"...I appreciate that but now I'm confused about the set of principles would lead you to accept the cost of killing a hundred thousand people for thirty percent better odds of saving Cheliax from Hell, but not the cost of making me regret having had this conversation."

" - you can pay in Evil to get more Good, you can't as much betray Law to get more Law. I really do not want people to be worse off by their own lights because they did not, before telling me a lot of information about the future which I valued highly, think to ask for my agreement not to invade any countries on the strength of that information, an assurance I would've given if you'd asked for it. If it's predictably a bad idea to tell me things - well, in the ultimate accounting it's still just a price to pay if it's worth it, but it's not a price you can pay selectively, and I don't think it's in fact a price worth paying."

"You're going to have to tell me if this is some universally understood conversational norm of the 3800s or a rule that's particular to you. I don't typically engage in conversations with the assumption that my interlocutors will only do things with the information that I approve of; if I did, I'd never open my mouth. When I mentioned Belkzen, I knew you had the power to conquer it – if I failed to draw the necessary inference from that, it's my problem, not yours. It wouldn't make me trust you less. And I've never resented anyone for using things I've told them to work against the interests of Asmodeus. 

Even if I did, though – is my trust worth a hundred thousand lives? I suppose it might be, but that can't be true in the general case."

"- it's not a 3800s thing, it's a Lawful god thing. Being an entity whose decision procedure doesn't make people regret telling me true information without carefully prenegotiating, and grants them the conditions they could've prenegotiated including the conditions they could've prenegotiated if they understood how to negotiate with Lawful gods, seems easily worth millions, probably billions, of lives in expectation."

"If you're wondering if other mortals do this, no, it's literally just her."

"I'm struggling to understand the mechanism here. What's the benefit of knowing something if you're bound not to act on it – I mean, aside from the satisfaction of curiosity fulfilled, which is worth a great deal to me but I'd have thought you'd care about less. And conversely – in the past, when I've had information I didn't want you to know, I've tried to make sure your church didn't become aware of it. It wouldn't have occurred to me prenegotiate conditions; I'm not sure any mortal alive relates to you that way. Unless you taught them to in Lastwall." 

"I hope I taught them to in Lastwall. I would've hoped it was known more widely than that, really - one of the favors I'm doing Aroden and Abadar before I ascend is trying to leave an explanation of it for their churches too, so it's more widely understood.

I spent a decade of my life trying to determine whether Aroden was trustworthy. An important element of that was whether it was possible for an agent at my level of - skill and confusion - to negotiate with Him in a way that protected my own interests. I don't want the next person who'd think to check to have to spend a decade on it. 

There are few benefits to knowing things that I am forbidden to act on in any way under any circumstances, and indeed 'you may not act on this in any way' isn't a condition you could've negotiated with me before this conversation, I'd have just told you that in that case we probably shouldn't talk. But there are plenty of benefits to knowing things I'm forbidden to act on by conquering countries! There are all kinds of non-conquering-countries-based candidate solutions to the problem of Belkzen, and the problem of Lastwall being militarily overstretched."

Possibly he should do something about the spike of jealousy he feels whenever Iomedae mentions her relationship with Aroden. He can't imagine what it must be like to have a being more powerful than himself really, verifiably aligned with his interests. (His life's involved a lot more signing contracts with Mephistopheles on a weeks's notice despite his obvious and profound incapacity). 

"It seems foolish to me for any mortal to be certain that a god is trustworthy. Of course sometimes one must negotiate with them, but – I think it's safer to do it from a position of continuing to be confused. 

I see why you'd want me to have told you about Lastwall's Belkzen problem, but I'm still not sure how this saves millions of lives in expectation."

"I have done things wildly more ambitious than I'd have attempted if I couldn't be as sure of Aroden as I am of myself. I think without that I'd delay ascension a few centuries, until I understood the Starstone, and that's - a very high price to be paying. 

