That is a bizarre way for things to be. "I - guess so?" 

It's stupid, how it manages to be hurtful that Altarrin doesn't expect more of him. Surely it's not 'unusually heroic' to be basically decent to your friends. And if the only reason Altarrin isn't angry is because he doesn't think Bastran owes him - friendship things - then that also kind of hurts, even if it's definitely not personal and it's just that Altarrin mostly doesn't do 'having friends.' 

He's friends with Caris, though, because Caris is better

"You don't seem sold. Tell me your objections? I want to hear."

“…I think it shouldn’t’ve needed to be unusually heroic, to - care enough to try not to hurt someone when it doesn’t even help. And I think I - want to be someone who can at least put some effort in, when it’s someone who’s put as much effort into making my life better as Altarrin has. It - feels like I must have disappointed him before, if he didn’t expect better of me now.”

"Thank you, that's helpful. Some of that is more of your own inner battles - but also you're surprised and hurt, by Altarrin's lack of hurt. We're definitely going to come back to that."

"Before we finish up with Bastran, I want to give Caris and Altarrin a chance to weigh in. Do you have any major concerns or complaints about Bastran that Bastran didn't bring up?"

"I mostly don't - think he ought to let Altarrin go, necessarily? He can do whatever he wants, I'm not Good, I don't think that I'm entitled to have other people want the things that I want. I would like it if he did, and I think a lot of people wouldn't die as a result, but if his answer is he doesn't care about that, well, that's fair? You can't demand people care about things? I think it'd be fine if he was like 'too bad, I don't care about your thing very much and I'm the Emperor', it's just hard to tell if that's actually what he thinks."

Altarrin looks thoughtful, then leans forward slightly. 

"I think it is just not true that I am disappointed in Bastran? I chose him as a candidate for Emperor - a lot of other people were involved, but I think it is still meaningfully true that I did the choosing, I have substantial influence over many elements of the Empire. I chose him for a job that I know is far harder and more unpleasant for people who - care about doing the right thing - and I chose him because he cares about doing the right thing, and his choices will affect thirty million people. I think he is doing a better job of that than my median expectation, and obviously that matters more to me than whether he takes extra time, during an emergency, to be kind to me personally." 

He looks down. "...I think it was a cruel thing to ask of him, in some sense. I think he would not have preferred a world where I chose someone else because being Emperor would make him unhappy, because we have mostly the same values. But I am definitely somewhat worried about Bastran's wellbeing, especially if I leave." 

...Okay. Wow. That's - actually really touching? And also Bastran really wishes Altarrin could have chosen literally any time to say it, that wasn't in front of the relationship therapist who is now ALSO probably going to have concerns about his wellbeing. The last thing Bastran wants to talk about here is his personal happiness or lack thereof. 

(Bastran...is mostly just not going to think about the thing Caris said, apparently.) 

"Good news, Bastran! The others do not have additional complaints to lay at your feet. Altarrin thinks you're doing a good job. Caris thinks you're entitled to your own point of view -- he's right about that, and that he knows it already is going to save me a ton of work!"

"And with that, your turn in the spotlight is over. For most people, this is the hardest part of the initial meeting, and you're finished with it now. Well done."

"If anyone needs a quick break, now is the time! And then we'll shift our attention to Caris."

Ramona stands up and stretches, takes a drink of her water, and rolls out her shoulders a bit. The anxiety of the morning melted away as soon as the session got started.

Oh good he can not do any talking for a while. 

"You know what to do, Caris. If I were to ask Bastran and Altarrin, what do you think their top three or four concerns or complaints about you would be?"

" - well, probably Bastran disapproves of how I want to steal Altarrin away, and is jealous that Altarrin wants to go? And Altarrin is too wise and ancient to have grievances with people rather than predictions about them. I feel like this is not actually the strongest complaint about me that one could have but I don't really want to list all of the strongest complaints about me one could have. Altarrin should be irritated about my seducing Bastran and nearly getting both of us killed, but he isn't.

I suspect both of them think I should be more Good but also it clearly makes them both miserable, so."

"Yeah, you don't need to list theoretical complaints that someone could have. Just working on your actual problems will be enough, without making up additional ones."

"So I heard:
1. You think Bastran doesn't want you to take Altarrin away.
2. You think Altarrin is... resigned, maybe... about your seduction of Bastran and the fallout from that.
3. You think they both wish you were more Good."

"Let's start with the second one, since I promised Bastran a break!"

"Altarrin? Do you wish Caris had done something different, instead of seducing Bastran? Do you have any lingering feelings about that, or hope for any change for the future?"

Altarrin thinks about this for almost thirty seconds before answering. 

"I think that if Caris had been more careful, a great deal of risk and messiness could have been avoided? If he had waited until he had a better understanding of what could go wrong when one attempts intrigue in the Empire. I think partly Caris felt rushed because I had failed to communicate that I was not going to just - get bored and stop protecting him, and that is on me, but I have a suspicion that Caris also wanted to - do something that felt adventurous and fun and impressive, instead of sitting around being small and harmless and dependent on my protection? I am not sure, those might be the wrong words, Caris would know better what he was thinking. - anyway, I did know about the plan, and I could have thought about it more and warned him, so some of that is also on me."

