it would be better for her if she had never been born - Epilogue: Lilia, Alex
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"I can't be subject to a truth spell, but I don't falsely give the appearance of being subject to one…and it's not like it wouldn't be noticeable if I lied."

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"Have you ever been tempted to break the paladin rules?"

She is careful not to say it at all flirtatiously. That's not the way to get to Alex, and if she did get him in a way that made him fall it'd make him a wildly less useful acquisition anyway. This Lilia is just - contemplative, curious, someone who has seen the whole world but only had the barest of acquaintances with Good people.

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"Not seriously. I sometimes found them inconvenient when I was younger, but I grew out of that. And got a better understanding of Law."

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"I think Iomedae should have a kind of paladin who gets one day off a year where they are allowed to gamble and lie and sleep around and go on a crime spree." (The truth spell objects to this claim.) "It would attract lots of people who find the principles appealing but only want to be a good person most of the time, and if the day was publicized in advance people could still trust them the rest of the time."

 

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"Are there many people who would want to be paladins all but one day every year? I doubt this is a common preference."

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"I guess you could argue I'm a very unusual person - have argued that - but the thing I've found most discomfiting about being Lawful Good is the thought I'll never be allowed to do anything wrong ever again. That's a very long time, see."

 

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...but she's not Lawful Good. "...The atonement didn't take."

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"I wasn't - pretending, when I tried it. I wouldn't waste Heaven's time like that. I thought it might. I - am trying to do the right thing, all the time and not just where you'll check, and not just now that you know I can beat a normal truth spell, I was trying before that too. Obviously Iomedae's entitled to hold out for more sorry than 'not really very sorry at all' for all of the monstrous things I've spent my whole life doing but - I'm trying."

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Will she be offended if he asks why? Probably not. She knows he still doesn't quite trust her, that's why they have these chats in Aktun.

"Why?"

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She makes a slightly impatient gesture. "Because while it's not the case that in any individual case I'm most tempted to do the Lawful Good thing I'm persuaded that the best way to overall accomplish my goals is to have that predictable tendency? The same reason anyone tries for Lawful Good, as I understand it?"

(Iomedae's complaint was probably that the goals in question are 'serve my Evil mother', but Lilia doesn't actually know; She could have objected to all of the unrepentant torture and malediction and so on.)

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"That is many people's justification for Law."

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"I can't think of any reason why I'd have a stronger grasp of the Law part than the Good part." Truth spell does not approve this statement.

 

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"...I realize you are not actually intending to be deceptive but I really do think it bothers our hosts."

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"I apologize," Lilia says to the sky. She has no desire to irritate Abadar but she thinks He's being a bit oversensitive here.

 

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"I feel like you... actually have a pretty good understanding of what Good is. Or at least you give that impression."

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"I don't think I'm confused about it. I would have been pretty bad at my job, if I couldn't - guess what paladins would have to say about things - and you write all these helpful guides...are there things where ...you know that they matter, but you don't actually feel upset about them -"

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"There are - things where I know they matter but I do not spend very much time dwelling on them? But it's not as though I, for example, think about a bad harvest in Arcadia and am indifferent to the people going hungry there."

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"I'm not indifferent about that either! Bad harvests in Arcadia are terrible! But - 

- the things I care the most about, instinctively, are big things." Grand things, but that makes it sound like a matter of pride; big things makes it sound practically Iomedaen. "Freeing Cheliax from Hell. Making it rich. Winning wars, or preventing them. Famines, and countries drowned or overgrown or devoured. I do realize that the big things matter because they are made up of people and the people matter. But -"

The trick is striking the right balance between sharing enough he thinks he has a genuine confession and not enough he thinks she's a monster. "I care about the people if they - remind me of myself, or if they have qualities I find admirable, or if I try very hard to find something to care about, for some reason. But most of the time - the thing I'm tempted to say, though I know it's horrendous, is that I don't care about the beggars on the street for the same reason I don't pick up copper pieces off the ground. It's not that they're worthless. They're just - not worth very much. And I'm busy, and if I were trying to make money I'd have much faster ways - metaphorically -" 

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It seems like possibly the sort of attitude one would have to have, if one is has good aims but tortures people to death and sends them to Hell regularly. "I see. It seems like it would make it easier to stay sane."

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"I wasn't doing intelligence work for infernal Cheliax."

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"Well, I'm not, anymore. So I can stop, and should stop, only -

- I feel distinctly more motivated by 'I want to have these Lawful Good allies trust me and be right to' and 'I want to see Cheliax recover' than 'I want to care about copper pieces.' Then I'd have to spend my time picking up copper pieces, which sounds terrible - metaphorically speaking," she adds irritably to Abadar. "But I do feel very motivated to - be trusted and be right to. I did find it painful to - be alone -"

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"Does it bother you, that we have to do all this?"

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"You would be very stupid to trust me without doing all this. I don't want to work for incompetent allies, you'll get yourselves killed or worse and the country will fall apart. 

 

...it bothered me the first time we met. To be restrained. I'd been arrested and then eventually executed and then in Hell and - I wanted to go run away, take a month off on another continent until I stopped startling at shadows - but we didn't have very much time, and it seemed quite plausibly like it'd be too late, if I took that long, and - and I intended to imply I'd only just changed my mind about working for the Thrunes, for reasons I assume you've inferred - even if you'd have been gentler with a longstanding ally there wasn't any time to establish it, and it would have been a waste of resources to try, and I wasn't actually sure if you had any way to do it - so I went, but I desperately wished I hadn't needed to, and every time I tried to move my hands I lost track of whose dungeon I was in.

You - when you asked me if that was really what I wanted, if I thought myself obliged to negotiate a Lawful Good way - I hadn't expected that. I think it was the first time in my life that anyone not related to me" that anyone at all, but that would be too much honesty - "put serious thought into whether he was dealing with me fairly. We were enemies. I cannot imagine anyone would possibly have blamed you for assuming Cheliax's spymaster was looking out for herself." The problem with getting emotional in conversation with Alex is that if she doesn't get really kind of absurdly emotional he won't notice. Her voice has tightened very, very slightly. "It was a good first impression, if you wanted me to put up with -" handwave - "later."

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"I'm sorry. That you were restrained then, and that all this is necessary now - but I'm glad the first impression was otherwise good. Asymmetric advantages to the side of Good, I suppose."

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