"What's Abadar's deal, according to you? At this point the only thing about Him that I've heard and don't currently think was a lie is that I'm His cleric."

"Abadar is the god of free and fair trade. He values—the kind of exchange where no one is being threatened and both parties are better off at the end of it, between mortals, but He also wants to trade with us that way, even if we don't understand what it means to trade with a god. He's also called the god of cities, and of wealth, but, I think, instrumentally, because you get more trade when people are wealthier and live in cities."

"—sorry, that's kind of the stock description. If I were going to try to give my own description, to someone smart who had never heard of Abadar, I'd say something like—"

"So, gods trade with each other, right? And gods are very smart and very sure of what they want and difficult to threaten and at least the Lawful gods can be sure when They're being honest with each other, so they only take trades that benefit Them, even if the god They're trading with hates Them and everything They value. Mortals—aren't like that. It's very easy for a smart person to trick a stupid one into thinking something is a fair trade when it's not, and it's even easier for a god to do that to a mortal. If you're a mortal trying to trade with Asmodeus, in the end He's going to get everything He wants from you and you're going to get nothing, or worse, even if it looked like a great deal when you made it. Abadar looks at mortals and says, instead—not that He wants us to be gods, that was more Aroden's thing—but that He's going to trade with us as if we were, not because He has to, just because He wants to, and he wants us to trade with each other that way too."

"If I had thought of a piece of math, that underlies the thing I think you're gesturing at when you talk about Lawful gods trading with each other, but is possible for mortals to learn, would that have caused Abadar to notice me and decide to cleric me if I asked for it?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Also, what's the deal, according to you, with Osirion, which is supposedly Abadar's country, basically treating women like property and not letting them participate in the economy? That's something that makes me feel like maybe Abadar isn't exactly what he's advertised to be."

"Osirion is Abadar's country. I'm from there. It's unpleasantly sexist, although—the version you heard from Cheliax, which was actively trying to stop you from wanting to go there, was probably unnuanced at best."

"What's the nuanced version?"

"Osirion was, until about a century ago, part of the Empire of Kelesh, which is, actually, approximately the way you were told Osirion is. I don't have a great model of how they ended up like that but they've been that way for thousands of years. Abadar does, I'm pretty sure, disprefer it, but is poorly equipped to fix it. Gender isn't a lens through which he easily sees the world. Male priests of Abadar are, in my experience, even worse equipped to fix it. It isn't really a problem that's solvable from the assumption everyone's just being a rational economic agent."

     "The thing you have to understand," says Emmelina Bianchi, third-circle wizard-researcher at the University of Almas, a dual follower of Cayden Cailean and Iomedae, and another highly optimized member of Keltham's welcoming party, "is that babies get ensouled at about twelve weeks of gestation. Terminating a pregnancy after that point is killing a child who will end up in the Boneyard, and is, correspondingly, Evil. Most horrible gender situations started out as well-intentioned attempts to minimize abortion and abandoned children."

"—wait, what? Twelve weeks, that's—there's no possible way there's any sort of—mind, internal experiences—there that dath ilan, or, I think, most people here, would consider to be a person. Why the ass does it work like that?"

     "You'd have to ask Pharasma."

"I intend to, possibly not in a terribly polite way."

"And, okay, I can see how that might result in a different sexual equilibrium than we had in dath ilan, but I'm still not sure how you got from there to the pharaoh being able to rape whoever he wants."

     "—I really think you shouldn't do that," says Emmelina.

"—so, first of all, that's not true," says Farah, simultaneously. "It was—basically true—in Kelesh and ancient Osirion, though probably not how you're imagining it, but in modern Osirion there's an application process to be a concubine, and I'd doubt there's a shortage of applications, either, it means a life of luxury beyond what almost anyone would have otherwise, and your son might get to be pharaoh. And I'd expect some of the girls are disappointed in the current pharaoh, who's rumored to prefer men."

"It seems like maybe I should just start working on cheap reversible contraception, except for how this universe appears to have much bigger problems."

     "That's approximately what the Iomedaens said when we applied for funding."

