"We don't have jurisdiction. The limited discovery we have already shows that the decedent is from an area with its own gods and its own afterlife system."

"So what, we just let her stay in the Boneyard forever?"

"The Boneyard is only home to the True Neutral. While we may temporarily host those unable to be judged, the decedent appears to have already had a very long life, so additional waiting is not called for."

"Let's revisit the jurisdiction argument after we have learned more about the decedent. At the moment, we don't have an option other than judging her here, but maybe we will find out about a way to return her to her proper custody.

Ms. Stoneheart, do you know where you are?"

"It does not appear to be Amenta. Or home. Or the starship. Did it explode? I had thought perhaps I would be reborn some day, as usual, should that happen."

"This is not 'Amenta', your home, nor any world on the Prime Material plane, no. This is a place for judging the souls of the dead in the universe owned by god Pharasma. I suspect you are from a different universe.

I don't know how you died.

Can you contact the god who handles your reincarnation, or describe how we might contact Them?

Does it sound to you like we are speaking in a language you understand, using words you are familiar with, at a speed you can follow?

Do you understand that you had, while alive, the capacity to take actions, and that those actions had effects on the world and on other people?

What do you know of Good and Evil, Law and Chaos?"

"...I cannot. We have no contact with the gods, and our understanding of them may well be incorrect. Our reincarnation is mediated by holy trees, which hold the souls of all the dead and place them into infants less than a month of age, before they develop a soul of their own, but again the details are not known."

(She half suspects that the gods set the whole thing up and then abandoned them. At least it's been stable for however many thousands of years. It's very frustrating and rather infuriating, but this is not really the time to dwell on that.)

"Yes. Yes. Good and evil are multifaceted and complex moral and philosophical concepts, I can expand if you wish." (She has the broad general idea correct, according to her thoughts. Healing vs torture. Kindness vs slavery.) "Law is... Rules and procedures and punishments, useful for organizing beyond people you personally know and the immediate future. Chaos is the tendency for large changes to result from small differences in initial conditions in a deterministic system."

"Given that her reincarnation is her natural afterlife arrangement, rather than a druid's whim, I would argue that we have, at most, jurisdiction over her most recent life."

"Either we have jurisdiction or we don't, and your proposal breaks all precedent and the common sense that we're here to judge souls, nothing less.

However, we may be forced to discard particular actions which we cannot place into context per Hell vs Izabetta."

Restricting inquiry to her most recent life would be convenient... and he himself just suspended a fellow judge for taking the easy way out. "What exactly is a soul in your universe? Your soul is different from the souls here, and we can't inspect it very well."

"If foreign gods are judging me, I think I should like to understand what exactly is going on and what it means for me before answering much else."

"Normally, you don't get a choice.

Given her open defiance of Pharasma, and that we don't even know if she can become an outsider, how I about I eat her now and save everyone the trouble?"

"In Pharasma's universe, souls come here after a single life, where we, on behalf of Pharasma, sort them according to their alignment, Good vs Evil and Law vs Chaos. From what I can tell, in your universe those are merely suggestions, but here they are fundamental properties of people, places, and objects.

There is a plane for each of the nine combinations of Good-Neutral-Evil and Law-Neutral-Chaos, where souls are transformed into 'outsiders', beings that are purely one alignment, unlike muddled living creatures." (There are other places souls can end up, but one, that's not relevant to the decedent; and two, ick.)

She has no salk and no weapon, but she can still glare balefully at the mouth thing while mulling this over.

"Most decedents have some idea where they're going and can, you know, argue for whatever choice they actually prefer if it's close. It's usually a bad idea, admittedly, but this trial is unusual in five different ways already, and also she has no idea what's up in any of the afterlives. I know we usually have a whole no proselytizing thing but it'd be unfair to hold a trial without informing her further. I'd even argue for releasing her outside the river of souls if she wants that, given the jurisdiction thing."

"It's possible that her gods have abandoned her universe - but I'm not making a decision on jurisdiction until we know more.

What accommodations do you propose?"

"Since we have a full court, perhaps we advocates could each give a pitch for our alignment?"

"Hm, would that satisfy you, Elysium?"

"It's not like you'd accept if I tried to keep Hell from speaking. Random order or what?"

"Is that a yes? I will select a random order."

"No objection."

"Any other proposals?

Okay."

He thinks over a text he has memorized, keeping a total of the number of letters, modulo nine. After every ninth word, he uses the running total to select an alignment.

Beware of false balance. There are no quotas in

Heaven, Nirvana. "Nirvana is first."

our task. Every soul must be assigned a fitting

Heaven, Nirvana, Elysium, Axis. "Axis is second."

