"It only threatened that because someone stole its table. Which was folly in the technical despise the fool sense."

"...I have so many questions about how physics as we know it could possibly function given the existence of someone who theoretically collapses all the wavefunctions because of staring directly at them all the time.  Though probably the easy solution is that they don't look at subatomics."

"If anyone can observe something while not observing it, it'd be Kimus."

"...Is it weird that I want to ask them?"

"Not that weird, but I think the Archmage of Day is pretty busy right now, what with the whole series of attacks on the Empire she accidentally set off."

"...Well, that sounds pretty bad."

"I guess it's not great, but they were no match for the city watch; it's worse out in the sticks, I suppose, where they had chance to pull together.

As magical disasters go it's apparently quite a big one, but it's not going to come visit us in Temeschwar."

"Who'd she even piss off?"

"Some new Eternal they're calling the Cold Sun. Split off from - Ylenrith, I think? A pity, Ylenrith's always been one of the more interesting eternals. Cares more about maths than physics, of course, but at least she cared about maths at all."

"If you paid any attention to the news, you'd have heard Ylenwe - the other remnant - has been placed under neutrality, so you're more likely to be able to meet heralds of what's left of Ylenrith than you were before."

"...I am confused by this."

"Sorry, yes. What's your current understanding of what a 'Virtue' is, and for that matter what an 'Eternal' is, and what happens to your soul after you die? It sounds like we need to sort out some baseline understanding before you can possibly not be confused by us sniping at each other as usual."

"'There exist certain philosophical concepts that have quasi-religious primacy and possibly significant metaphysical impact, heck if I know how many or which', 'big honking ball of esoteric utilityfunction doing its esoteric-utilityfunctioning things', and 'absolute fuck if I know, seeing as I didn't really think I had one last Tuesday'.  I think you mentioned the whole Paragons-and-Labyrinth thing, though."

"And the reincarnation, which is presumably evident that you've mentioned as well but, to be sure.  And I went on that whole tangent about Buddhism.  Which is really feeling like the thing to analogize from, theologically speaking.  Except maybe with a dash of Catholic saints thrown in.  ...I forget if the fancy Buddhas are, like, relevantly the same guy or - well actually probably it's not a constant, there's Buddhas-as-aspects-of-this-one-guy-Siddhartha-Gautama -" She makes a credible try of not mangling the pronunciation but it's pretty clear that the name is foreign to her - "and, like, Buddhas as in 'yes this one guy with a cult is totally spiritually enlightened', and who knows what else, really.  Not something I really studied."

"Okay, so your Virtues are, Ambition, Courage, Pride, Prosperity, Loyalty... now everyone is going to mock me for which ones I leave to the end... Vigilance, and Wisdom.

Which is in alphabetical order, and not in any kind of priority order.

There are also a variety of concepts with similar metaphysical weight, but that are bad for you rather than good for you, like Vengeance.

Whether you had a soul or not before, you've definitely got one now, so I'm afraid it's probably time to think about what you're doing with it. By default, human souls go to the Labyrinth, wander around lost for anywhere up to several hundred years, then get reborn; being virtuous speeds up the process, as well as eventually building towards understanding the whole process enough to get out of it entirely."

"I wouldn't say they're my Virtues in the sense of my own philosophy urging me to follow them, though that's certainly good to know.  Are there - could you just make one up?  Do they vary not just in presentation but effect by culture?

"...It's hardly going to be me doing any-fucking-thing if I lose all my memories and core values in the doing, similarly - but I do get your meaning.  Apparently the soul verifiably exists."

"You can't just make one up, there are specific things that actually resonate with the soul or don't - the names are pretty arbitrary though, I hear the Faraden call Ambition 'Hubris', they don't like it very much.

The exact effects of anointings are probably culture-bound - only us and Sumaah really use them much, and while we're not extremely similar culturally we mostly agree on the interpretation of the Virtues, so it's hard to test, but anointings have changed over time.

It's generally held that while you do lose your memories - unless you get to call them back with a past life vision, but those are rare and expensive - your core values are exactly the kind of thing that are preserved, which is why it's important to develop a strong, Virtuous set of them."

"Anointings, you say?"

"Ah yes, let's cover Things You Can Do With Liao. You've seen Insight, looking at the state of a soul.

You can also do Anointing, which gives someone a temporary shove towards one of the Virtues, like I could make you more inclined to keep your commitments, and able to draw on that strength to counteract other effects that might make you not do that.

There's also Dedication, which aligns your soul with a Virtue - it's mostly useful in conjunction with the others, you can only have one Dedication at once and it affects what Anointings and so on you can do.

And there's Consecration - like Anointing, but a more limited range of effects and on a place rather than a person - and Hallow - which puts the effect on an item, you then feel it when you're holding or using it, along with a little description if you like.

The others are a bit different: Testimony lets you put a couple of words on the soul, that you can read back off with Insight, and that probably do something to help you retain qualities when going through the Labyrinth but we don't have solid evidence of this, sometimes you get them back from past life visions though.

Exorcism lets you affect spiritual entities - ghosts, possessing entities, souls in jars, sometimes when a soul's been knocked out of place a bit by a past life vision, that can happen if you're not careful in them, some kinds of curse...

And Excommuncation, that doesn't come up much thankfully, it basically cuts you off from your soul - reversibly! - you don't dream, you can't use liao, apparently it feels pretty awful too, everything is muted and it's harder to be virtuous. It occasionally has uses for fixing really weird soul maladies, and sometimes it gets used to stop someone dedicated to one of the malign spiritual presences getting up to anything else with it. And of course sometimes people deploy it politically, or just to hurt people, like everything else.

Sumaah are rather more inclined to use it as a punishment; we're not sure what happens to your soul when you die excommunicate but it's unlikely to be good, so we generally try to stop people from doing that even when they want to."

She nods.  "...I do not like that.  Any of it, really.  Brr.  Potentially nonconsensual mindfuckery is the worst sort of fuckery."

"Your mind is always your own, how you act on the inclinations is always your own choice. The Commonwealth hate all of them, though, it's not an absolutely unusual position - it even has its own name, Lucidianism. As long as you don't go around wiping off miraculous auras - those that are created by Paragons, generally they're very rare and obvious because they're not the standard type or duration - you won't get into trouble for that in the Empire.

I generally think they're useful for showing you what the fundamental action of a Virtue is, and also for picking an effect that actually is something you want and using it to defend against any you don't want."

"My thoughts and feelings are how I choose to do things.  Saying that an inclination to act in a certain way has no effects because I can simply choose not to, is not, actually, coherent, because it's affecting how I weight choices.  Unless there is something I misunderstand, here."

"I guess the question is really whether the internal experience of an Anointing, and so on, is - of an internal or external stimulus, because someone or something telling me to do something just pisses me off most of the time, whereas if it actually flips any switches in my brain, in the - internal symbolic representation of my model of the world - absolutely the fuck not, get it away from me, you know?  Has anyone ever tried an anointing for - accurate metacognition?"

"Depending on what you mean by metacognition, there are a couple of Wisdom ones that might be close? One which, uh, I'm going to have to look these up because I don't do them all the time." He gets out a small notebook and flips to an early page in neat writing. "Clarity of Wisdom helps you express things more clearly and concisely, and Challenge of Wisdom helps you reject conclusions that aren't backed by evidence?"

"That's definitely something, at least."

"You definitely sound like your inclination is to Wisdom, or maybe Courage; Wisdom is mostly about getting to the heart of the truth and acting on it, Courage is mostly about knowing you're right regardless of external pressure and generally Doing It Anyway."