He sighs, very slightly. "I do not think I particularly have lingering feelings about it. We seem to have more or less resolved the - general difficulty in communicating - that led to me feeling pessimistic about any attempt to reassure Caris about my intentions or the security of his position. - I suppose I am still a little confused and curious about what changed, there. But - mostly I think Caris was always the one most at risk of enormous harm from his hasty decisions? If he had gotten killed, it would have been - not forever, I was going to fix it someday, but it might take me another thousand years to fix Velgarth alone and get him back. Whereas if I had gotten killed, I -" he looks down, "- would already be somewhere else, now, and no longer tied to the Empire." 

"It would've been better if I'd let him die. I had the thought at the time but - I wasn't very sure and I was scared I'd die before he came back."

Slight shrug. "I think it is genuinely not obvious? You might have died, and that would also have been very costly to the project we both care about - more than five years' worth of cost, and possibly more than the rest of this natural lifetime, which is the longest I would stay here even if Bastran never changes his mind. Also I think you would have more or less been forced by the compulsions to return to the Empire anyway, unless you had a plan for that which you never mentioned, and I think that went substantially better because you had taken a genuine risk to save my life, and earned some goodwill." 

"I... think I don't understand how you all think about death. You seem to have different rules about that. Altarrin is immortal, but Caris should have let him die? Caris is trying to become immortal? Bastran doesn't want to be? There's coming back from death? I am a little bit lost and need some help."

"If Altarrin dies in this body he'll come back. If Bastran or I die we won't. - I believe Altarrin that he'd try, eventually, but it's hardly the kind of thing you can expect to work, if I've been recycled ten times by then. 

I want to be immortal like he is, or - maybe there's even a better method, combining our magics. To have a system such that the destruction of my body does not entail losing myself."

Also Altarrin's immortality method kills teenage kids when he evicts them from their bodies, and he really thinks Carissa has no business calling him Good, but he is nnnnooot entirely comfortable saying that in front of the relationship counselor. 

"I think almost any problem can be solved, eventually. At the very least, there are other worlds, at least four of them and once you have personally learned of four I think you should assume there are thousands or millions, and some of them have different magic. But I would definitely prefer to solve it for Caris sooner, so we can solve it for everyone else. I - am not really sure I understand how Bastran feels on the topic. My prediction is that he - on some level feels he would be obligated to stay on as Emperor forever, if he were immortal, and understandably does not want that?" 

It might be mostly that. 

It's...probably not entirely that? 

Bastran is having kind of a lot of difficulty thinking about this topic, actually, possibly because the compulsion to serve the Empire does not like him thinking about there being an amount of serving the Empire that would be too much. His head hurts now. He doesn't say anything. 

(Yes, it's just as well that Altarrin not mention killing teenagers so he can use their bodies, Ramona would definitely have a WAIT HOLD EVERYTHING WHAT moment if she heard about that, and would have to think what to do about it, and ask a whole bunch more questions, and wrestle with her own personal philosophy and ethics, and let's just say it would derail the session.)

Ramona sees that Altarrin has lobbed a question at Bastran and Bastran isn't sure how to answer it and has a pained look on his face.

"We got a little off course, I think? Let me rewind a bit. We were talking about Caris's guesses about Bastran and Altarrin's complaints about him. And within that, we were taking a look at whether there is currently any problem remaining between Altarrin and Caris about Caris seducing Bastran. And if I understood correctly, that has been resolved to Altarrin's satisfaction."

"After that we talked a bunch about a bunch of other ways things could have turned out, and I got confused about how death works for you. And I'm still somewhat confused, but probably not in a way that matters right at the moment. I would like to table the discussion of all those hypotheticals and go back to Caris's list."

"Let's talk about whether Bastran and Altarrin wish Caris were more Good."

"Is Caris right about that? If so, what would it look like for Caris to be more Good, specifically? I am still learning what you all mean by Good and Evil but I bet there's more than one way to play it."

Bastran looks like he might need a minute before he's ready to answer. Altarrin can go.

"I - would not have phrased it that way? I think it is true that Caris was very shaped by growing up in Cheliax, and part of that is in the direction of - tending to consider his own impulses toward kindness to be a weakness that he should avoid? But the more inconvenient part for my purposes was his assumption that everyone else would be entirely out for themselves and ready to exploit any weakness, and this made it very frustrating to try to express that I actually genuinely wished us to be allies. I also think Caris considers torture to be - less damaging to people than it actually is? Which seems like partly having internalized the teachings of Asmodeus, and partly just Caris being a very unusual person, and either way I think the problem there is more specific than Caris not being Good." 

Another slight shrug. "I think I am still actually confused what Caris means by Good and Evil - perhaps partly because Cheliax deliberately confuses the distinction, since they are trying to make Evil seem appealing and I think it is just - not, usually, to most people. But the thing that matters to me is that Caris is committed to giving our world immortality or afterlives. It matters less to me whether wanting that technically counts as Good according to Golarion's system." 

"So in your view, Altarrin, a better version of Caris would be more open-minded about other people's motivations, and more aware that torturing people is actually just bad. Not Evil, but bad, leaves them less than they were before. Is that right?"

"What would be different for you if Caris shared your view on torture?"