Nirvana, Axis, Abaddon, Hell, Maelstrom, Elysium, Abyss, Boneyard, Heaven.

"Nirvana is the Neutral Good afterlife built chiefly by Sarenrae, goddess of healing and love. It consists largely of, beautiful valleys and mountains, with prospering cities populated by many other thinking beings, with an island at the center for new arrivals who need help the most. We believe that everyone has the capacity for Good. Whether you recognize it or not. Whether you feel you deserve mercy, and comfort, and safety, or not. Nirvana believes that you do. We believe you were trying to help, and if you failed, it only means you need help yourself. We believe that you deserve comfort and mercy, like any other thinking being, every single one. Not so free and wild as Elysium, nor so structured and purposeful as Heaven or Axis. A place where you can exist and rest. Should you be sorted Neutral Good, you will come to our land to live in peace, and to help others, if you wish. Or to live alone and simply rest from your lives of conflict, if you wish. I don't actually know what you would want in an afterlife. It may well be that Nirvana is not right for you; But I believe you deserve it, if you want it, even if it is not entirely up to me."

"Axis is the Lawful Neutral afterlife. Physically, there are patches of any environment that someone wanted enough to arrange, but our cities are particularly popular. Being morally Neutral means that we are happy to interact with people no matter their values, not that we are required to maintain some sort of balance, although a few people like that do exist. Our most famous god is Abadar, god of commerce and mutual benefit. You can buy almost anything you might wish for, including Good and Evil things, and Chaotic things too. You can sell just about any skills or items you have to offer.

Abadar is not our only god. We have many concerned with various forms of order and honor, or concerned with other things entirely while pursuing Their goals Lawfully. Markets are not our only form of interaction, although they are the most common. We accept anyone who is safe and reliable, whatever their habits and manner, including not interacting with others at all.

Many souls choose to buy improvements, eventually taking many forms, with myself as a one example. Some, valuing self-sufficiency, prefer to develop strength and refinement by themselves.

I will now respond to Nirvana, and, preemptively, to what I expect the other advocates to claim. Nirvana is a place of great charity. Axis does not, as a plane, especially value charity, but we are prosperous and life is bountiful.

Nirvana offers growth only in a particular direction, with limited variation in form and abilities. While Axis cannot match the fluidity of the Chaotic planes, we are, to repeat, prosperous. Almost any enhancement you want can be bought, and, more concretely, a very large selection of well-liked options is available for prices that most can afford. I said earlier that you can buy almost anything you might wish for, and there too, I can say more concretely that almost all of the things that people want, weighted by frequency, they can obtain after a time that they think is reasonable. On average, 98% of a person's lasting unique desires are fulfilled after a time they think is reasonable.

Despite my clarification, you can probably think of more tricks in those statements, but tricks are not our way, usually, and if they are, the possibility is announced. Hell uses tricks without warning. The Evil planes are generally unpleasant. If you want to fight for Good, the Good planes will use you more efficiently than Axis, and similarly with Evil, but Axis is more able to accommodate any other goals, if you are capable of being sorted Lawful."

"Abaddon offers oblivion for most; food for the very hungriest."

"Hell is the Lawful Evil afterlife and unlike the Abyss or Abbadon, will not send you to oblivion. Should you be judged Evil and want to continue existing, you want to also be judged Lawful. Or Neutral and choose Hell, since Pharasma objects to oblivion. We also offer instruction and perfection of your myriad mortal flaws, the chance to participate in useful industry, and advancement opportunities, all under the auspices of Asmodeous, God of among other things, well defined contracts."

"The Maelstrom is infinite. All the Chaotic planes are infinite, but Elysium and the Abyss have a theme. The Maelstrom, the Chaotic Neutral afterlife, has everything, and it's all within reach. You can be anything.

When you arrived, the news caught the interest of the Maelstrom, and various creatures lent their attention, their memories of past trials, their lawyerly personalities... and I was created, Advocate for Maelstrom. Or rather, I was reassembled. When I return, it will not be my death, but just a change, and eventually another case will bring me forth again to continue this thread of life.

So. If you like being alive, we're the most alive."

"If you want to be actually free, free of the gods setting rules and expectations on everything, free of demon lords trying to eat you, and also still meaningfully the same person as you are now in a couple hundred years, you want Elysium. It's a wild place, infinitely so, and that means you can just walk away from bullshit instead of having to cope with it. Good so that we just let people be, and don't eat each other for no reason, and that Elysium contains some things people actually care about. Chaotic so that there aren't any stupid kings or temples or sets of social mores designed by committee that end up incredibly constricting and confusing and kind of Evil most of the time telling you what to do, but not quite as chaotic as the Maelstrom. You can just wander places, and see cool things, and meet interesting people, and then wander somewhere else when you get sick of it. But I'm not your dad. Do what you want."

