"I expect you understand them better than I do! Since you're at least Lawful."

Irabeth doesn't speak the obvious rejoinder aloud, but she thinks it very very loudly.

"What exactly do we want people to conclude from getting the spells?" she asks Cherry.

"I was hoping that they would conclude that the displacement had been done by someone who wanted good things for them, who wasn't their enemy. Which is true, and which would hopefully contribute to making them less scared," she explains. "If would also have been nice if all the capabilities that I want to give them -- such as teleportation, etc. -- were presented in a way that they would intuitively be able to grasp and use, since that simplifies the needed explanations."

She shakes her head.

"Honestly, it sounds like giving people spells might be a bad idea for the same reason that I think a bland, neutral environment is a good idea. It sounds like people will read a lot into having spells, and we can't really predict how any given person is going to react in advance."

"How do you make people Wiser?" she asks Desna. "How does that work, and how much does it mess with a person's mind and sense of self?"

It works by doing - this thing which is hard to explain without actually doing it. A Miracle doesn't have a stable form like a Wish does that shows what it would do if cast. Desna can do it to someone, though, and it's one of the non-exploding instructions for Wish that mortals know about.

She finds the second question confusing. :Of course it changes people! By making them Wiser! Or more Cunning or Splendid. That is the goal, to change people.:

"They're the same thing as the spells - Fox's Cunning, Owl's Wisdom, Eagle's Splendour. Except smaller, and permanent, and you can benefit from up to five Wishes and also the spell. People can try the spells for a bit and see if they want to keep them."

"People's personalities can change a great deal if you make them twice as Wise! I'd recommend almost everyone to try it some time, but I wouldn't do it to anyone without their permission, if they never experienced it before."

She nods seriously. "Some of me will want to do some studies to figure out what those spells are actually ... doing, then, before we use them. But I'll make the spells available to people who want them."

"And I'm sorry -- I didn't speak clearly," she tells Desna. "I meant that most people have ways that they would be okay with changing, and ways that they're not okay changing. I was trying to figure out how the changes from these spells compare to, say, the changes from sneezing, or getting enough Vitamin D, or being drunk. That way people could have the right general expectations of what would happen before they try it."

"I feel like that has somewhat pulled us away from the original point, though. If giving people spells isn't going to be a clever workaround, are there any ways we can actually improve on 'put people in an environment appropriate for their species, with a written and illusory explanation and basic necessities, and a way to change it to suit them and instructions for traveling elsewhere', or is that pretty much the best we can come up with until we get some more help from Golarion?"

They spend some time improving details and making sure every race and individual is accounted for, to the best of their knowledge, until they've done the best they reasonably can.

"Before we open the door again, I have a bit of personal advice, which of course you don't have to accept." He turns to Gord and Irabeth. "I think you two should take some time to yourselves, to talk and come to better understand each other. You don't need to convince one another or to agree about anything. But you should go into the last battle liking or hating the real person in front of you, not your own misunderstandings."

This sounds deeply unpleasant and painful, and also very familiar.

Gord has talked to priests and wizards and monks and, yes, paladins of every faith he ever met and he has always tried to understand their viewpoints and motives and beliefs. He tried to be converted, to believe in any one of those creeds, and failed time and again, or perhaps it was they who failed to convince him. 

He tried following Lawful people, and when he couldn't take it anymore he rebelled and was clericed for it. Since then he has spent much of his time preaching, converting others, but it's the same thing really - if he were wrong, if they knew something more true than he did, they'd be preaching back, not following him around. Life is an eternal argument and neither words nor swords alone are enough.

Surely a god of all people could convince him, but he likes to think he's Chaotic Good at heart already, and Cayden thinks he should talk to the paladin instead. Well, she's the chosen of her goddess, so she's probably as good as they get.

Gord winces, anticipating the pain of the coming argument, but he knows it for what it is: growing pains.

She doesn't really look forward to this, and in fact she's allowed to refuse. But Cayden thinks it's a good idea, and He's a god so He's presumably right, so it's her duty to do it, to advance their cause in every way she can.

She does her best to understand why, to formulate a clear goal in her mind. Correctly understanding one's allies is clearly good. If she learns Gord is - better than she thinks or expects, wiser or more Good - that would also be clearly good, for her to know and to - right the wrong of her having a poor opinion of her ally.

But if that was it, she hopes Cayden would have told her as much, because she would welcome such a correction. Although He implied she had some misunderstandings about Gord, and she very much hopes he's not worse than she already thinks of him. The gods trust and welcome his counsel as much as hers, and he had added some good ideas (as well as very bad ones, of course).

She probably can't figure out her misunderstandings without actually talking to Gord. Her Goddess-granted higher Wisdom has proven invaluable today, but almost as often by making her less sure of herself as the opposite.

