraordinarily good by the standards of horrifying heathen cultists.

Second thought: ...creating unlimited water like that - that only persists if drunk, what, seriously, why - does not in fact sound like something a cleric could do. ...Is Griffie, possibly, from a Far Realm in which there are entirely different gods and entirely different magic. 

"I see. The true Church is a single body - made up of all of the faithful, but organised by the hierarchy of priests and acolytes and spread all across the known world as far as it can reach." And, hopefully, beyond. "It is... admittedly a lot of work. I can well understand those cults not bothering with it."

...On the other hand. That sounds like a fairly sophisticated - if wrong - notion of the nature of gods and how They affect the world. The clues that something is very strange here are mounting rapidly. ...Also, killing an evil god is not something she's ever known heathens to consider, for some insane reason, it's one of the most obviously reasonable and sane doctrines. 

"...All right. A great deal of what you've said is quite strange, everything from the - orisons - to druidry to the gods. May I ask what you think is actually happening here, with where you are from and how you arrived here? I have guesses, but would hear you first."

"My theory is that I've left the set of places derived from Aiquzall, which my world is derived from, entirely. Your gods are Outer Gods by my standards. I haven't heard of benevolent outer gods that are as cohesive as yours sound, but that doesn't mean much, there's plenty of reasons for me to not hear of them. I arrived here during an attempt to hijack aboleth Gate infrastructure, and while I didn't expect to be sent this far away, it's not terribly shocking that something went wrong."

There are no benevolent Outer Gods. Why do you think we are kept imprisoned here?

(She does not seem to have noticed it.)

"Mm. It would explain it. The Far Realms are not... normally accessible at all, still less wise to visit."

Thaaaaat's one nasty undeath setup right there.

"There's some highly regulated opportunities to engage with outer gods, at home. I got some snake summons subsidized by one."

"It's going to devour you just like she will."

She blinks. "That is more... more mercantile than I would ever have expected such things to be." 

+21 perception makes it hard to not listen, but ey won't engage aloud. Ey does mentally note that Yig's had a golden opportunity and he mostly didn't take it, and if Beryllia was going to attack em, the best time would have been while ey was more disoriented.

"It really is. My understanding is that Yig in particular views fitting into existing social structures as an expression of his domains, in the same way that a snake fitting inside various crevices is."

"The fact that those come across as existing social structures - this is a peculiarly abstract way of thinking - is itself quite striking." Generally heathens tend not to trust merchants. 

"Please. You don't know the truth. Please, please say you can tell something isn't right."

"I'm not usually who you want for not listening. Do you mind if I make general statements?"

"You may. Stay calm."

"That I'm better at."

"In general, when I am convinced of arguments, it's because the arguments have some form of supporting evidence."

"You know, that is uncommonly wise of you. I wish it weren't."

"What does she think of anyone who does not obey her?"

It is not terribly surprising that souls stuck in torment do not make very good arguments.

"Have you already checked whether killing these frees them?"

"You would? Please - please - they won't and nobody else is allowed to come here, you can ask her that -"

"Do not even speak of it." she interrupts. 

Griffie can drop the subject… for now.

"All right. We can go back to discussing Yig."

"The summoning system is as follows: Every summon is supposed to go through Axis wards. Plenty of summoners don't do that, but they are supposed to. The wards slow down summons a bit. But Axis can screen some specific creatures in advance, for a fee, and if Axis likes what they see, the creatures can go through the wards faster. I don't think Yig is necessarily buying Axis Currency Units to then subsidize snake summons with, he's plausibly just making snake screening easier in some way."

"I told you." In its voice is deep and real anguish. 

"... That's... An impressive achievement of whoever set up the 'Axis wards'. Axis is - some kind of state? I'm surprised it's worth it for them."

"It's an outer plane, like Heaven. It's not a god, but in some ways it has the influence of one. It can empower clerics. It gets support from gods, because, say, if anyone could summon anything they had the raw power for, the local gods would not like the results."

All right, this somehow just keeps getting more bizarre - "How can anything be like Heaven?"

Optimistic case, someone somewhere has made more progress, somehow. More likely case: it's another Acererak situation.

The other part makes sense, though. "Testing assumptions - what would happen if anyone were allowed to summon whatever they could?"

"Uh, when I say it's like Heaven, I mean it's doing some similar activities, not that it's Heaven's moral equal. Also, we might both be referring to different things, when I say Heaven I'm referring to the more Law-aligned regions of the Upper Planes."

"Axis is a plane strongly associated with various principles, which gets power from those principles being practiced on the Material Plane. It's not rare for people to go there when they die and then become more like the plane and do work associated with the plane."

"If anyone were allowed to summon whatever they could, some people would probably summon an outer god who accepts summons, and who would probably cause a lot of problems on the Material Plane. Or they'd summon demons who weren't themselves prevented from summoning more demons and end up with a lot of demons. Things like that."