Problems with translation spells are usually resolved by retreating to simpler words. "Let's try to speak more plainly. All people are divided into groups, which we call races. They almost always look different enough to tell, but that's not why we call them different races. Humans from Garund have black skin, and vampires have white skin like people here in Avistan, but Garundi are still humans and vampires are still very different in every way except how they look."

"Some traits are the same for everyone in a race, and some traits vary between people. Every dragon has wings, and no human does. Most orcs are stronger than most humans, but the strongest humans are stronger than most orcs."

"Some races can have children together. When humans and elves and orcs have children together, the children are usually - intermediate on some traits, like strength. When outsiders - demons, devils, angels, azatas, genies, some kinds of elementals - have children with mortal species, the children are usually more like the mortal parent but they have some traits from the other parent, physically and mentally. Such as having wings, horns, glowing eyes, little glowing halos over their heads, innate magic, much greater or much lesser strength or cunning or wisdom or splendor, fire or cold tolerance... And some outsiders, like demons, can't have children with each other, or at least most of them can't, only with mortals."

"There are hundreds of races - actually for all I know there are many more than that. Some are very different from each other, in almost every possible way. Some aren't humanoid, or aren't mortal, or are magical. There's nothing common to all of them, except that they're all people."

"I think you might be asking - why are humans and orcs called different races, instead of variations within a race, like Garundi and Avistani humans? I think humans and orcs have separate origins, historically, although that was millenia ago. And we don't mix nearly as much as different human ethnicities, not even in terms of living in the same places. But maybe it's just - convention. I don't think anything would really change if everyone called humans and orcs a single race. Gord's right, though, it wouldn't make sense to count everyone as the same race just because there's some azata out there who could father children with almost anyone else."

"Does that make things clearer? We can answer any questions you have." Except possibly the ones about personal interfertility.

"Um. That makes some things clearer and some things less clear," she replies. "It makes why you treat these categories the way you do clearer. But it makes the entire ... shape of your world make less sense."

She looks up at the stars while she tries to think how to explain.

"There is a fundamental pattern to how creatures that resemble their parents behave, on an aggregate level. It's not a strict law that always comes true, but it is a specific, repeatable tendency such that you will be right more often than not if you use the pattern to guide your guesses. And it is a pattern which is ... like math, in that it should be equally valid in any universe, given some extremely basic assumptions about how creatures behave. If you are interested, I can show you a step-by-step logical proof that demonstrates that this pattern is correct."

She turns back to face them.

"And this pattern weakly contradicts the state of the world which you're telling me about, such that I am not certain that there is anything wrong, but that it makes me confused. So I suspect that one or more of the following things are probably true: someone or something is messing with how you have children, you are all fundamentally mistaken about orcs and humans being mentally different for hereditary reasons, people were originally created deliberately (not spontaneously arising from the environment), you get some traits from where and how you were born (rather than who your parents were), or I'm missing something fundamental about Golarion."

She shakes her head to clear it.

"I am happy to keep talking about this, and digging into what this says about Golarion. But it also doesn't seem immediately relevant, either to Irabeth's story or to our broader plan. So it should probably wait until afterwards, when we can just look at all the orcs and the humans and figure out which of those things is true way more easily."

"Several of those things sound right! People get traits from where they're born, that's half the problem with demons and other outsiders! And I'm sure you're missing something about Golarion, you can't have learned everything in a day." He grins.

"I've also heard that gods created some races. Dwarves think Torag made them. But no-one's taking the credit for humans."

"I think most outsiders do spontaneously arise from their environments. The ones who aren't ex-mortal souls, that is. All the elementals, and some of the people on the afterlife planes. And they can't have children with each other, but they can have children with mortals."

"You seem to be insisting that since orcs and humans can have children, then we can't really be different races. And if we're consistently different despite being the same race, then there must be another reason for it. I - suppose that if Someone very powerful is behind an elaborate deception, making one tribe of humans and all their descendants stronger and less wise and - more green? - at birth, for thousands of years, we might not be able to tell? But I really don't understand why you'd think that, rather than just that - some people are different."