When I decide whether to go to Belkzen over your objections or not, I'm choosing which kind of god I'll be. One it's safe to tell things without negotiating incredibly carefully in advance, or one it's not safe to tell things like that. 

I think if you compare this Iomedae, and an Iomedae who it is not safe to tell things without negotiating incredibly carefully in advance, across all of the situations in which they'd be distinguishable from each other as gods, this Iomedae outperforms that Iomedae because -  all it takes is some entity with enough background to understand the difference but which is not clever or careful enough to negotiate with an adversarial god, which is making a high stakes decision, and is willing to ask Me and not willing to ask that Iomedae. And there are many worlds on which I intend to operate, and a long time ahead of us."

And that only works if anyone understands it, which they don't – because probably it's some teaching of Aroden, and Aroden is dead – 

Alfirin? I'm worried I'm going to say something that gives the game away. Is all this something that people would understand, in a world where Aroden lived?

I think it's the end of prophecy, more than the death of Aroden, that would make the difference. It's not like Aroden's the only Lawful god. But also - I don't know that it's something I would know in great detail if I hadn't spent most of my life crusading with a future god. It's not something I knew at thirty.

I wonder if more people did understand this before the Age of Lost Omens. Not something I should ask about, anyway.

And to Iomedae – 

"I'm not sure entities who aren't clever or careful enough to negotiate with adversarial gods should consider themselves clever or careful enough to reliably tell that that's what they're doing. I'm not. And I've negotiated with gods in my time, not because I felt at all confident that I could, but – because the consequences seemed likely to be worse if I didn't try." 

"That makes sense to me. But the range of circumstances under which you should tell me things is - much broader, if I'm not an adversarial god, even if it's not infinitely narrow even if I am one, and I think there are potentially a lot of important things in the distance between those two possibilities. A lot of people who might - check with Me if their terribly clever Wish wording will work, if they believe that I can and will meaningfully promise not to act on that information by stopping them from trying it or warning their target, and who won't if they don't think I can or will meaningfully promise that."

" – Well, I won't tell them if you don't. You aren't a god now." 

" - if you prefer that I not interact with you according to any principles beyond those we've negotiated explicitly, I will respect that, but I don't think 'betray people only if they won't tell anyone' scores all that well as a predictable tendency, and I don't think it matters at all that I'm not a god yet.

...I think it could matter, to a hypothetical different kind of person, whose attitude about all this was that this was one of several possible interpretations of what it means to be Lawful Good and they weren't smart enough to figure it out yet and would figure it out when they were a god and in the meantime do common-sense human things. That would be a reason to change their behavior on ascension, and to not consider their human behavior strongly indicative of it. 

But this is relevant to a lot of the instructions I'll leave my church, and I think I'll get better results and be more able to negotiate alliances that favor my ascension if I have it right going in, so I did spend a lot of time thinking about it, and - I think it's the right policy, for reasons that apply already. Not across specific situations necessarily, but if one is just going to decide in every situation what policy looks momentarily most convenient one loses out on all the benefits of having predictable policies, and if one isn't going to do that then one needs a policy that underperforms in some specific situations to create benefits in other ones."

And she finds herself a bit reluctant to say it, but, "sometimes I worry that Alfirin will do something foolish and so I try very hard to be someone she'd talk to, first, and I don't think I could fake it, and I don't think it'd be a good idea to try to attain what I want there by being someone who'd special-case her and happily betray anyone who I could bluff."

"I will." If she is ever again in a position where she expects to do something Iomedae would consider very foolish. The fact that she hadn't been able to notice thirty years ago that Iomedae was someone she could have talked to then was already on her mind in this conversation. It is, when she thinks about it, one of the things she regrets the most.

He wonders if Iomedae knows about the thing Alfirin's already done. If she did, she never told her church. 