Every good argument needs an audience. Often you're trying to convince them, not the person you're loudly arguing with, but even when that isn't so it's great to see other people's reactions and hear their opinions. (If you're lucky, you can have three or four people with strongly held opinions all argue together. This often ends with drawn swords, which is just as lucky in a different way.)

"Cherry, would you be willing to listen and - provide an opinion sometimes? You're alien to the both of us, and you have a fresh outside perspective on our shared background in Golarion, which I think might be very useful."

"...Also sometimes I'm just very wrong and if you think that's the case you should tell me so. You don't have to tell Irabeth when she's very wrong if she doesn't want you to, that's my job."

"Sure, I'm happy to listen and tell you if I think you've said something that doesn't make sense," she agrees. "Even though I've gotten something of a crash-course in Golarion, I'm still expecting that I might end up lost fairly easily, though. Irabeth, is it alright with you if I listen in?"

She steps back and summons a low wicker chair to watch from, giving the two of them metaphorical center stage.

Cayden leaves unobtrusively; Irabeth is still too deferential towards Him and it wouldn't be good for her if He stayed.

"It appears I need to understand you better, and repair some misunderstandings," Irabeth says evenly.

"I have many questions and demands and disagreements and none of them are for you."

"I don't know you. I take issue with Iomedae and her church and the way she runs her two countries, and with most of her servants whom I've met. I don't hold people responsible for their gods, or for things they didn't personally do. Frankly I have a hard time holding people responsible for things they did last year, if they've changed their minds about it. I don't want to hate you because some other paladin I met did a hateful thing once."

"But Lawful people want everyone they work with to think and behave the same way, so you probably agree with a lot of things I oppose. I want to know if those are things you'd want to do yourself. Even if you won't be able to do them anymore, after the coming war, I'd still want to understand why you wanted to do them yesterday."

"I would like to say I take issue with Lawful Good more generally, but actually Erastil seems much nicer, because he doesn't usually go after people who want nothing to do with him. Iomedaeans always say they're the best kind of Lawful Good, Iomedae is general of the armies of Heaven, but maybe I shouldn't project her faults onto the whole alignment. And of course she's the one who owns countries. Abadarans and Asmodeans are even worse, so I've always thought of Iomedaeans as the Law tainting the Good, but maybe you can explain that better."

"I would also like to get to know you better, personally, because we're going to fight a war together and that's the level on which I understand people, as individuals, not as faceless identical servants of some deity. But I don't have a right to your privacy, it's up to you how much you want to tell me."

"The one thing I do understand very, very well is that people are different from each other. Everyone wants and enjoys different things. There'd be war even if everyone just wanted the same stuff for themselves and fought over it, but actually people want very different things and they fight over which thing will happen. Some people like hurting others, and some people don't want to be hurt, and that's all there is to it."

"So if you tell me that you want the world to be a certain way, because that's just what you enjoy deep down, I will understand. What I don't understand is people who enslave and torture and kill others but honestly think this is for their own good or the greater Good or whatever else, and so they've got to do this unpleasant evil duty for the sake of the rest of us while holding their noses, and we really ought to thank them for it."

"I do think that paladins and priests, and - army officers and so on, have a duty to hold their order or church or army to its laws and stated purpose. If someone in the organization does something illegal or evil or just very - counterproductive, they should be able to explain it, and if they can't they should ask the person who did that to explain themselves, and if they're not satisfied they can and sometimes ought to denounce them publicly or in extreme cases resign."

"Law is about cooperation, trust, binding agreements, predictability. Even organizations that aren't Lawful need trust to function, not just between members but with anyone they interact with. And Lawful Good organizations that want to help people and improve the world won't get very far if those people don't trust them, and they need to maintain not just the reality but also the appearance of justice and correct behavior."

"So yes, as a paladin I want you to come to me with any complaints you have, if they're about things contrary to our stated purposes or laws or Law, or contrary to Good. I will answer personally for my order, the Eagle Watch, and I care about other paladin orders and the Church of Iomedae and will try to figure out what's wrong, and advise them of any mistakes I think they're making. I'd do it for any Iomedaean, anyone trying to be Lawful Good, if I had the time."

"The Eagle Watch was founded to fight and to correct the wrongs done by some other crusaders during the Fourth Crusade. We have a history of calling out the vices and corruption of some of our allies. I know perfectly well that even good Iomedaeans have done many wrong things during the fighting, though not paladins because they'd Fall over it, and I don't hesitate to denounce such acts."

"Enslaving and torturing and killing people are Evil and no Iomedaens should do that except when there is no better way and the law permits it. We live in a terrible world where we have to kill our enemies, and enslave criminals so that we don't have to kill them, and in some cases torture as punishment or when interrogating prisoners may be lawful though it's never Good. But these are never goals, we don't want to do them, they are costs we bear and have to stay mindful of."