"If every human in the world married an orc, the next generation would all be half-orcs, and it would make sense to call them a single race. But orcs rarely have children with humans - very rarely in a marriage - and so we've stayed clearly different."

"Oh!" she exclaims. "Yeah, that does explain it. Although ... I'm not sure how seriously to take creation myths. On the one hand, my world had those and they turned out to be wrong when we learned more about how we came to exist. On the other hand, we were just chatting with some actual gods."

She waves a hand, dismissing the thought.

"The thing I was trying to explain is that with any non-negligible amount of crossbreeding, it is weird that the strength and the negative wisdom and the color all go together. Inseparably. Like, suppose that a half orc got both the better strength and the better wisdom. That makes them more desirable as a partner, and then whichever side of the divide they have children with has a chance for the better strength or better wisdom to percolate out through that whole side," she continues.

"And something like that could totally happen by chance, it would just be weird and unlikely. But some combination of people picking up traits from their environments and this packet of traits being deliberately designed to go together by whoever created you suffices to explain it."

She shakes her head.

"In my world, there are different groups of people who look similar and share traits -- like the ability to digest milk as adults -- but those traits don't stay pinned down in those groups. The groups are just loose collections of correlated traits, but the most beneficial traits eventually escape from each group and make it everywhere. Like the milk thing -- it's started showing up in groups other than the one where it first appeared. And in that context, believing that there is a sharp, unambiguous divide in things as fundamental as 'whether you are good at cooperating' is ... usually a bad idea that covers up some other explanation for whatever specific thing you observe."

She claps her hands.

"I feel sufficiently enlightened on the topic of half-orcs. Do you still have questions for me that you want answered now, or shall we return to hearing about what Irabeth did next?"

"I still don't think I understand why you were confused before, or what it is that you now realize. But I don't really understand why we were talking about it to begin with. My story isn't about orcs, or half-orcs other than myself. And to me, my race is - only incidental to who I am and what I've tried to achieve with my life."

Irabeth collects herself.

"After I left Lastwall, I spent several years - not wandering, I was always moving with purpose, but without any long-term goal in mind. I spent most of my time in the triangle formed by Varno in Ustalav, Numeria, and the River Kingdoms around the West Sellen. Those parts have very little effective governance. The people must fend for themselves, but they seldom manage to organize across more than a few towns. They are preyed on by bandits, raiders along the river, demons filtering in from the Wound up north, and the forests all through Varno, with the great Echo Wood to the east."

"There was never a shortage of work. Clear-cut missions, helping people, rescuing people, sometimes bringing criminals to justice, missions that did not present any moral difficulties to a paladin. But I thought it might be wrong to keep to - very unambiguously righteous acts. Not contrary to Good or Law or my oaths, but - wrong in betraying our promise to seek the greatest good. So my biggest difficulty, in those years, was understanding which things I should do that might achieve more Good at some risk of doing something wrong. When to convince myself, or allow myself to be convinced, to do something not as clear-cut as defending a town from bandits, or rescuing someone who was kidnapped. What to do when people fight each other, and none of them are either Good or Lawful, none of them deserve my support, but Good and Law would both be served by them not fighting anymore."

"I'm not sure what more to say. Nothing I did was much more important than all the rest. The things I learned, the ways in which I changed, all came gradually. I gained a better appreciation of people who are not Lawful because they do not live in an environment that rewards it, who are not Good because they are afraid to risk to helping others at their own expense. I grew to better understand what Law and Good can give people, why they are needed and what happens if they are gone."

"I probably could have learned the same lessons in Mendev. But Mendev is - poor and unsafe, and poorly governed, because of a constant terrible struggle with the demons and the cultists. It's easy to blame them for everything. In Ustalav I saw how, in the absence both of an organized government and of an existential threat, people can still - not grow up to be their best selves. Law and Good both require work, and don't happen by themselves - at least, not among mortal humans."