"The Abyss, the Chaotic Evil afterlife, is for fighting. Winning. Crushing and consuming. Come test yourself in the only game that ever matters, with the highest stakes and greatest victories. Yes, you might be destroyed painfully in the maw of a greater demon. Would you want it any other way?"

"The Boneyard, the Neutral afterlife, is where you are now. Sometimes Neutral people stay here for a while until they have more of an alignment and leave to the corresponding plane. The Boneyard is also the permanent home of True Neutral people, including scholars, artisans, custodians of nature, tricksters, and especially those involved in collecting, guarding, and judging souls.

Your experience working with the resurrection trees of your home universe intrigues me. Here, you could continue a similar task, of similarly vast importance."

"Heaven is the Lawful Good afterlife. Nirvana and Axis already spoke of Good and Law. I would only clarify a few points.

Yes, Heaven strives to have no Evil. If that dismays you, I beseech you to check if you truly wish for Evil, or merely for things that don't fit the stereotype of selfless toil. Heaven, and all the Good planes, have a place for ambition, greed, sadism, power, satisfaction. Evil means that you fundamentally want the world to be worse off. Good means that you want people to thrive and be happy. If Heaven made our own people miserable, that would defeat the whole point.

Heaven is not just for fighting Evil. You can have a quiet Lawful life with your friends. You can make works of art that inspire. There are people you can organize, comfort, or heal.

Our outsiders usually do appear to embody the stereotype of selfless toil, but that is a course we choose for ourselves, which fulfills and delights us, not a burden of forced conformance."

"The option to say 'fuck this, I'm out' like you seem to want to on some level may or may not be available depending on the judge's decision."

"I see. Assuming lying is impossible here..." She glances at the judge. "Well, I will consider all this carefully."

Axis sounds most reasonable to her, honestly, followed by Elysium, followed by Nirvana. At least at first blush; They could all be deceiving her quite strongly, and a shining city - like the Black Empire, that was torn away, like Amenta- Does sound more like what she wants eternity to be than vast wilderness.

There's some part of her that has a tiny sick thrill at the thought of the Abyss. Could she kill a horrible giant elephant thing, with enough preparation and skill...? But, no, that's her blood talking, the same fighting impulse all Dwellin seem to have, and it's quite different if they won't come back.

"The original question, what do I know of our souls? Well, largely speculation with no way to verify any of it- I was one of very few serious scholars on the matter, we don't tend to keep written records." Damned gods. "The soul as we understand it is not a physical thing, it's more like a record of a person's experiences and the - pattern of themselves, their personalities, their skills and tics and unconscious mannerisms, their cached reactions and associations. A babe touched to the Soul Well will, some ninety-nine times out of one hundred, receive a soul and grow up as a person who already once existed, growing up and remembering more and more over time. One in one hundred, they are left to develop a wholly new soul, becoming a new person - it's quite distinct and obvious from about a year and a half of age. But reincarnated persons can remember specific locations of buried caches, carry grudges from past lives, and learn the same sorcery life after life should they eat sorcerer-stones again. When a person touches the soul well, their current state is recorded and stored. If they die, or if they are out of contact for too long, eventually their stored pattern as of the last time they touched the Well will come up for reincarnation, generally geographically close to where they lived."

"They're not lying."

"Your souls sound completely different from ours, not like souls at all, but like a life copied from one person to the next with Scribe's Binding - that's a spell that turns someone into a book, which can be copied or edited. Under Maelstrom vs Ndaya 0454, mind-affecting spells are given no special deference, so we should be judging her 'most recent life' as she perceives it, which is in fact the creature before us."

"That is not the creature before us. What we have is a thing resembling a Pharasmin soul, not a text. If that is a direct import from her universe, we judge the soul. If that is a container for a 'text' made by whatever process brought her here as an attempt at translating between universes, we judge the creature it represents as Heaven proposed."

"We might not be able to tell.

If we judge her memories of past lives, we create an incentive to distort memories, which flies in the face of Ndaya. Even without deliberate distortions, memories are unreliable. For example, people remember a moment of shame more vividly than a hundred quiet kindnesses."

"And remember themselves more righteously than they actually acted."

"Ooh, what if this is a test?"