As an opening statement by an Iomedaean paladin, it's quite - orthodox. It leaves all the usual lines of attack wide open.

"These are not costs you bear. They are costs you impose on others. On everyone who doesn't freely choose to fight under your banner."

"Mendev enslaved its own people, forcing men to fight and die in the crusade, men whose only crime was being drunk or stealing some bread after the army took all the wheat in their village, or just being in the wrong place in the wrong time. It welcomed Cheliax and Isger, marching in people enslaved from birth, and when the slaves fled from the torturers the Mendevians whipped them for their temerity before bringing them back. Generals sent whole companies to die for a tactical advantage, for a promotion, and ordered their own archers to fire on them if they retreated. I assume they had someone else ready to kill the archers if they refused. How does that improve the world? How is it just?"

"War is very Evil. By that I mean it's very hard to wage war successfully without doing more Evil than Good. And yet we must wage war, because losing it would be worse."

"Mendev is not formally Iomedaean, as a country, and its laws are not Iomedae's laws. Paladin orders wouldn't do most of the things you describe. Mendevian soldiers worship Gorum as often as Iomedae, and He is neither Good nor Lawful. It's not surprising that war is bad, and it's not unique to the Crusades. It's often worse, because victors enslave and rape and torture the losing side a lot more when they're not demons, or have civilians of their own."

"But most of these things are - not the best possible actions, but plausibly the best that people could do under the circumstances. Isger wouldn't ally with Mendev if Mendev didn't return their runaway slaves. The general would lose the battle if the company didn't advance. Mendev would lose the war if it didn't ally with Isger and enlist its criminals. And if demons overran Mendev, all its people would be dead or worse, and soon so would other countries. That's a far worse outcome than what actually happened, including for most of the people in Mendev. Being forced to fight and risk death is still better than demons descending on your village."

"Obviously I can't speak to specific cases I haven't heard about, but in general, doing your best and sometimes failing at that too is all you can ask of people. Lawful Good is a higher standard, and being a paladin is a higher standard still, but we can't demand that all our allies and subordinates be Lawful Good, because demanding that wouldn't help anything."

"I am still confused as to how you think you're helping anything by working with demons to kill or kidnap soldiers."

"Mendev is ruled by a paladin. The law says she has the power of life and death over her subjects, who must obey her commands, unless they're nobly born, because the right to be free is inherited, like in every Lawful slaver country."

"Kenabres is ruled by an inquisitor. That's two cities out of three in the country under the direct command of an empowered Iomedaean. Paladins from Mendev and Lastwall both fought side by side with Setsuna's army. Maybe they thought sending slaves to die wasn't up to their higher standards, but they weren't bothered enough to charge in and save them, they exploited the opportunity bought by their deaths like the good little soldiers they were!"

"How closely you can ally with evil and preside and rule over evil and still claim your hands are clean because you wouldn't do that yourselves? You just have your subjects do it for you! I liked it better when you said it was for the greater good, because that's still wrong but at least I can understand how you'd make that mistake, if you were a lot less Wise than a paladin has any right to be!"

"I don't think I can build a greater Good out of a million tiny pieces of Evil. Not because of some fancy argument that two wrongs don't make a right, because I know I'm not smart enough to pull it off, and neither is anyone else. Even the strongest gods like Desna and Sarenrae say they can't do it, and maybe Iomedae doesn't agree but she's not down here to hold your hand."

"I helped two slaves escape a likely death in battle. They didn't want to be there and they'd done nothing to deserve it. Being drunk in public is punished by a fine, unless the judge doesn't like you and sends you to the army and then it's a fucking death sentence. I bet Cayden would have grinned and told them 'straight on', but Mendev is Lawful, which I hear is better than that."

"So I didn't go looking for a fancy argument why I shouldn't help the people in front of me. I killed a man who tried to stop me, because he wouldn't surrender, and he was a soldier, and ought to know what it means to choose to fight to the death. And what does it matter if I worked with demons in a good cause? Isn't that your argument, that you'll ally with devils when it's worth it?"

Weeping Cherry starts taking notes (invisible to the others, in order to not distract them). This discussion is A) fascinating, and B) seems like it might be heating up a bit too much to be the most productive way to reach mutual understanding.

"Sorry, can I interject?" she asks. "I don't have any context on which of the different claims that you're making are true, and I'm not sure which ones each of you think the other is mistaken about. But Gord, I noticed that you're sort of making Irabeth responsible for everything going on in Mendev, because she's associated with some of the same things that the rulers and other institutions are. And Irabeth distrusts you at least in part -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- because you're associated with the demons who have been terrorizing the countryside."