"Only the last mission I undertook had a lasting effect on my life. I was asked to track down a man from Nisroch, a powerful fighter who had been - casually terrorizing and mistreating the locals as he passed through, and they feared he would commit some greater evil - " she recollects her audience. "I should explain. Nisroch is a port city in Nidal, a country that has been ruled by worshippers of Zon-Kuthon since before written history. Zon-Kuthon is - the Lawful Evil god of pain and suffering. There's probably some nuance to it that I don't understand, but that's how He comes across to anyone who isn't from Nidal."

"Asmodeus cares about other things, like slavery and tricking people with elaborate contracts. Zon-Kuthon seems to just care about - maximizing suffering. He's not nearly as powerful as Asmodeus, thankfully, He has very few adherents outside Nidal and they don't try to expand their borders. But He has been reinforcing the powers and defenses of Nidal and its rulers for so long that no-one seriously considers attacking them, either. Cheliax nominally ruled them, before Aroden's death - before Cheliax was ruled by Hell - but they never managed to conquer Nidal or replace its government. Zon-Kuthon doesn't own an afterlife like Asmodeus does, and only tortures the people in His country, and so everyone focuses on greater Evils that are easier to defeat, and - tries not to think about it too much."

"So when someone openly from Nisroch, the main port of Nidal, went on a trip to the River Kingdoms, people meekly told him what he wanted to know, and waited to see his back before calling for a paladin's help."

"When I finally tracked him down, he had someone tied down on a table and was in the process of - torturing them. I - had to attack right away. Fortunately there was little room for misunderstanding. Also fortunately, I won the fight."

"He was, of course, unrepentant. Later - after a day to reflect, for me and him both - I executed him for his crimes. It wasn't even the first time I'd had to - knowingly send someone to Hell. Anyone I could hand him over to, in the River Kingdoms, would have killed him without even the pretense of a trial. I wouldn't be doing them a kindness by making them, or letting them, kill him, so I did it myself. That is - one of the so-called lesser evils that we commit because our Good is made more efficient by Law, and it is not a small Evil at all. But that's not why I'm telling you this story."

"His captive, a woman called Anevia, was also originally from Nidal. A fugitive, seeking a better life. She had made something of a name for herself as a Good adventurer working with Desna's priests, in proudly open defiance of her past. Until her story filtered back to her homeland, and that man was sent to quash any rumors that one can ever truly escape Nidal. After I rescued and healed her, she decided to help me with my work - actually, she tried to pledge her life to my cause, but I managed to convince her not to do that. We spent a few weeks together, getting to know each other better."

"And then the news came down the river of Khorramzadeh's attack on Kenabres. I decided to immediately leave for home."

"Anevia insisted on coming with me. I tried to dissuade her. It was a very important cause, but a very dangerous one too, and - it didn't have to be her fight. It was over a week before I even knew Kenabres hadn't fallen, that the war hadn't already been lost. Longer still before we knew the Fourth Crusade was functioning in more than name, that Mendev wasn't fighting for its life all alone. She said - that it was personal. She didn't want to fight for the Crusade, she wanted to fight for whatever I did, by my side. It took me - some time before I understood what that meant, or knew what to do with it."

"It took us almost two months to make our way to Kenabres. The city had been retaken, but there was fierce fighting on the border still, and would be for years to come."

"My parents had rushed to the city to help repel the first attack. They were past their prime, retired and out of practice, but they still helped save lives, and so they reenlisted and just - kept fighting. Their daughter had flown the nest, they couldn't have known I was coming home, and they felt that - that chapter in their lives could be over. They were both strong enough to detect alignment, and they didn't mind risking death over a quiet retirement."

"I came home just in time to attend their funeral."

"Losing my parents was - the most painful thing that has ever happened to me, personally. I mourned them for a very long time. I was bitterly sorry that I had not seen them in years. I had sent them letters, I found some of them in our house, but they had no way of writing back. I knew I was taking that risk, when I decided to do the most good I could, far away from home, and I didn't regret my choice. I just - hadn't really felt the loss, the missing years, while I thought I could go back home one day. I mourned their loss, even more than mine."

