"There have been other decedents with unusually-shaped souls. In re Tucker, In re Vitamin, In re Riddle. The ability for a soul to have alignment is neither necessary nor sufficient for it to be judged. Affirmative answers to the questions at the beginning of every trial are necessary, but not sufficient.

What if someone were to split their soul into pieces, one of which resembled the decedent? We must take that into account in any precedent we set."

"What's wrong with splitting a soul into parts, each of which is judged separately?"

"Pharasma might object to people putting all the qualia in the part that gets a pleasant afterlife, to avoid punishment for Evil."

"I'm not sure if that's possible, but anyway, this court is not for rewarding or punishing anyone, but determining the most fitting category for them. Breaking down souls into pieces split by alignment would mean that petitioners to each plane would arrive already more pure, diluting the alignments of the afterlives less."

Here's a Shoki, with constant Detect Good, Detect Evil, Detect Law, and Detect Chaos.

"My soul is not broken or edited so far as I can tell."

The documentation on editing souls in the buried city was absolutely plastered in dire DON'T warnings. So she obviously didn't.

(She reads as Lawful Neutral to the shoki).

"I that's settled then, if she has a soul capable of alignment.

Ms. Stoneheart - is that the best way to address you? - what were your greatest acts of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos?"

Whether she thinks of things in her most recent life or not, what she flinches away from, what common minor habits she thinks should count - it will all be informative.

"It's fine. I'll take a moment to consider."

Of course, the first two things her mind leaps to are her libraries, and the buried city. She goes through a lot of painful, uncomfortable effort to build her libraries, because it is Important that the past is recorded. But is that truly lawful? It's certainly not Good. Nor Evil. It doesn't help or hurt anybody but herself. It's a principle she holds dear. Nothing should cease to be. And she's been consistent to applying effort to it for... To her best guess, 3100-3200 incarnations. And even her earliest records when she re-reads them reflect the same broad attitudes, the notion that nothing ought be lost to the mists of time, and maintaining reincarnation is a holy duty. That's consistency if nothing else.

The buried city... She did not want the Amentans to simply take away their heritage, as it were, left by the long-dead gods or their ancestors or something. It was a stroke of luck, not inheritance, that she received 'ownership', since it consumed her sorcery to reactivate itself, and thus declared her administrator... And then the Amentans spent a lot of effort and money repairing the place, and she negotiated for a pittance of the profits to be used for all Dwellin kind out of some twisted sense of charity, rather than using her administrative access to claim all of it... Ugh, there's a lot there to think through. Amentans are kind of frustrating.

She still doesn't understand what they mean by Chaos besides, presumably, the opposite of behaving in an orderly, predictable, rule-abiding manner.

Should she consider more things in her daily life, then? She finds it broadly unremarkable and boring, honestly. Caring for the trees and learning other things about ecology is the important part. When she starts accumulating enough favors and shiny trinkets, aside from her constant hunger for more sorcery-stones, she often leaned on local kings and chiefs to be more fair, though it always ends up being a massive headache to get properly stuck into politics and much of the treecarer's social position comes from not touching all that too directly... She almost never supported slavery, implicit or explicit or even the use of prisoner labor, but neither went out of her way to eradicate it. An endless, thankless task, that will never finish, that.

"Law. I kept records over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, remaining consistent in my priorities and principles in that time. I negotiated fairly with the Amentans over the wonders of the buried city when it would have been possible to destroy or claim them all myself."

"Chaos. I have betrayed promises and established arrangements at times, if things become dangerous or unconscionable. The last time a great sea-conqueror murdered his way across the world, he purchased my non-interference with outs if he crossed a line. Regrettably, he found a line that I did not think to even delineate." What a horrible person, taking joy in making things pointless. 

"I later decided his cruelty was too vast. He was taking prisoners and slaves and destroying the part of the brain that interfaces with soul wells, and then keeping them alive for a long time knowing that they would lose all those experiences forever. So I went to his camp and was received as a neutral guest and murdered him in front of his court. And then most of the courtiers when they fought back. I also systematically... Returned his prisoners to the wells." That was grim work indeed. "I suppose that's Evil as well, though they certainly shall come back, that's the whole point."