"Then we judge exactly as if this were real."

"We're already relying entirely on her memories, which may be completely fabricated."

"Your point?"

(Abaddon had been thinking that all this fighting about evaluating memory is a waste of time and she smells edible so how about this problem disappear the fast way.)

"We don't even know if she's actually from another universe. Maybe this is an attack meant to waste our time."

"Are there any other points before we begin actually considering her alignment? I'm still undecided about what parts of her life, if any, are in our jurisdiction, but we can come back to that after we know more."

"We can see if spells and soul-affecting detection effects affect her normally."

"I would like to ask the court what precisely a soul is so that we can consider things correctly. For example, In re Constantine, that it is Evil to interfere with Pharasma's judgement, should not apply if her people's patterns are not souls according to the court- Or simply because they would not, normally, be subject to Pharasma's judgement. This trial is clearly an exception to the usual course of things."

"In re Degurechaff, 2113. Degurechaff suddenly entered Pharasma's Creation from outside it, and the court decided that she would be judged normally, that is, her actions from before in, for example, arranging the killing of civilians in wartime and committing acts of cruelty towards her subordinates, contributed strongly to the shape of her soul and future decisions. Making her Evil." 

"We already know that her soul doesn't properly work with the transcription spell made by Pharasma Herself... but maybe that's optimized only for Pharasmin souls. We can get a Shoki to take a look?"

"Bailiff, please fetch a Shoki and someone to run future errands for us."

"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."

"If you say that the prisoners were a form of undead, killing them was inherently Good."

"In a different universe, Pharasma's condemnation of undead is irrelevant."

"It sounds like their existence was counter to the system they have there, which doesn't have active guidance from gods, so we look at the gods' apparent intentions in setting up the system, which is endless resurrection."

"Yes, we should treat defiance of other universes' gods as we would want them to treat defiance of Pharasma."

"'Should'?"

"I interpret Axis as offering advice to me on how to judge in Pharasma's interests, not reaching beyond the domain of this court under In re Crouse."

"I don't know what undead are so cannot really comment on the comparison. My intent was to prevent suffering."

And maybe SLIGHTLY to murder someone she found personally repellent, but not to cause him pain and the murder part is practically routine among powerful Dwellin, since you're reading her thoughts have all these anecdotal examples- The annual scheduled war which sees twenty percent casualties and everyone involved going home happy, death-matches for leadership changes in the more dangerous regions, pirates and warbands changing leadership practically daily in jolly good fun until someone who can keep it for a while ends up on top, casual murder attempts turning into negotiated trade deals after the fact-

Anyway, Allikreav was awful and had to be stopped. At least for a while. She ended up going after him a couple more times in future lives, not breaking any deals this time, until he cut it out with the torture enough that she hasn't heard of it happening in the last few hundred years.

"When you said '...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.', how did your work affect the prevalence or nature of 'friendly, supportive communities'?"

"The social role of treecarer is religious, a teacher and roaming advisor, as well as practical, the actual care and keeping of the soul trees. My lessons oft focused on Firnu and Dela, whose teachings indicate hard work and discipline and keeping to promises, and kindness and planning ahead and loving children specifically, respectively. When giving guidance I would focus on these aspects- Keep your forestry and animals in order, keep your feuds on the field of honor and not in the household, keep your fear and hate away from your children. Also, I would give services cheaply or freely where they are most needed, and had little need for expansive material possessions- Other than sorcerer-stones- So I gave a lot of the gifts I receive from kings to keep their soul-wells in order to charity."

(In her head, she is running through memory exercises to try and dredge up more details about the oath of non-aggression, about that night full of white hot fury-)

"So yes, that's a lot of Law and Good, but that isn't exactly what I asked. Does maintaining the soul wells itself contribute to 'friendly, supportive communities'?"

"Why does that matter? There's already plenty of Law and Good, as you said."

"I want to focus on the notion that keeping consistent priorities and maintaining structures is Lawful. The decedent originally described her treecarer duties as Good. While I don't doubt her overall Good, for example her social work as part of her role, maintaining the soul wells is not Good as far as I can tell."

"By analogy with the work of psychopomps, it's clearly Neutral."

"As my colleague from the Boneyard says, yes, but I want to bring focus back to the decedent's deliberate purpose and consistency, which, separate from the particulars of the purpose, is Lawful. In re Guardian of 23 Sandstone Boulders establishes that following a personal code is Lawful if the decedent does or is prepared to make sacrifices to follow it. Abadar vs Kofusachi -7025 says that deliberately making oneself easier to trade with is Lawful. Heaven vs Grace -7977 says that one can trade Lawfully with beings of significantly lower intelligence, such as ants, but I argue that the same applies to trade between gods and mortals. Acts by mortals to make it easier for gods to trade with them, such as keeping a consistent personality and preferences, are thus Lawful."