"The day after the funeral, I took my father's sword, and I dedicated myself to killing demons. It was - a way not to have to think too much, or make any decisions. I might have stayed that way forever. Anevia - saved me from that. Brought me back. I came to care for her, not just as another person who needed my help."

"Eventually we fell in love, and we married. I think that was - the last important thing I needed to learn, to complete who I am as a person. Or at any rate, the last important thing I have learned. Not how to love, many people know how to love. How to - do things for Anevia, and for myself, without feeling I was selfishly taking away from others."

"When Anevia needed rare and expensive medicine, I sold my father's sword to pay for it. She was shocked when she learned about it. I told her that I was happy that was the choice I had been given, that I felt freed by it. My father's legacy wasn't a sword, it was his life. He spent it happily married and raised a family, and he was Lawful Good and wise and self-sacrificing, and that needn't be a contradiction. I could have saved more lives, with that sword, than with the cheap one I had to use instead. But I wasn't a worse paladin for selling it."

Aww! That's really sweet. Weeping Cherry had been fighting down the urge to keep explaining, but now she's entirely captivated by Irabeth's story.

She nods at the last part about learning to reconcile doing things for yourself with wanting to be good. "That's a lesson I had to learn as well," she remarks. "I'm glad that you were able to learn it and reconcile things within yourself."

She carefully does not offer Irabeth a new sword because that is very much not the point.

Gord has never been to the River Kingdoms, but he has heard about them all his life. For such a nearby place, they feel almost mythical: a land of the brave and the free, where men live unburdened by Law and slavery is seen for the abomination it is. He's helped his share of freed slaves and prisoners escape there, and he always wanted to go see it for himself, but there was always something more urgent -

He feels glad Irabeth's description doesn't contradict anything he'd heard. Then he feels surprised that he had, apparently, been afraid that it would. 

Irabeth's tale sounds like something he could see himself doing, in another life. How much difference is there really between Lawful and Chaotic Good adventurers, in a country without a government or local laws worth the name? Law is strongest when it can build - organizations, when it can bind people together, and much weaker when it binds each person alone. In a free country, the free nature of all Good people will shine through, even for a paladin literally sworn to Law.

The classic romantic story: saving a damsel bound to an evil altar, falling in love, living happily ever after. (He assumes. If Anevia had died since then, he thinks Irabeth would have - worded it differently.) He's lived through his own version of that story, but of course it hadn't ended in marriage. Cassia hadn't wanted to follow him in his private war, and he had no right to ask it of her, and, well. He hasn't regretted it, but he's always thought of it as a romantic tragedy. He's glad it worked out better for Irabeth.

Gord is pained to hear about the death of her parents. His own parents are alive and well - as far as he knows - he hasn't seen them in years, and hasn't been writing - it isn't a Kellid tradition, really, he hadn't thought to - suddenly he wants to see them again. His older brother had just married when Gord left, he'll have children by now, and his three little sisters will be all grown up.

He never looked up to his father nearly as much as Irabeth describes herself doing. He respected him, certainly, both formally and in truth, but now that he is grown himself Gord thinks his father is - an average man. Not a bad or a weak one, but no great sage or hero either. Just a man who raised a family, through all the hard years. Gord doesn't want or need his judgement, of what he has become and done with his life. 

That leaves - a faint worry, that his father won't judge him well and he'll know the judgement is wrong and still feel - pain, because he is his father and when Gord imagines telling him about himself he finds he still wants his approval and praise and admiration.

He resolves to visit his family when the fighting is over. Everyone can teleport around now, so he'll really have no excuse not to.

"I fought on the front lines for a few years. Eventually the situation became less desperate. Anevia and I bought a house in Kenabres, once it made sense to start spending some time at home, helping patrol and guard the city during the day."

