Iomedae wants to be a responsible radio show host and so she'll go through the other basics too - where is Iomedae's divine realm, what was she like as a mortal, what are her teachings, what sorts of people does she pick as priests -  before she can start asking Aarind all her real questions.

"Is Lastwall a free country?"

"Yes."

"It allows people to listen to Freedom Radio! I appreciate that about it! Would it permit also a radio station where Lastwall's enemies made the case against it?"

"I'm not sure how we'd stop it… Lastwall would not ban radio receivers, the way Cheliax has. Even if we did, that doesn’t seem to have worked very well for them."

"I think there are many elements of freedom," Freedom says thoughtfully. "The right to listen to the radio, or to speak on it. The right to speak before a court, or own land, or demand recompense if soldiers passing through take their things… I think Lastwall lets all people do those things, or maybe all people who can seem reasonable and meritorious. 

The right to choose their leader, or how their taxes are spent, of course no one in Lastwall possesses."

"I'm not sure I understand… It seems - odd, to say that a place is not truly free unless it is an unsettled wilderness, which is how I understand the thing you said. I suspect I understand wrongly."

"No, not at all. The country where I have seen political freedom best executed was mostly cities, and very rich. But in every city, the people voted for a representative, and the representatives all got together and conferred and chose the President, and so every adult, landowning or not, knew that their armies were commanded and their laws decided by a person they or at least their compatriots had chosen, and if they didn't like how it was going they'd pick a different one. That is a kind of freedom, I think, and Lastwall doesn't have it."

"Hm. I suppose if that's your standard, then I would say Lastwall is not a 'free' country, though I'm not convinced that it's worse for it."

"Well, I can imagine a few ways that might be true. One is that Lastwall's people are very foolish, and don't know what they want, and would choose badly who was in charge if they got to choose. We don't give toddlers freedom, as they'd wander off and be eaten by bears. Is that the reason you are thinking of?"

"Well, not exactly that - people do not have to be very foolish to be more foolish than the wisest people in the country, or than a god."

"So the people of Lastwall would do a pretty good job, probably, of choosing their leaders, but not as good a job of it as Iomedae can do Herself. Like how a boy of twenty training to be a smith can make a pretty good horseshoe, but not as good as his master, probably. Only, if his master never lets him make any horseshoes, he'll never have the chance to surpass the master."

"I see what you're saying but - it does not seem right, to choose the leaders and laws of an entire country that way. The consequences of choosing a bad ruler or a bad law are far, far worse than those of making a bad horseshoe, and fall on many people. It seems to me that it's wronging those people, to expose them to those consequences only so that they can get practice deciding. Even if some of them might, with practice, become better choosers than the ones who decide now, I think that not all of them will."

"Well I wouldn't say that the only point of political freedom is to train people in the choosing of leaders, though it's among the advantages. Another point is that duties we've chosen are easier to take up than duties assigned to us. Does Iomedae order people to join her church and become her priests? Are those She empowers considered so ordered?"

"No!  It is our vows that we make as Her priests that oblige us to follow her orders - it would make no sense for Her to order us to swear to follow Her orders."

"But that's precisely what a country is! It issues orders to those who have never taken any oath to follow them, or else requires those oaths in the first place. A man cannot grow up in Lastwall and decline to pay taxes or follow laws because he never agreed to do that, can he?"

"Hmmm. He cannot, of course. But he could leave, if he found our laws or our taxes intolerable."

"I am glad of that. It's very important. But philosophically, I think every demand that people obey orders from an authority they did not choose is on shaky ground, and so it is good when people choose their government. It is not the only good. If Lastwall fails in its duties, we will all die horribly, and I will readily admit that it seems important for us to not all die horribly. Lastwall is perhaps unique in how little it could weather a single fool of a ruler, because its watch cannot be interrupted and the other wars wouldn't do much better. 

But - but I would say that this is an injustice that was done to Lastwall in its founding, that it was saddled with a task that had no affordance for error and therefore no affordance for political freedom."

"I am not sure that I want to concede that - Even ignoring Lastwall's special purpose as a country, I don't think that the people of Lastwall are worse off for having a government that is wisely chosen instead of popularly chosen."

"I think that you believe this because democracy is in its infancy, and no one you've ever seen has a lot of practice at it. And of course when Iomedae chose to make her state as it stands, democracy was not even in its infancy, and there was nothing even to try to improve on. …and some of the truth of this matter depends on how smart gods are, exactly, and how much they improve even on the best possible popular judgment. But I think that the people of Lastwall are - treated as children, in having a government in which they have no say, and the benefits of the treatment are real but the costs hard to measure. …should we argue about something else?"

"I hope that democracy will last long enough that we can see if it's a good idea. And, yes, I think you're right that we've - found our disagreements here, and are unlikely to convince each other. What else did you want to talk about?"

"So, say you see a slaver ship on the high seas, and with just a little bit of banditry you could take three hundred free people to the nearest free port. And maybe not make it to Heaven, but Nirvana's all right too. Does Iomedae say you shouldn't do this?"

Oh, this one he prepared for.

"Iomedae does not command us to attack slave ships, nor does She forbid it. In this sort of matter, She instead teaches us how to properly go about it - If Lastwall were to decide to put an end to the slave trade in the inner sea, we would not do so with random, unpredictable attacks on slave ships. There would be - a declaration of war, I suppose, against all slavers, and a set of procedures that our captains would follow when demanding a ship's surrender, and courts to ensure that all our captures were legal and to compensate any merchants we troubled who were not carrying mortal cargo. An individual Iomedan ship's captain, unaffiliated with Lastwall or any other Iomedan order, might engage in a private crusade against slavery, in which case the teachings of the Goddess would still be to do so openly, without trickery, to demand surrender rather than attack without warning, to compensate those wrongly detained, and so on."

"So all of those things could be justified two ways, or at least I can think of two ways, and maybe your church with more practice justifying them could justify them some more ways after that. The first way makes reference to the fallibility of mortals. Sure, I might say, for a truly just cause it would be worth conducting oneself in an underhanded manner, but many people are wrong about their cause or wrong that their actions advance it. By committing to ask for surrender and avoid trickery, the Iomedaean captain saves himself if he is in error, and it is error that his rules protect him from.

This explanation proposes the question: does Iomedae have to care about the rules? She's a god. She's not in error."

"Even gods can err. Aroden did, one assumes, or else His plan is far beyond our comprehension. But even setting that aside - there is a power in being predictable. In following the rules so that you are seen to follow the rules - Only attacking following a declaration of war, or the like, means forfeiting the element of surprise, but it also means that anyone who you have not declared war on knows that they are safe, that they do not need to fear a surprise attack from you, that they can make themselves vulnerable in approaching you and you will not take advantage of them doing so. It means a lot more opportunities to work with people to get things you both want, even people who might be your enemies - or imagine themselves to be your enemies - in other circumstances."

"That was the second explanation that I thought of! It's related to what Sevandivasen spoke of. People know Abadarans won't steal their money, and so people will put their money in an Abadaran bank, when they'd otherwise be fools to trust it to a stranger. This is a gift Abadar gives His priests, even if the form the gift takes is the fact He might strike them dead on the spot about it; they are stronger for the fact He might do that, not weaker, because it is worth so much to be known to be trustworthy. If people know Iomedans will respect their surrender, will war with them only openly, will be straightforward in negotiations, then this is a gift She gives Her priests. Assuming they can hold to it. 'Don't steal money' is simpler than 'war only openly'. If a listener lives in Cheliax, and will die the minute that they war openly with House Thrune, should they war secretly, or not at all, or should they just plan on dying?"