"She doesn't think her gods exist and wasn't trying to trade with them. If she was acting consistently over time it's because she wanted to do that as near-enough a terminal value, so far as I can tell."

"...Permanent settlements are almost always unviable without at least one Soul Well at their center, and a source of clean water and food. Migrant communities too rely on the existence of soul wells not more than a few weeks' travel apart. Soul wells can survive on their own, but not generally proliferate, and are occasionally destroyed, so the work of maintaining them is necessary and contributes to civilization."

Not that their civilization would be allowed to collapse entirely by the fail-safes the gods seem to have built, but there is better and there is worse.

"I accept that lack of knowledge is a mitigating factor, but not that it erases the alignment of the act entirely.

It's Lawful when an artisan advertises fixed prices out of a personal aversion to haggling rather than any grand ideal of fair trade. It's Chaotic when they give a discount to the local lord, even if that's what everyone else does."

"It sounds like her motive was Good after all, Axis."

"And Lawful in its particulars.

Going back to my point, her general consistency is Lawful however she intended it."

"Are you implying that clerics of Chaotic gods are somehow Lawful?"

"Yes! A little bit!"

This is irrelevant. But he can't just cut off argument...

"Then you've made a mistake! I don't know where, but clerics of Chaotic gods aren't Lawful!"

"Not on balance, no, but a cleric of a Chaotic god who renounced Them is some amount more Lawful than a person who was never a cleric at all."

"How does that apply to the decedent?"

"I accept the decedent's consistency as information about her character which we may use to evaluate hypotheticals. If she had intended trade with gods I would accept that, but she didn't. Mitigated by ignorance, I don't think the remaining Lawfulness under debate is likely to decide this case. Do you dispute that?"

"No, Your Honor."

"Hell would like to hear more about the 'black empire', as a subject that may be relevant to the hypothetical gods' intentions for her world, and how she deviates from them. Previous thoughts on the subject indicate that it had severe negative consequences, and that she wants to do something similar despite that."

...Well, it's true that if her records and the occasional vague memory are accurate the black empire was a flaming garbage fire by the end. And by the middle. But- No, if that one is asking about it it means they want to hurt her somehow with the asking, what if instead she thinks about biology and hating having her mind read. She hates it.

"Hell may ask that.

Ms. Stoneheart, we are used to having a complete transcript of the decedent's life available. Your defiance of Pharasma is not appreciated."

"Is there some way you could get that without the aversive and paranoia-inducing and dare I say possibly therefore Evil if I understand it correctly action of reading my mind?"

"It's not Evil, it's pragmatic. If it causes you this much distress, it's no longer pragmatic."

"And violates the Fair Trials Act."

"Yes, fine. Let's get a Scribe's Binding.

Here recesses the court in the matter of in re Stoneheart."

The Shoki takes this opportunity to slip out.

There's no one around with Scribe's Binding prepared, so he prays to Pharasma for a divine intervention...

...who hires a god who likes Scribe's Binding so much She gives it to Her ninth-circle clerics.

After the book has been copied, the judge carries it outside and smashes it. Miracle restores the petitioner. (Unlike some judges he knows, he's not stubborn about only using his Miracles to carry out verdicts.)

And now Karakan is in a cobblestone courtyard next to a giant feathery black dragon and a Dwellin-sized winged skeleton. Buildings with too many doors surround her, wrapping overhead. The lighting comes from lamps of many colors mounted above each door.

The dragon sticks a claw into a ring that could fit around her waist... and shrinks into the form of the judge. He strides to a door with a chartreuse lamp, tiny bits of paper fluttering behind him. "This way, Ms. Stoneheart."

The courtroom: plus 11 books, minus one giant chompy frog.

(One of the books is at the decedent's desk.)

"Here reopens the court in the matter of In re Stoneheart."

"The decedent's involvement in the Black Empire, as interpreted in the context of her society, defiles their norms - this is both Chaotic and Evil."

"Chaotic, yes, but not Evil. Violating the moral intuitions of her compatriots is Chaotic, but not Evil unless it caused harm or she intended it to cause harm."

"Also, the Dwellin developed a strong distaste for industrialization after her actions. This provides some weak context for the outcome, namely that some people later judged her, rightly or wrongly, but the Abyss's argument must be evaluated in the context of the norms at the time, not later."