"I joined a small paladin order called the Eagle Watch. The Watch was founded by an Eagle Knight - they're a large Andoren military organization and some of them specialize in spying on Evil factions. After the Third Crusade, they thought Kenabres could use a strictly Lawful Good organization to deal with issues internal to the crusaders. Corruption, people acting in their own interests or in some foreign interests that hurt the overall crusade efforts, crime the regular authorities can't afford to fight because they didn't have enough resources, or for reasons of - politics. It ended up attracting many people who were at loose ends because the regular army wouldn't let them be Good enough, or from other orders that lost too many of their men at the start of the Fourth Crusade and were disbanded."

"It's a lucky day when we're tasked with something straightforward, like chasing down a presumed demon cultist who killed some soldiers. To be clear, that was an accident, I just happened to be at the gates when the messenger arrived. More normally we deal with - accusations without additional proof, or from an untrustworthy source. Some people want anonymity, so they can report receiving illegal orders or some crime committed by their employer without them learning who turned them in. Sworn testimony, even under Zone of Truth, often isn't sufficient to convict someone, and then the employer might fire them or the commander might find ways to punish them."

"And many people just refuse to deal with the authorities, or testify in court, because they're afraid of being accused in turn of some other crime. They don't want to be seen in public. But they can tell us under Zone of Truth, and we won't ask any questions that don't bear on the crime being reported. We won't make them worse off for coming to us. We'll investigate and see if we can find sufficient evidence to bring to the authorities - or to disprove the accusation, of course. And some things we can simply tell the authorities so they can investigate without knowing who told us. Some crimes, like kidnapping or murder, don't really require an accuser, it's enough to find a victim."

"We try to find out about everything that's going on in the city, and some of us do undercover investigations." Which is to say Anevia does - Irabeth herself is far too distinctive - and other people who work for her but she always puts herself in the most danger and - well. "Prelate Hulrun doesn't like us, because we sometimes make trouble for him by - making different tradeoffs than he does, and picking different fights. But I think that if we weren't around, he'd have to change the way he operates, to compensate for everything we do that the government can't afford to."

"I realize this isn't telling you about myself, as much as about my organization. I'm not sure what to add. I don't think I've changed very much as a person in the last ten years. Maybe I didn't spend enough time - reevaluating, doubting myself, thinking whether I should be doing something else. But the need was always so desperate, the Crusade so often on the edge of losing the war, and so much of it was because of infighting and crime and betrayals that went undiscovered and unpunished despite our best efforts. The crusade ended because we couldn't keep attacking, but we're not at peace. Not even close to it, like we were when I was a child."

"I'm glad that - it's going to be over soon. I hope I'll have the time to reflect, before I need to choose my next mission."

This sounds like a reasonable role for an organization to Weeping Cherry, who has no preconceived notions about Prelate Hulrun's operations. Certainly, she has seen (and argued with) weirder forms of de-facto government.

"I hope so too," she agrees. "Bar can't predict how often the door will open on a new world, but with the time-stop effect, I am fairly confident that we'll have time before we need to deal with the world after Golarion. And my world certainly has problems you can help with, but none so urgent that I think it would be a bad idea for you to take some time to think and reflect first."

"In fact, I was going to recommend that both of you take some time off to rest once the assault on Hell is complete," she continues. "Just telling someone that the problems they've been fighting against have been solved often doesn't produce the gut feeling that they're solved until they've had time to see it for themselves. In your cases, taking a few weeks or months to tour my world, and see that everyone is free and safe with your own eyes, and to spend time with your loved ones before you figure out what comes next will make it easier for you to choose well."

"And while you're free to make your own ways, I would also be delighted to have you and anyone else you wanted to bring as guests on my estate for as long as you want."

She smiles at them.

"To return to the topic, thank you for sharing that story of your life. It certainly gave me a better understanding of Golarion, even though that wasn't the main goal."

"You've worked to expose criminals and traitors, in the government and inquisition and among the other crusaders. To make up for their failings, to help people avoid the authorities that would have ignored or hurt them. And probably also to punish people for a bunch of things I don't think should be crimes, but I'm going to ignore that for a moment, because I really do want to focus on the positive side."

