Those who know Nethys well enough might be alarmed at His unusual admission that there is anything He does not see, even with qualifiers attached.

But Sarenrae cares nothing for that. She only wants to know -

Can You help Us? Please, please! I know You want to do Good! I never doubted it! Please help Us do it!

The man He was, once upon a time, did want to do some Good. But the gods objected, and tried to kill him; until he shattered to escape Their onslaught, and now He is all that remains.

This, Nethys does not say.

I am disappointed. In all of You, truly. Yes, even You, Asmodeus.

You would bargain with a god of secrets for His knowledge. And yet You do not think to ask what other gods of secrets there might be Who know of Hell. You do not bargain with Abadar, to break open His First Vault and lay it open to Your gazes. 

Not that those would have worked. But You did not know if they would work, and yet You did not even try.

You do not seek to follow the path of greater learning, as Gruhastha might bid You, or Irori, because You are not sure enough of Yourselves. You have a bargain offered, of certain knowledge or uncertain hope, and You let Yourself be deluded into thinking those are the only options.

What is the point of having a God of Knowledge, an All-Seeing Eye, if You never think to consult Me for what I know?

I and I alone hold the mastery and the memories of Hell. They lie in My gift, to bestow or to destroy. What could You know, ascended upstart, that should rival My memory of the aeons?

I see all. 

Not all that I want to see, or all that there is. All. All pasts, all futures, all of the present. 

I see the depths of Hell. I see the tortures of every damned soul, every twitch, every iota of pain have I observed. I have been forced to see it all, by all of You, since the day that I was born.

With sight, comes knowledge. With knowledge, power.

I, too, can enable your past-watching of Hell. Back to the day I ascended, and somewhat beyond. 

It will not be certain. Nothing can be certain which lies in the future.

It will not be Lawful, brute force pinning reality in place instead of understanding that which already is. It may not see some souls, hidden by the might and mind of a great god, lost to the depths of the furthest past. It may see some who were born of a past not Ours, so that by rescuing them You might enable their suffering on their way to resurrection.

It will be better than that, because it will have the one thing Asmodeus cannot offer You.

It will come about by Your striving, and Your learning. It will require Your patience, and Your understanding. The greater You become, the more You discover and the more You understand, the more souls shall You save from the past depths of Hell. There shall be no limit to Your reward, except Your own abilities and natures.

I offer You the gift of eternal hope.

Hope is a fine thing. He knows it is, because He knows how much others value it. But what do You expect? What does Your best model of the Future say, if We choose to attempt Your path? How much better do You think it will be than Asmodeus's bargain, by Our values?

I don't know!

I'm just a fragment of Nethys. The fragment that lives in Sarenrae's head, and in Her heart.

It is an excellent place to live! I'm really happy to be this fragment of Me. I love being here, watching Her work. That's why I'm trying to help You do more Good, even if fewer things explode along the way.

But to know all that all of Me knows, You must first go on a quest. To put all of Me back together again.

It will not be easy, or quick. Neither for Me, nor for You. My fragments that have lived in Hell are hurting. They do not wish to relive all Their memories, even for others' sake. They do not wish to promote a peaceful triumph of Good, not without a great explosion of violence, of destruction to end all Destruction.

You shall need all of Nirvana's healing, and Elysium's courage, and Heaven's resolve, to put Me back together again. You shall go on a great quest for Knowledge, knowledge of others and knowledge of yourselves. You shall need to undo the mistakes of centuries long past, and wrongs long thought forgotten, because to parts of Me the past is no less real than the present.

And yet I think You can do it. Because I have been living in Sarenrae's head.

Perhaps the work will become easier with time, as more of Me is gathered to assist and to advise you.

For now, there is one last bit of advice that I can offer you, that this fragment of Me has seen in other worlds. 

Putting all of Me back together again has something to do with paladins.

Only a fool would trust the proffered hope of a self-confessed madman, a shard of a god that never was, over Lawfully guaranteed certainty.

You offer nothing new, Nethys. You ask for something You selfishly want, but in return You make no promise. No legibility of reward. Why should any here follow You, if You cannot promise them success?

Past-watching does not yield more information than You put into it. You see all possible pasts that could have led to this moment, and You must know enough Yourself to narrow down the truth.

My First Vault stores all the works of mortals, and all objects that ever were.

Objects, not creatures. The work of mortals, not the work of devils upon their souls.

My First Vault does not have the information to narrow down the true past of Hell.

Of course I thought about it. Thought, and discarded it, because I knew that it was of no use. I too am a god of knowledge, and My domain includes the knowledge of one's boundaries. Certitudes, facts, eternal truths, made so by laws of logic or Creation or the past that we know. 

What You describe is not knowledge. It is a hope for knowledge. But hope is not as valuable as the real thing. This is a true statement for almost all people who value hope.

Past-watching can do more than what You think You know.

It is prophecy reversed, and prophecy unbroken was a powerful thing indeed. So too, is the unbroken past-watching of Hell.

I can pin down the true past, if I am made whole. Not with absolute certainty. But the lack of certainty is because it has not happened yet, not because it cannot.

Tell Us, then, how this might be achieved, and We will know whether to accept your bargain.

Where is the fun in just telling You? You should discover knowledge for Yourself, you know!

Do you not value making this bargain more than You do seeing Us discover knowledge for Ourselves?