"Oh, good, maybe there is someone here who sees this whole situation in approximately the terms I do, even if they haven't fixed it yet."

     "Probably the whole reason Iomedae chose me to be here is to communicate that."

"I still think you should keep in mind that Cheliax has much more libertine sexual norms than everywhere else specifically because they're trying to send people to Hell."

     "That's not true—they are trying to send people to Hell. But I think there's something much better than what Osirion or even Lastwall is doing, that we could achieve if people in those places even realized what they were giving up."

"Osirion, if you'd showed up wanting a harem, would have found ten wizard apprentices with Alter Self, with mild distaste. Lastwall would just have been horrified."

     "Iomedae would have told them to get over it."

"Maybe."

"I think I may, possibly, be getting distracted from my original intent, which was to sort out my finances, on account of all my money being in Cheliax and also, according to Iomedae, having been vaporized, and then visit a library."

"The Church of Abadar actually can't help with your money having been vaporized, that's why you're encouraged to have a bank account," says Farah. "But I'm quite sure you're eligible for a loan against your future income."

     "Vaporized?" says Emmelina, who was not briefed on the exact method used to get Keltham to Axis.

"I think Nethys is to blame for that being the most efficient solution to anything, but yes. Actually my bag of holding would have been vaporized and the money lost in the Astral Plane, but—"

"Actually, I think the Iomedaens are going to do evening prayers soon, if you'd like to stay for that," says Farah. "Or we can go, I'm not an Iomedaen."

(The Golarion-adjacent part of Aktun does have a day/night cycle, for familiarity's sake for the recently dead, though petitioners don't sleep and it isn't rigorously adhered to. The library, for example, doesn't close.)

"I think I'd like to observe that, but not participate, if I can do my other tasks equally well afterward."

Tonight, then, they'll sing a hymn of ancient Azlant which doesn't properly have anything to do with Iomedae, or any god at all, but was a favorite of Aroden, and adopted by His church and, later, Hers. It exists in half a dozen translations, though none are regarded as the equal of the original, in part because the central metaphor revolves around technologies yet unnamed in Taldane. Hearing the original Azlanti beneath the omnipresent translation effect of Aktun, Keltham may, in fact, understand more of it than the singers.

The careful textbooks measure
  —let all who build beware—
the load, the shock, the pressure
  material can bear.
So when the buckled girder
  lets down the grinding span,
the blame of loss, or murder
  is laid upon the man.
    (Not on the stuff—the man!)

But in our daily dealing
  with stone and steel, we find
the gods have no such feeling
  of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge They make us,
  for no laid course prepare—
and presently o'ertake us
  with loads we cannot bear.
    (Too merciless to bear!)

The prudent textbooks give it
  in tables at the end:
the stress that shears a rivet
  or makes a tie-bar bend;
what traffic wrecks macadam;
  what concrete can endure;
but we, poor Sons of Adam,
  have no such literature.
    (To warn us or make sure!)

We hold all realms to plunder
  —all time and space as well—
too wonder-stale to wonder
  at each new miracle;
'til, in the mid-illusion
  of godhood 'neath our hand,
falls multiple confusion
  on all we did or planned.
    (The mighty works we planned!)

We only of Creation
  —oh, luckier bridge and rail—
abide the twin damnation:
  to fail and know we fail.
Yet we—by which sole token
  we know we might be gods—
take shame in being broken,
  however great the odds.
    (The burden of the odds!)

Oh, veiled and secret Power
  whose paths we seek in vain,
be with us in our hour
  of overthrow and pain,
that we—by which sure token
  we know Thy ways are true—
in spite of being broken,
    (because of being broken,)
  may rise and build anew.
    (Rise up and build anew.)

"That is, quite possibly, the most dath ilani thing I've heard in Golarion, which, simultaneously, no actual dath ilani would ever sing at a gathering."

"Why not?" asks Matthias Arnsen, the sixth-circle cleric of Iomedae in charge of this operation.

"It's—not a way ordinary dath ilani are encouraged to think. All the stuff about failing and knowing you fail, seeking the Way in vain—that's the way Keepers think. Maybe they have songs like that, I wouldn't know."