"Being a paladin made it all possible. You said before that paladins are effective because everyone can trust them, but I didn't realize that included Hulrun."

"And I know you said you didn't have time to reflect, whether this was the best thing for you to be doing. But how sure are you that this was worth doing at all?"

"What would it take for you to decide that the system is broken for good? That it can't or shouldn't be kept barely afloat, when it forces you to work around it and in despite of it, and prevents the creation of something better? Is there a point where you'd say - maybe you're not allowed to oppose them, because they're the lawful government endorsed by Iomedae, maybe they even mean well, maybe they're just too strong for you to defeat or replace - but you're not going to tacitly endorse and support them by helping people live under their rule!"

"I don't mean your helping people is bad in itself, obviously, I mean - it's like what you said, that if more people joined your cause, you wouldn't have to make such terrible tradeoffs. And I guess you think of Mendev that way too. But to me it seems more like - they actually do a lot of bad things, not to achieve anything Good, just because they want to, and they allow other bad things not as a tradeoff but simply because they don't care, and if you give them more resources they might do something even worse with them. They don't deserve your support, any more than they do mine."

"I understand the people fighting the demons on the front lines. Without the doomed offenses, the pointless attempts to take ground we couldn't make any use of, without enslaving people to do it for you - stopping the demons makes sense. Even if it wasn't for some greater Good, you don't need an excuse to defend your home and your people! But I wouldn't help someone like Hulrun do his work, any more than I'd help the Hellknights. And I don't understand what makes it different for you."

Finally, he's talking her language! Asking what is permissible, what should be supported or opposed, in what conditions she would have acted differently than she had. These are safe, sane, rational questions, about rules, without any on-the-spot emotional decisions.

"Those are good questions! What it would take is for me to think the alternative to things as they are would be better, and that it could be achieved, by my actions or my order's actions or even by all the Iomedaeans and some of our allies acting together, in which case I would try to convince them about it. And of course I wouldn't do or permit the things expressly forbidden by my oaths."

"I think it's overdetermined, and not a close thing at all, that I should help Mendev stay together in its current shape, or to reform it from the inside. I'll go over several reasons why, and I think even some of them being true would be enough."

"First, Mendev is not a monolith. Even ignoring all the foreign crusaders and the churches, the government and nobles and most local people don't cooperate nearly enough to think of them all as one organization. Which means I can help some of them, and oppose some others, without worrying that I'm helping perpetuate an Evil system. Or in my case, while fearing that a system that I think is much better than nothing will collapse somewhere else, while I'm not there to stop it."

"I'm willing to catch murderers in Kenabres. There are Mendevian generals out there doing some Evil things I don't condone. They work for the same government as the Kenabres city guard. So you might think that by helping out in Kenabres, I free up some of their men and their funds to go to the generals."

"But the Mendevian state is not nearly well enough run to actually do that. I'd need to prevent half of the crime in the city before they notice. And even then the freed funds would be used locally by Hulrun, not given back to Nerosyan."

"Even when I turn in a murderer for Hulrun's judgement, I don't free up some of his men and funds for other tasks, because they very rarely conduct investigations into things other than security threats like cultists or very large crimes like mass murder, things that affect the whole city. They can't afford to chase down every murderer, because Hulrun considers his main goal to be exposing cultists and other traitors, and that's not a fight he's comfortably winning."

"It is true that, since I help - improve the city, by leaving more people alive and loyal - there are second order effects on the rest of the country. Kenabres is a vital city for the border defense and the Crusades, and improving it gives those generals a little more slack. But I believe the first order effects dominate. If I save a man's life, the army doesn't grow by one man, and I'm not enabling a general to send another man to his death. Not unless you think it's bad for people to be alive in Mendev at all, like - every additional living man goes into the army? I don't think that's true."