"I think this is really the same thing we've been talking about this whole time. There's any number of reasons to prefer a Republican system of government, but the one that matters most to me is that – how should I put this –

Cheliax wants its subjects to become Evil. Lastwall wants them to become Good. Osirion wants them to become Lawful – that one's another more recent development – and most places just ask them to pay their taxes on time and not cause trouble. A Republic, at least a properly developed one, ask its citizens to be honest, thoughtful, civic-minded – and it wants them to be free. It needs them to develop in themselves the qualities necessary to determine what ends they should desire and how best to achieve them. It isn't enough for them to be able to trust their leaders, or even their gods, because their leaders answer to them. 

– Not that it's a bad thing to have your people trust you, as a mortal or as a god. But I do think the fact that this is something you're willing to sacrifice so much for reflects, hmm, a certain difference in emphasis. I don't mind it, but I would like to know what other rules you consider yourself bound to, when you're talking to me."

"I don't ask people for conditions I think it would not have been in their interests to offer me, and where it comes up that they might wish they'd offered me some condition on our conversation, I think whether I'd have granted it, and if so I abide by it, and if I am going to use their aid in a respect I suspect doesn't serve them, I tell them so such that we can establish what they wish they'd negotiated. 

I don't especially expect the citizens of a Republic to end up more free. Because I don't expect it to last, and because even if it does I think I don't expect that a tyranny of all ones fellows produces good government and there are important freedoms born only of good government. Freedom from unjust prosecution, and from prosecution for things that should not have been crimes, and from being called to serve in unjust wars....I could imagine being persuaded that the exercise of choice in policies is a more important freedom to have than the freedoms born of good government, but I think one of the most important arguments for Lawful Good government is that people in a well-run state will be freer.

And of course maybe there's some kind of intermediate thing that'd grant both good government and choice of policy, but I don't think it's Republicanism, at least not as I've ever heard it proposed. I was thinking -

- what if people can't appoint their magistrates and governors, but they vote every three years on whether to recall them? There's less avenue for the country to end up run by Geryon-who-got-bored-and-thought-it'd-be-funny, but you're using the fact that people know better than anyone far away if their local government is manifestly unsuitable. And you could do the same thing with taxes, because I do think there's some kind of principled argument there -

- the principled argument would go something like, where the state takes from them with the threat of force, the only defense is their own good, and not the good of any other, and so anything the state does with taxes not for the benefit of the payer is a taking from the payer not fundamentally more Lawful than highway robbery except in its predictability -

- anyway, you could task the government with descriptions of what will happen, in the world, at two different levels of taxation, a clear and simple description, and have people vote between them. I think if you'd succeeded at all in building a state where people believed in their cause they wouldn't just favor whatever selfishly benefitted them most. It's a very preliminary sketch of an idea but I'd expect it to encourage integrity and civicmindedness and the qualities necessary to determine what ends they desire - a lot more than voting for rulers, which doesn't actually seem to me like it either encourages or requires that."

"There are a few ways we could look at this. 

The first is – I'm being deliberate when I say leaders, and not rulers. I hardly think I need to convince you that ruling is morally corrosive, but I've come to believe that so is being ruled. It teaches people that the best thing they can aspire to is the exercise of power; and that, failing to achieve it, they should cower, or toady, or expend their talents in the pursuit of empty honors – or, failing all of that, not exercise their talents at all, lest they come to the attention of some jealous lordling. When we know we have no control over our own fate, why try to better it? Why develop the virtues of reason, judgement, concern for the public interest? One's better off staying in one's place. That's what voting for one's leaders changes. It tells people that in the end their choices matter. I'm not wedded to any particular republican system and I think there's a lot of room – and need – for experimentation, and voting directly for policies might very well play a role. Still, it can't substitute for placing the real exercise of power in the hands of those who are subject to it. 