"And I don't want to say that who you associate with isn't an important part of your character, or that you shouldn't hold people responsible for the things your allies do, because those are both true. But it seems like it might lead to more mutual understanding if you talk more about concrete details of what you have each personally done and why, instead of making each other account for everything that your nominal allies have done, when they've all done bad things that you had no personal control over."

"Does that make sense? I don't want to prevent you from talking about the ultimate nature of Law and Good -- it's really interesting to hear about. I just think that it sounds like you're still interacting with the versions of each other in your heads, and not with the actual specific people you're talking to. I guess that's a critique aimed more at Gord, since it doesn't seem like Irabeth has as much of an ingrained idea of Gord?"

"I just said I don't want to blame Irabeth for anything other people did! She's the one who insists on defending them because they have some kind of - shared responsibility in Law!"

"But yeah, Cherry's right. I still don't know anything about you. And you only know one thing about me. So, how do you want to do this?"

"We can try Cherry's way. Tell each other about the most important decisions and choices we've made, the things we think make us who we are. I don't know if that's best way to describe and understand someone, by reducing them to a few key decisions, but maybe it's the best we can do in a few hours."

"But before that, I do want to respond to something you said. You asked where the line lies between things we won't do ourselves, and things we won't have others do in our name, and things we won't tolerate anyone doing. I think that's a very important question that everyone should know the answer to, because without knowing it you can't really trust paladins the way you're meant to trust us."

"Some things are absolutely forbidden. We accept surrender and don't mistreat prisoners. We don't harm those who come to us under a flag of truce. We don't kill a few innocents to save many others. We don't break promises, or lie to allies. We won't command anyone to do something we wouldn't command a paladin to do, and we won't command a paladin to Fall."

"We swear oaths about this. There are some oaths that every paladin takes, and more oaths for different orders, and positions of authority. The oaths make it clear, in words everyone can understand, what we will and won't and must and cannot do. Those are the things everyone can trust, when they meet a paladin they don't personally know."

"Breaking an oath, any oath, makes a paladin Fall. So swearing oaths makes those commitments absolute. A paladin would only ever break them if they were willing to stop being a paladin over it, and they would probably also lose their Good or Law."

"But no oaths can tell us what do to in every situation. We still need to decide how to accomplish the greatest Good we can. And we give up on some Good, and abide much Evil, when we judge it to be worth it."

"So if you're wondering how we can work with Evil, or whether we'd do some particular thing, the answer is simply - that if we haven't sworn an oath not to, we might do it if we think it is truly for the best. Which is a very hard decision to make, and ideally no-one should have to make it on their own in a single round, and - we do the best we can."

"Some people disagree with some of the tradeoffs we make, and that's fine. Some people would rather be Neutral Good and only ever help people, and that's fine too. What we do isn't just Good, it's Lawful Good, and swearing oaths about some things and not others is the part that's Lawful. We think it's the best way to do the most Good but we do know not everyone can be Lawful, and probably not everyone should try, although I do think everyone should seriously consider it."

"I also have some things I'll never do or permit. Like slavery. I don't swear oaths about them, because I know I might be wrong, and I have been wrong for most of my life, and I wouldn't want an oath to stop me from doing better. I don't understand how you can be so sure that - you'll never regret the oaths you swore, never decide you were wrong."

"So let me tell you about Past Gord. Past Gord made a lot of terrible mistakes. If I met him now I'd fight him to stop some of the things he did."

"I grew up south of the Sellen. It's technically Numeria, but the Mendevian armies pass through and do as they please. My grandparents fled Sarkoris-that-was with most of their tribe, and now their descendants are a shadow of former glories, but we still worship Gorum and tell the old sagas and bow to no king who's out of earshot."

"I joined a mercenary company for a few years. Learned how to fight, thought I knew something about the world. Eventually we went up to join the crusade - this was in 4703."

"I came to hate the crusade. Gorum teaches that you shouldn't fight those who don't fight back, that you should accept and honor surrender. Fighting is good, but people are supposed to want to fight, to choose it. And many crusaders did choose it, or were defending their homes, but too many others weren't there by choice."

"On some days, it looked like two generals driving two unwilling armies towards each other, and the one who frightened their own troops more won. I didn't know, back then, that this was even more true of the demons than of us. I believed everyone who said the demons were an implacable enemy, an existential threat, a justification for anything that could be done to stop them. So I looked away from all the evil and injustice and horrors of our allies. Our band fought willingly, and the demons were my enemy, and the rest of it wasn't my fight."

"I hate that about Past Gord. That I accepted evil. I don't blame people who are misled, I know how easy it is to make that mistake, but I've come to oppose it utterly."