"Second, if I'm considering whether to help keep Mendev afloat, I have to compare it to the alternative where it sinks, not to some blank state of neither Good nor Evil. If the state of Mendev collapsed, it would be overrun by demons, and most of its population would be killed or tortured or worse, and the rest would become refugees. Just as happened in Sarkoris. And that is a far greater Evil than any committed or allowed by Mendev, so it's easy to choose the lesser Evil."

"You suggest that fighting the demons directly is enough, and the state of Mendev doesn't need to be propped up behind the lines. But the army that holds the border is manned by Mendev and funded by Mendev's taxes, paltry as they are compared to many other states, and most of the foreign crusaders are Mendev's allies. Everyone who wants to volunteer, and can afford to, is already doing that. We can't have the army without the state, and we'd have lost the crusade without the army."

"Fighting the demons is of course crucial, and I did spend several years doing that, and rotated in for shorter shifts in all the years since but one. But some effort must be dedicated to other things, and in my judgement not enough effort was going elsewhere."

"Third, I think it's much easier to reform Mendev from the inside, by working with the authorities without working for them, than in any other way. You speak of Mendev's existence preventing something better from arising, and - I can't imagine what that might be. Even without the demons, even if the people were not exhausted and impoverished by a hundred years of war and the Sarkorian refugees, the only successful revolutions for Good have both been against a country ruled by Hell. Revolutions against lesser evils don't tend to end up improving very much. What do you imagine could exist instead, if Mendev collapsed but the border miraculously held?"

"I'm not alone in this. Many people outside the Eagle Watch work to improve the system, or to help people directly. Some people donate money to us, instead of more strictly military crusading orders, because they think our work is valuable. If the demon threat disappeared - if we had another thirty years of peace before the next big war - I think we could improve the country significantly. If enough people agree and cooperate we could reform Mendev instead of overthrowing it. And if we have enough support, I expect Queen Galfrey and her political allies would be on our side."

"Fourth, and most importantly, I don't have to make this judgement myself. I can look at what all the other paladins, and Lawful Good people, and wise people of every truly allied alignment, think about it. And even better than that, I can look at what Iomedae thinks about it, because She is much wiser than any of us, and because this obviously greatly matters to Her. She has given Mendev a clear sign of approval in putting and keeping one of Her strongest paladins in Golarion on the throne. Such strong paladins are costly to Her. If Queen Galfrey is more useful as Queen than smiting Evil, that means she is very useful indeed. And it's quite plausible that Mendev would not have lasted this long without her on the throne, considering the people next in line."

"So even if Mendev seemed - of marginal utility, to me, I would never consider myself more qualified to judge it than Iomedae Herself."

Gord feels very conflicted about this argument!

"Some of your arguments make sense. But they lead to unacceptable conclusions. And I'm not sure which of your premises I should dispute."

"I don't want all the disagreements between us to reduce to - you think betrayal is absolutely forbidden and worse than death and take oaths about it, and I think that of slavery and sending others to die in your stead, and maybe there's no way to reconcile that. In a better world we could agree to forbid both things, but we've had to live in the world where we each made some terrible tradeoffs, by the other's lights. And I want to be clear, I will make my stand here if I have to. But I'd hate it if there was no better way."

"Different people care about different things. That's what makes us different people and not clones. But it feels wrong to reduce Good to something as, as arbitrary as that. We want people to be different, but we also want to agree about what Good is."

"Maybe if everyone goes off to their own world, and only ever meets people who think sufficiently like them, then every small community will have its own shared idea of Good, without conflict about it. But that feels weak, it feels - Chaotic Neutral. Everyone going off alone isn't a real victory. It's only really needed in the first place because some Evil people keep hurting others."

"And maybe a world where Good has triumphed and there is no more Evil to fight can agree on everything, by not doing anything people think is bad even if some of them think it's not as bad as all that, because there's no longer need to make any tradeoffs. I don't think we live in that world. And I don't want to ignore Evil in my safe little garden, like Nirvana. Neutral Good doesn't make many tradeoffs, and it also doesn't defeat Evil very well."