I don't see why government by one's fellow citizens shouldn't be good. Certainly I can't think of an alternative more certain to produce just laws, saving, of course, the direct personal eternal rule of a Lawful Good god. But if you're not planning to rule over all the world – I think I'd rather take my chances with a government which I can choose, whose actions I can debate, who depend on good-will of their neighbors to stay in power, over the arbitrary rule of some conqueror's great-great-grandchild. Or did you think any king or queen alive protects their subjects from unjust prosecutions and unjust wars? Or that they would, if their throne depended on it? Or that they could guarantee the same protection from their heirs? 

The system you've proposed might work very well for Lastwall, which I don't think I can convince you should be governed in the republican manner. But – the real strength of a republic is that it rewards the best in people, instead of punishing it. You still want Lastwall to be ruled – and that means you want the people of Lastwall to spend their whole lives knowing that they shouldn't answer the questions that matter for themselves, and they shouldn't aspire to be better than the society that produced them. Probably that's fine. After all, it would be a tall order produce someone who surpassed you. The reasonably thing to do in your situation is to settle for that – but for the rest of the world, I think we can afford something more ambitious. 

The other is that Asmodeus teaches us that we're stupid and shortsighted and contemptible, and that we can only hope to rise above our natures or accomplish our aims in the world by obeying our betters. There's a question I sometimes ask myself: do I disagree with those claims because I hate Asmodeus, or do I hate Asmodeus because I think he's wrong? Now, realistically, a man can be of two minds, but on most days I like to think it's the latter. So – what does it mean, to really believe that? I think people are better  when they're free. I think that, left to our own devices, we can come up with systems of government that balance that freedom with justice. I think when you leave us to our own devices, we won't inevitably degenerate into petty tyranny – and I've seen a fair amount of petty tyranny, but much goodness too." 

"- it would be a catastrophe if people in Lastwall grow up believing they shouldn't answer the most important questions in the world for themselves."

"Well. You do let them leave." 

"People have to decide what to do with their lives! Whether to have children! Whether to be soldiers! Whether to serve a god, and which one, and in which capacity, whether to send their children to distant schools, whether to keep their salary or give it and where to give it to. Those are - by far the most important decisions they make, the decisions that affect the world most and affect them personally most, they are wildly more important than who sits at the head of a distant government if the distant government is at all well-designed and not entirely subject to the whims of its ruler."

"More important for them, not more important for everyone." 

"No, more important for everyone. Each person has only a little influence over a vote, and the difference between the choices is not always going to be large. Most of the effects people have are through the work they spend the hours of daylight doing. Doing the right thing is about making difficult moral decisions about how to spend your time and resources, over and over, every week and every month and every year, and it - doesn't actually seem plausible to me, that whether or not people are competent to ask themselves 'what do I want to achieve with my life, how do I get it done, what am I willing to pay for it, and how will I notice if it's not working' - is about whether they vote for their leader.

I know that you've seen the result, and I haven't.

But if I'm wrong about this it's not wrongness about the efficacy of a form of government I've never seen, which is a place I'd expect to be wrong. It'd be wrongness about the entire human character. I'd expect that what matters is - education, so people have choices, examples of how those choices turn out, so it's evident where they can carry you and why you might want to try to get there, training at making important high stakes decisions and seeing how they actually turn out, good recordkeeping so you can tell which of your decisions had what effects, wise elderly people who travel to tell the stories of their own lives, their greatest regrets, the paths they didn't take and the good and bad reasons why not. It's about institutions that, when they get things wrong, look back closely and truthfully and ask 'why did we get that so wrong', and where people feel that the hours are precious, and ask themselves all the time if they're being well-spent."

"Education is a wonderful thing. Where I'm from, the only country to offer it to all their children, free of charge, was infernal Cheliax. And they kept very good records, too.

I do think people can be competent in the way you want them to be without a republic – and in Lastwall they probably generally are – but you're asking them to build institutions that teach them the skills they need to make high-stakes decisions without fundamentally wanting them to do any such thing. If there's one thing I've learned from experience, it's that people can tell when their government is lying to them. I don't know how you can get them to value the things you want them to value without really believing it."