"Maybe. Truth spells, lots of people who are paladins and can't lie - I guess I can see how they might have fewer abuses of power or messy politics. Could also explain how Cheliax has lasted a hundred years - the truth spells, at least, since they don't have Paladins. I still want to go to Andoran once the war's over or - whatever else happens to make it so Cheliax can't just invade."

"Yep. Andoran - wants to be America, and Lastwall doesn't. …you know what Lastwall really is is a theocracy in a world where the gods do things, and it doesn't have good Earth analogues for that reason. None of our comparison points are going to be any good because there just haven't been Earth countries pointed at the service of an involved god since they were low-tech themselves."

"Yeah. I bet we would have more examples if high school world history classes were more thorough, but they'd still all be pre-democracy examples, like maybe France was a theocracy under Joan of Arc - I don't know if it was, I didn't bother learning French history -"

"I think she died young," says Iomedae dubiously, who looked up Joan of Arc once after being told she was reminiscent. "The Catholic Church used to be a state and call crusades and so on. …maybe still is one, but just pretending their communes work?...there's so much more we'd know if we'd waited a few more years. Probably wouldn't have been worth it, even if the years are one to one and definitely if they're a hundred to one."

"Would've been worth it if we'd been learning the right things, I think, but we had no way to know what those were. I've been thinking about which things we didn't learn but we could've guessed that we should have - the only one I've come up with is that we learned how to make guns but not how armies use guns - World War I had trenches, but that's about all I know."

"Magic might make it more complicated anyway. I - don't know how good to expect Lastwall's execution to be. It seems like if you are paying all the costs of being a military dictatorship you should at least be a useful one and win all your wars but I'm not sure that's how that works. …do you suppose that the fact the other Iomedae was a tactical genius suggests I could learn. I have been assuming it requires, you know, genius."

"I don't think military dictatorships are good at winning wars?" She's not sure who is good at winning wars, besides America. "I think you could probably learn tactical genius, if she did. Unless she spent those four years of her life in a secluded monastery receiving training from the archangel Michael, in which case you might need to find that monastery."

"Joining us here today on Freedom Radio is Temos Sevandivasen , seventh circle cleric of Abadar. He's on the other side of a screen from me, in the service of my efforts to be hard for curious wizards to track down, but he's agreed to sit down with us for an hour and answer all your questions about Abadar. Archbanker, thank you for joining us."

"I have been very much looking forward to the opportunity," he says gravely. 

"Can you tell us a little about yourself? How did you come to the priesthood of Abadar? What do you do all day?"

"I was born and grew up in Kumura, a Vudrani kingdom that when I was a young man threw off Keleshite rule and had the opportunity for the first time to be governed independently. But the new state was badly in debt, and had many obligations that it was unclear if it could meet, and the people had been impoverished by centuries of exploitation and by the war that freed them. I turned to Abadar because I wanted to understand how to make a country rich, and His Manual of City-Building had a section on how a responsible governor could make a place rich through reliable rule. We arrived at agreements with our creditors - agreements to pay them in full, because a state like a man has only its word, and we wanted Kumura's word to be good. We set up a banking system. It took thirty years of hard work, but - Kumura prospered.

So much so that our neighbors grew jealous, and about six years ago they banded together to destroy Kumura and see it absorbed into a rival kingdom. The attack took us by surprise. We lost. I died there, but - I had insurance. I awoke in Absalom. I live and work there now."

" - are you going to go back?"

"I don't know. Abadar opposes war. It is a terrible thing. Necessary, sometimes, but always destructive. Civilized people would be able to compare their strength and settle matters in a fashion both prefer to destroying one another. Of course, if you predictably won't fight back that invites people to try things - but it's one thing to defend yourself whatever your strength, and another entirely to spend a few decades in exile and then come back to revenge yourself on entirely different people descended from the ones who wronged you. I dream of returning, but - I would have to have good reason to think the people of Kumura would not thereby be wronged."

"Let's start with the basics about Abadar, since some members of our audience have probably been living under a rock for the last hundred years, or are in countries that lie to them about how the Church of Abadar works. Is Abadar Good? Evil? Lawful? Chaotic?"

"Abadar is the Lawful Neutral god of cities, wealth, and justice. His domain in Axis is called Aktun, and it is a more prosperous place than any on Golarion, full of wonders that are hard to describe. The buildings reach straight up into the sky, and carriages carry people through the air and underground to their destinations, and nearly all of the people are dressed as kings, and about only that work which purchases them things they are willing to work to have."

"We could achieve that here on Golarion, right?"

" - well, I should hope so. It would be very difficult, and take a long time."

"Would it? I've seen an estimate there are a billion people on Golarion. Perhaps it's a billion years of work, to build Axis, but wouldn't that mean we could do it in one year, if everyone worked towards it?"

" - well, probably some of it has to be done sequentially."

"Sure. I don't really expect we could be done in a year. I do think it could be the work of our lifetimes, and our grandchildren born into it."

"I imagine that Abadar looks upon you very favorably, young woman. There is betting, within the Church, on whether you are in our priesthood."

"Betting? Why, I expect many of our audience thought priests ought not to gamble."

"Well, gambling refers to all kinds of different things, right. There are games played in Vyre designed so you will always lose money playing them, preying on foolishness, and one probably shouldn't advisedly do that. There are games of skill, played for all the reasons that might participate in any other contest of skill, and the Church has nothing to say about that. We don't preach against people spending their money however amuses them, really, if they rob no one else in so doing. And then there are games of - divination. Say that in a room of people, one of them knows the truth of your identity, and all in that room are called to place bets on the result. That one will bet correctly, and will probably be willing to bet a larger share of his purse than those of us beleaguered by ignorance. The betting, then, will tend to favor the knowledgeable over the ignorant. This works even if the person doesn't know the truth of your identity but is just a better guesser than most people."

"So by betting on whether I'm a priest of Abadar, the priests of Abadar try to tempt anyone who knows to show their hand and get rich?"

"By betting on whether you're a priest of Abadar, the priesthood of Abadar makes it the case that knowledge of whether or not you're a priest of Abadar is easy to make money off. And in general, by betting on many things, the Church rewards knowledge and punishes foolishness. Not ignorance - if you're ignorant and know it you can simply not bet - but foolishness will lose you money."