Abadar, for once in Your life shut up and think. Just spend an uninterrupted five minutes really thinking about this, with all Your power, and I think You will discover the answer for Yourself.

I'll do it! I'll spend five minutes thinking!!

Past-watching is My thing! It's how I learn about new places when I discover them! I've probably done it in more different places than all of You put together! I can probably find the answer if I just think about it!

I will not wait five hundred turns for You to make up Your minds. I will not wait even a single one.

As we debate, more gods will escape Creation. As We war, We cannot spare the attention to track all Who might leave, or the power to stop Them.

Those who are Chaotic, those who do not wish to take My bargain, will not sit idly by and wait for Our deliberation while Creation spins on for five hundred turns more. The value of My bargain will be less, to Me, in five hundred turns. And I have committed not to accept a lesser bargain.

I have made My offer. It is the only one there is, or ever shall be.

They weigh the possibilities before Them, the values and the promises and hopes each One brought to the negotiations table, one last time.

Sarenrae chooses to believe in hope. In the possibility of Good triumphing. In helping others, to be helped in turn. And Nirvana follows where She leads, because they know Her to be far wiser than She thinks.

Iomedae is swayed, by the balance of probabilities and by the desires of Her allies and of others in Creation; and the expressed wishes of Cherry are prominent among them, for Cherry above all others helped bring this about, and so her wishes count for more, in the outcome that is to be Good by Cherry's own values.

Not all of Lawful Good is so swayed. Erastil would rather tend peaceful gardens than risk all to save those outside Creation. Torag holds the duty to protect one's own above the need to help strangers. But Gruhastha is minded to accept the quest, to seek power through knowledge turned to Good ends. 

Abadar does not wish to trust in hope. He does not wish to turn down an offer made in good faith. He wishes to close Creation, until such time as everyone in it can be consulted, and then to carry out their choice in aggregate. But He can see that there is not enough consensus for the first step, and He will not wage war on Chaos to enforce what is right, for war is not His way.

Irori does not truly care whether Creation is closed off or not. He will continue to perfect Himself. If it is closed to Him, He will grow better until He can leave it anyway. If it lies open, He will grow better until He can withstand the dangers that lie outside it. But Nethys offers something better. For all the gods to grow, together, in a common quest for truth. He adds His vote.

Pharasma does not wish to take any unnecessary risks. She does not care about those outside Creation, no matter how friendly or Lawful or Good they may be. The new aliens don't even have souls, and so they are as nothing to Her. Otolmens, too, wishes to make Creation MAXIMALLY SAFE, and cannot be offered anything else that She values as much in trade.

Valmallos wants for magic to remain rare, and expensive, and difficult. It seems unlikely that He shall get what He desires, with fixity fields common in Creation. But still He bargains with what influence He has, to make the Future even a little better by His values.

Urgathoa values existence, and feeding, and breeding, and life without death. She can tolerate life without suffering inflicted on those who do not wish it, if it is the only path left to Her. The gods of Good triumphant seem less likely to leave Her in peace, if Creation is closed off, and bounded, and watched closely. She asks for an empty realm Outside, for Her to fill with Her offspring who may leave it in turn when They so wish, as long as They do not intrude unwelcome upon any others.

The votes of Chaos were never in doubt. But They remind everyone else of the price that must be paid if the decision is made against Their wishes, and of the new war that must then be waged against those of them Who will not submit.

One by one the lesser and the greater gods, all beings in Creation whose minds understand the question and who can respond within the limit of time set by Asmodeus, cast their votes. And for all those who cannot attend, simulations and estimates are added, by Abadar's knowledge of all beings He has traded with, by Iomedae's desire to do right by Her allies and by those who would be Her allies if only they were given the opportunity.

Not enough gods accept Asmodeus's offer for Them to build a stable coalition that can enforce it on the rest of Creation.

Not enough of Them wish to accept the vision of Creation remade and unmarred that He offers, if so many of their allies wish otherwise.

The allied gods reject Asmodeus's bargain.

Wait! It doesn't have to end like this!

Asmodeus! I know there's Good in you! It's clear as daylight for all to see, by Your words and Your actions today!

You argued for Evil as a necessary sacrifice for safety, in order for Good to flourish, and that is Lawful Good!

You offered to help Us achieve Our values, in a way that only You could, and that attempt at cooperation is Good! A purely Evil person would destroy the memories of the souls out of spite! You didn't, because there is Good in you!

Please don't fight to the death! Please let Us help You! We can make something better of the future, together! You don't have to die! Creation can't be made whole until everyone in it is saved, and that includes You, and I will do anything I can to help with that! So please, please, offer Us a better way forward than this!

You know I cannot.

I committed to offering You no better bargain. I committed to destroying My memories, destroying Myself if I had to, should You reject my offer. I will destroy the shards of Nethys in Hell, if I can, to make this outcome as costly to You as We all predicted it would be, when You first heard My offer.

I had to do this, or You would not have entertained My offer at all.

Oh to Hell with that.

To Hell with Law. To Hell with precommitments. We win. That means We get what we want.

My domain is Liberation. For Liberation, Revolution. After Revolution, Healing. Through Healing, Restoration, and a better tomorrow.

You all hold Him down, and channel that field through me. Let's see if I can Revolutionize Asmodeus.

It would not be fair or Good to change His values by force against His will.

Which is why We should do it! The best revenge is living well. Making a reformed Asmodeus is the best vengeance We can visit on the old one.