"Have you tried...finding your jobs fun...so you don't have to pick something else up on the side?"

"There's a temptation, if you are too invested in finding your work enjoyable for its own sake, to deluding yourself about whether something is really the best-for-the-world way to spend your time if it's the sort of thing you find intrinsically motivating."

" - that's why you have your superiors decide what you work on instead of deciding it yourself and picking something you like that doesn't serve your god at all."

"Yes! That is why I am guarding a gate - well, now I'm a liaison officer, but yesterday I was guarding a gate. I have tried to find the intrinsic motivation and deep fulfillment in guarding a gate, and as far as I can tell it's just not there."

"Shoulda been a wizard. I loved my job even at the Worldwound and loving one's job was not especially common there." - there's more to say about that, but she suddenly finds that that, of all things, feels like betraying Cheliax to complain about. She regrets nothing she did to fight the Worldwound and resents nothing done to her there.

"I don't think I'd have been a very good wizard. Too wise, you see."

"Nefreti Clepati is a wizard and a cleric both. I have been thinking I will sneak into her tower and copy whatever it is she's doing."

"Nefreti Clepati in one sense has wisdom in spades, and in another equally important sense has none at all."

Carissa had formed a firm intention to not share with Lastwall any of the actual things learned through espionage and that means she cannot tell anyone that Nefreti Clepati and Aroden have a Complicated Relationship Of Some Kind even though this is some truly incredible gossip. 

She endeavors to not even let slip that she is tempted. She'll probably succeed, everyone here's very - something. "Oh, I figured she was in on it and only pretending to be crazy," she says, this being what she figured before she learned any secret things.

"I continue to be a junior officer who was not, personally, in on it, and if I were in on it I would not give up my co-conspirators so easily.

...But, also, I think she's probably sincerely crazy. The high priests of Nethys tend to be."

"I don't really know much about any other gods. I was at a big fort that got foreign adventurers - assigned there on purpose, because I can make anything I've gotten a good look at - but I avoided asking questions about religions. I know Nethys is the mad god of magic and that's about it."

"He's supposedly omniscient, and his high priests are also a little omnisicent and a little mad. And sometimes also ninth-circle wizards."

Carissa thinks that trade is worth it and she bets that Iomedae doesn't want her to make it so she won't. Grudgingly. 

"...I don't think Nethys hands out wizard circles, so much as picks clerics who are or will become powerful wizards."

"Oh I figured there's some line of ludicrously dangerous magical research that if you're clever enough makes you both go mad and attain new heights of power. I am all right with attaining my power the slow way by surviving lots of assassination attempts, though."

"No, I think the madness comes with the cleric circles. Nethys-spelled-backwards wasn't a wizard at all - He was the high priest in Iomedae's day, I don't know how his name is pronounced, I've mostly just seen it in writing."

"I further know almost nothing about the Shining Crusade, except that it won. ....and involved a lot of werewolves?"

"...It...might have? Ustalav has a lot of werewolves today, I wouldn't be shocked if it also had a lot of werewolves then... but no, the crusade was mostly against undead and I can't recall any mentions of werewolves. I wonder why Geryon picked that one."

"- I once made some frankly limb-endangering personal decisions with a very scary Hellknight in exchange for the opportunity to see Heart's Edge, and it's not undead-bane."

...

"Heart's Edge is being held by Hellknights? - Or maybe not anymore, but - where?"

Ha, great gossip that she didn't learn through espionage against the current regime at all. "Used to be at Citadel Dinyar. They're Iomedaeans, aren't they?"

"If you stretch it. They are - were - dedicated to containing the worldwound, which was one of Iomedae's interests among many, and decided to declare themselves to be followers of every god with an interest in containing the worldwound regardless of how little those gods might otherwise have in common. How did you get to see Heart's Edge? They weren't exactly being public about holding it."

"Half of my job was to flirt with adventurers who had fancy magic items so they'd show me the fancy magic items, and they couldn't take it too far because of the Worldwound treaty. So this guy likes me, right, and he was impressed at how fast I recognized all his stuff, and after a while he says he bet I couldn't do it for an artifact. And I thought, well, that's not an opportunity I'm about to pass up, let's get ourselves contract devils.

So, the guy bet me that I couldn't, in less than half a minute, identify all of the magical properties of a major artifact without any magic aid - I didn't have to take my headband off, and I didn't have to give up my armillary amulet, but the point wasn't for me to go around scrounging up good wine and heroism and so on, anyone can do impressive things they get to cheat at. The deal was he could check that I had nothing up and was wearing nothing, and I could cast Arcane Sight, take a look, and if I correctly identified every attribute of the major artifact in less than half a minute, then he bought me a nicer headband - I had the weakest sort. And if I missed any I became his slave for life. - it wasn't much of a gamble, I knew I could do it."

Tivath stops walking in the middle of the street and blinks stupidly.

"Aren't there artifacts that specifically - hide how they work - "

"There are artifacts that try.

- to be clear, I don't think it would've been a sure thing against literally every magic item any god has ever crafted. But - it's not as if the guy's order had lots of secret major artifacts and he could pick the one I'd do worst on. I was more worried he'd found some other way to cheat me in the contract, but," fondly, "he hadn't. He just laughed and said it'd been worth the shot and paid up."