"-Occasionally I do let my temper get the better of me and go pick a fight with something for the thrill of it." Typically, the first obvious monstrous animal or slaver she can find that actually poses something vaguely resembling a threat.

What about the Black Empire? She doesn't really remember the details of it, she just has her writings from the time, which is a lot less to work on, but she thinks she ran away and hid when things got bad, rather than leaning into the old Coal King's escalating desperation to preserve it. She started that mess, and when it became untenable, she ran away rather than face the consequences. She almost winces thinking of the pain and panicked tone in her writings from the time. What's so terrible about building a factory? About burning coal? About larger cities, the printing press, glassworks... Why did the world decide that was Not Allowed, and turn against them...? Move on, dwell upon it later. 

"...In terms of Good, my motivation for maintaining the soul wells as I do is for the benefit of all Dwellin, that they may return to live again, and that they do so in friendly, supportive communities. My prices for such work often ended up going to charity in one way or another, from requesting policy changes to simple gifts of gold to the poor. Though much of my life was aloof. I enjoyed solitude."

"That's a lot, thank you. Transcripts for the advocates and bench, please."

The clerk collects their notes, leaves the room -

- picks up 10 copies of the complete transcript, including Karakan's thoughts, as typed up and printed by the Morrigna in the other room -

- and returns to distribute them.

"Do you regret violating your agreement with the sea-conqueror?"

"One broken promise of that magnitude is enough to make her not Lawful. Axis vs Kejsi -"

"She's had a very long life, and people change."

"She doesn't."

"Well let's find out. Ms. Stoneheart?"

"It was really stupid even if it became part of my legend. That I would calmly walk up and decapitate you for fucking with the trees. I should have announced that the deal was off at least because of that insanity, and fought my way to him conventionally. I did announce that he had violated the spirit of the terms, and he decided to gloat at me for it. It inspired me to make my promises much more carefully going forward."

Hardly anyone actually keeps promises. Just a few of the most stable kingdoms, a few millennium long grudges. The usual result of swearing enmity now and forever is deciding later that it doesn't count.

"What exactly did you do to return the prisoners to the wells?"

"It was several years of effort. Whenever I would find and free a set, I would explain what had happened - if they did not already know - and lay out several options. This was well before the buried city gave me insight into souls, so they were limited. One, I kill them ritually, near a soul well, to send them to reincarnation early. Even with this brain region destroyed, it effectively tells the system that they are dead and clear for reincarnation if you do it properly. Two, if the maiming was done badly, that is, erred too far to the side of not killing them rather than ensuring the disconnection - a series of rituals and medicines intended to regrow the brain region, that I did not really expect to work very well but was willing to try, and indeed they did not work very well. Three, experimental brain surgery to attempt transplantation of the organ from someone dead of other causes. Four, none of the above, continue living their life even knowing that they will lose all memories and personal development from it.

Many of them had already committed suicide of their own accord. The distribution among those I reached was perhaps two thirds for the first and a quarter for the second, with almost none picking the latter two options. I respected their choices."

They're reading her thoughts, she now realizes, which is very annoying. She's just going to be annoyed and not let it change things, though.

"Okay, I don't think that's Evil at all."

"Suicide is Evil, helping someone do Evil is itself Evil."

"What's your citation for suicide being Evil?"

"Everyone knows that!"

"The usual argument for suicide being Evil is, I believe, that it interferes with Pharasma's court by sending oneself to early judgement, also that it's a way to dodge one's commitments and debts and that it hurts people by making them mourn you. Doesn't apply here. Sounds like dying was the expected and Good option where she's from, in this scenario."

"I'll accept that most of the killings were Neutral, not Good. We'll have to interrogate the decedent to see if any of those she killed dodged commitments or intended to cause grief. Also, if she ever killed herself then that does affect Pharasma and is Evil as normal."

"Yes, we're reading your thoughts." Sigh. "Get the Morrigna in here to prepare live transcripts for the advocates."