"The decedent is an oathbreaker. I'm certain we could make use of her."

"Axis wants this decedent.

"Axis is not about following rules for rules sake. Axis is about following rules because it makes sense to have rules. Most people who make Axis don't fully understand that. Most petitioners spend their first 200 years unlearning obedience to a monarch, or chasing perfectionism by abiding by a particular ruleset, or following the incentives that rulers have put in place. Then they spend the next 200 learning how to decide on one's own rules, and following them, and failing to get it right, and trying again.

"This petitioner did a bad job. She broke an oath. If she did that in Axis, today, it would harm the fabric of the plane. But a full quarter of petitioners in Axis end up having to recant an oath they made poorly, in their first 500 years of learning. We have methods for helping them do so in minimally destructive ways.

"But she's still ahead of the average petitioner we receive. She's already thinking in the right terms, even if she's often wrong."

"Alright. I can't tell if you've convinced me or just convinced me that Pharasma v. Calistria should be overturned. But I'll rule. This court finds Safira" sigh "Lawful Neutral."

Miracle. The judge disappears from atop the pile of stones fashioned as his chair; the stones beneath pop away, one at a time, each delayed by a sixth of a round or so from the one above it.

Althur, no longer technically Nirvana's representative, waits until everyone else has popped away, except Axis.

Orinthal waits for everyone, except Nirvana, to leave as well. They expected Nirvana's representative to have a question or two.

"How does Nirvana select representatives?"

"People volunteer for a training program, then once we are trained, there are always volunteers for every trial. Most people self-select for trials they're good at, starting with easier ones or impossible ones at the start of their career and closing in on closer ones as they get better. We usually decide by consensus, in the group of volunteers, which of the volunteers is the best choice.

"Or, in the rare cases where no one volunteers or consensus can't be reached, there are a number of ex-lawyers who make the executive decision on who to send."

"And how do you think Axis decides who to send?"

"Probably some market mechanism. But you can't possibly, even in Axis, have enough liquidity to have prediction markets on who will do the best job for every single decedent."

"For the closer trials we do, but you're right, we don't have a prediction market on every decedent. For even more decedents, we have prediction markets on where they'll end up. I did start a market on her fate and will make a bit of money on that, since a few people bet against my ability to win this trial. But beyond that, we have—incentives for getting people into Axis. Fractions of impact payments are earmarked for the representative. Fractions of wages are earmarked for each representative. They fade out over time, and they are typically a small fraction of the total cost.

"But I wasn't lying when I said this one was valuable to Axis. I wouldn't be surprised if she's a demigod of some unexplored area of—what is a valid oath, how do you behave to prevent people from systematically and unfairly exploiting oaths, in a thousand years. Or she'll go off in some other direction that I can't predict."

"That's almost Nirvanian, you know. 'This person didn't do a great job in life but they deserve a second chance in their afterlife.'

"I hope they can heal in Axis properly."

"Not everything in existence worth doing is healing."

Plane Shift.

It can be hard to do other things until you have, though.

Plane Shift.