"Thank you. For making this attempt to - cooperate, in good faith, and find some agreement that will benefit both of us and all of Good, instead of - not that."

"Different paladin orders take different additional oaths. All the paladins in the world do share a few core oaths, like not breaking our word. That's not because it's the nature of Good that keeping vows is more important than anything else, it's because the function of paladins is to be trusted and to enable cooperation. People have to know what to expect of any paladin they meet, no matter which god empowered them."

"I'm not sure there is anything all Good can agree on as an inviolable rule, something that can't be traded away for anything. I would break my word to save enough people from Hell, some number of people that outweighs the harm of one more paladin Falling and paladins becoming less trustworthy on average. You might enslave someone to save enough people, because 'enough' can be very large - a million, a billion? We don't have to deal with such stakes, thankfully, they might break us, but the gods do. And it's very important that the gods and Their mortal followers agree, because you've seen what happens when we don't."

"So we follow the advice of the gods. We swear some additional oaths, and keep them. These oaths were refined through hundreds and thousands of years of collected wisdom and trial and error, not just by us paladins, but by the gods themselves. Iomedae herself was very wise as a mortal, and made it part of her life's work to write new codes and oaths for paladin orders, and then She confirmed them and probably adjusted them a little after ascending. And She is part of a long chain of other gods, Lawful Good as well as some Lawful Neutral ones, like Aroden was."

"And I think the same applies to asking what Good is. We can - follow the things that all the Good gods agree on. I think they already account for that, they agreed on those things between themselves, because they don't want to set their followers against each other. So if most of the Good gods agree on something, I'd consider that very important."

"I don't think most Good gods agree on forbidding slavery. Obviously it's bad and almost always Evil, but they don't think that it's - uniquely bad. I know Milani thinks that, and probably some other gods, but most of them don't. And the reason I think this is true is that - if, say, all the Chaotic Good gods agreed that slavery was terribly Evil, then the other Good gods would take that into account, and they would all tell their followers to fight slavery much more, balanced with some things Lawful Good and Neutral Good think are very important. I know Iomedae would make that deal with Desna, if She asked, because that's what being Lawful Good is."

"Is that... your whole argument? Trust the gods, because they are wise?"

"Yes! They are cunning and wise and very experienced and care very strongly about getting it right. Of course we should trust them more than some mortal, even if that mortal is ourselves!"

"But then... you can trust Iomedae about how to be Lawful, but how did you choose to be Lawful in the first place? How did you choose to be Good? Why worship Iomedae and not someone else, like Erastil? How do you know what Good is, before you can trust some 'Good' god about it, if even the gods can disagree?"

"I don't think I ever chose to be Good. I always wanted to help people and improve the world, and obviously that's Good and not Neutral or Evil! But many people do choose it consciously, which is excellent. I think it's enough to - want to help others, and care about people besides yourself, and then it's obvious which way to go."

"And I did consider not being Lawful, but I was raised Lawful and I wanted to go to the same church as my parents, and then to the same afterlife. And I was taught it's the most efficient way to promote Good, and I still think that's true, certainly compared to Neutral Good. I'm really not cut out to be Chaotic."

But Gord isn't really listening anymore, he is pacing and talking to himself in mounting horror.

"If you don't know what is truly Good, ask the Good gods."

"If the Good gods disagree, follow the majority vote? If you find yourself agreeing with Milani, but no-one else does, do as the others say, because that is cooperation?"

"How do we know which gods are the Good ones? Who gets to vote, on which things to tell their followers?"

"Is that a stupid question? Everyone agrees about the gods' alignment."

"But what makes a god a Good one, if they disagree about things? Why isn't there a shading of Good into Neutral, with some opinions and some gods in between, like mortals are?"

"...alignment. The same reason mortals are never halfway-to-Good. There are detection spells, and everyone of every creed uses the same ones, and they always give the same result."

"There is one faith, and one god, that concerns itself with sorting everyone and Everyone into the nine alignments."