Archmages don't cry.

(The cathedral is still standing in his time. The carvings and the murals and the glass were destroyed long before he was born, when the building was rededicated to Asmodeus, and now it belongs to Iomedae. It's still impressive, in a spare, cavernous, martial sort of way. There are no statues).  

His first order of business is to pick an opera house of which to become a passionate partisan. His second is to find a café and see what it is they're arguing about. 

If he has strong opinions about abridgement of Vudrani epics, or about monolingual adaptations of a play called The Sisters where half the content is in thick Galtan Taldane unintelligible to speakers only of Imperial stardard Taldane and that's the point and anyone adapting it is a traitor, or about biting political satire in which Iomedae and the Emperor of Taldor and Tar-Baphon are all sleeping together, or about obscenity laws, then that's probably enough to pick him an opera house of which to become a passionate partisan.

In the cafés they are presently arguing about the origins and nature of the bovine pestilence, the innate character of peasants, the truth of a provocative supposed-memoir recently published about travels through Tian Xia, and whether the lending of money at interest is Evil.

Well, he's against obscenity laws, strong in favor of the Galtan language, getting the impression that the point of this satire is that the Shining Crusade is merely a ruse for both the empire of Taldor and the Whispering Tyrant to level each other's forces at the expense of their oppressed imperial subjects, which is wrong but probably just what he'd assume given a similar state of information. 

Much as he'd like to yell about peasants, Naima wouldn't forgive him if he didn't take the opportunity to learn what people thought about disease a thousand years ago. He'll listen in on that conversation. 

They're pretty sure that diseases are caused by curses and by swamps. And the bovine pestilence probably by swamps because cows are unlikely to have offended anyone, though it's possible the cows' owners did, but the pestilence has been spreading rapidly across all the land, so - probably swamps not curses. Swamp-caused diseases are fixed with clean air, except then you'd expect cows to be fine, they spend all day in the clean air. 

He likes the Galtan National Opera House! They like him back.

The Opéra national de Galt, if you please. 

He will venture that the bovine pestilence is caused by minute animalcules which thrive in poisonous airs but also quite like cows. The animalcules themselves may be of necromantic or natural origin, he hasn't a strong opinion on the subject. 

Huh! If that’s so, you can hardly cure the cows no matter what you do.

That's so, but it does suggest that isolating a sick animal as soon as symptoms are observed might protect the rest of the herd. 

Well, it worked for Absalom the last time cholera hit the Inner Sea, and cholera's definitely a swamp disease rather than a curse disease.

(Someone else objects that you can totally curse people with cholera. Not that they've done it, but they've heard of it.)

Élie doesn't think that proves much! You can also curse people to suffocate or become deathly afraid of drowning, and those also occur naturally. 

Cholera in any event seems much more swamp than curse in nature, unlike the plague, which is obviously characteristically curse-like in nature. Though quarantine also helps with the plague.

Of course, who's to say the bad air in swamps isn't because the places are cursed? 

The person who proposed the swamp/cursed distinction is mildly offended about this and wants to expand on the distinction! Someone else argues that Elié's right and it's all the same thing with an underlying curse-based cause. One party present is actually worried about the bovine pestilence affecting him personally and gets impatient when this gets too theoretical.

The coffee is quite good. 

Élie doesn't actually think any widespread disease is due to curses – who'd have the time? – but he'll let them hash it out. 

What about the people discussing usury? 

Well, certainly it seems that usurers are frequently Evil, but this may be because of the selling people into debt bondage and not strictly because of the usury. On the other hand they may not be so possible to tease apart.

That's so, but without usurers, how are poor men to get loans? 

Well, there are all kinds of things that are Evil but nonetheless better than starving on the streets. Like prostitution. Or service to demons. Or necromancy.

He thinks that's unfair! Necromancy's a very poorly defined school and there's nothing intrinsically immoral about a great deal of it. 

Sure, everyone says that, and then their army of dead bodies tries to take over the world.

Someone else objects that there's no indication Tar-Baphon wanted to take over the world, that's just Imperial propaganda.

Well, most necromancers aren't the whispering tyrant! But he's very interested to hear what this fellow thinks Tar-Baphon is really after. 

Tar-Baphon just wants Avistan north of the Fog Peaks, and he has no right, of course, in a sense, but the same way Taldor doesn't have any right either, and if anything enslaving the dead is less unjust than enslaving the living. You can tell there's no good cause for the war because all of the propaganda is about how incredibly just and glorious it is. No one says that kind of thing who isn't selling something.

Oh, it is good to be among one's own people.

Élie (not that he's using his own name) would like to point out that it's not as if his urrent subjects were dead to begin with. It's his opinion that Tar-Baphon is hardly likely to stop at the Fog Peaks – stopping not being a typical behavior for ninth-circle wizards who arrange to be personally murdered by Aroden to gain a portion of his divine power – and also that the Emperor chose to pick a fight with him now in order to convince the northern provinces that we can't live without imperial protection. There's no reason they can't both be true! 

A free and independent Galt could defend its own borders against Tar-Baphon, if it weren't suffering under crushing imperial taxes and having all its best and brightest recruited to serve in Crusading forces!

Naturally! And that's not incompatible with Tar-Baphon really wanting to take over the world. 

Fine, probably Tar-Baphon really wants to take over the world, though so does the Emperor,  and so does Iomedae, so it's hardly a distinguishing great evil of Tar-Baphon's. 

The Emperor certainly would if he could, but he's not being nearly as efficient about it. And Iomedae seems more interested in ascending, anyway.