"I am only seventeen but I think I am not the casual sex type... if I go through several worlds is there any realistic prospect of like, keeping, somebody I marry?"

Daniel folds his hands and prays.

"...The Foundation of Heritage is designed such that your closest loved ones and progeny might be akin to Angels as well, granting them longevity and many of your own powers. When angels or mortals perish, they each and every one come before the Gates. You could meet them again in Heaven, or, were you both virtuous and worthy, pray to be made mortal-born angels and sent unto another world once again, together. I do not think this is a guarantee, merely a possibility."

"That makes getting married as an eternal being much less appealing."

"I can see why it might."

"I'll... think about it. Mercy and charity?"

"Mercy: You may not intentionally kill, nor risk a great chance of death by your actions of, any sapient being. This restriction does not apply to Demons, but does apply to people that Demons are possessing. Examples: If you are in battle and see a deadly blow coming for an ally that you could block, you do not have to block it. If you see someone falling to their death, you need not rescue them. If you are facing a man threatening to kill a hostage, you may not act in ways that might incite him, but may act if you sincerely believe you have a great chance of preventing death. If you see a way to kill a Demon but it might also strike your ally and kill them, you may not attack. This Vow comes also with an instinct for turning what would be lethal attacks to nonlethal ones, and knowing when your attack would kill instead."

"Charity: You may not accumulate wealth. You may personally be no wealthier than the median person in your region, kingdom, or empire. Anything in excess must be donated to charity in one way or another, and not in ways that come to directly benefit you again. Donating to a charity that pays you well, no. This does not include state budgets, merely what you use for your personal self or award yourself. I am finding it difficult to think of examples."

"- I could imagine folding quite a lot into a state budget, basically anything making it easier to do my job, as long as I steered clear of making gold statues of myself or whatever?"

"Items directly related to the work, such as limousines or a starship to travel on business with, state dinners at which important diplomacy occurs, a luxurious office within which governance is laid down, could fall under such an umbrella. Practical equipment, even if expensive, is fine, and using such equipment outside of work is also fine. A large home, personal entertainment, elaborate vacations, and suchlike is not."

"I'm probably up for taking that one if I wind up in a world with a decent median standard of living but I don't want to wind up without plumbing or something. Does mercy rule out, uh, a lot of state level actions, such as declaring and following through on a retaliatory policy for actions by neighbors that might involve lethal violence, or tolerating a non-zero rate of deaths among people I'm having arrested for disseminating demonic propaganda, or something?"

"Enacting laws that carry the penalty of death, knowing that they must be enforced, is an action which violates the Vow of Mercy. Enacting laws that you know will cause some deaths by accident or incidentally is not necessarily so, provided you do your best to reduce the risk of death caused by enforcement."

"And if I'm like, uh, 'if you violate that treaty banning bioweapons my empire will conquer you'...?"

"Threatening war would not, but actually following through on a threatened war would almost certainly violate the Vow of Mercy. It seems like it would be difficult to lead a state with such a vow."

"Rats. Are there like... custom vows ever? Or did God hand down some umpteen years ago and this is how they are for everyone always?"

"The standard set of vows are optimized. Custom vows give far less virtue or are more restrictive in several ways in exchange for being less restrictive in one particular way."

"Can you give me an example?"

"A variant of the Vow of Mercy which prevents thou only from directly killing and permits causing indirect deaths so long as they are not done of malice, would permit a nation you lead to levy the death penalty and wage war. However, it would apply also to most animals, still require you to take reasonable steps to minimize death, and would provide two Virtue instead of five. It would, like the first, not apply to Demons."

"Honestly I'm sort of puzzled about the morality of killing given that virtually everybody gets to walk through the gates and hang out in paradise forever."

"Not all consider death an evil, but God does. My own conclusions on this matter include that killing when ye had known the fate that awaits in Heaven is perhaps less evil than had ye not known, but the harms are not small. It is a traumatic thing yet, a forceful displacement to another world and a robbery of the potential life that could have been built. Also, Heaven awaits not everybody. The overwhelming majority, but not everybody."

"Is there a way to tell in advance?"

"Not for certain. To use examples, I had seen a slave who had loathed their masters direly and arranged to poison the whole house from babe to elder enter the Gates, for they were driven to it in pain and desperation, and had regretted it even as they committed. I had seen a soldier, seen as a hero of his nation, be condemned to Hell for his delight in cruelties and torture, who even to the end only relished the power of violence. I had seen a mass murderer who had killed dozens, but yet held a glimmer of regret and in the end did not resist when the authorities found and slew him in turn, and he came to the Gates. It takes true and unrepentant evil to go to Hell."

"What is the - process - by which this true and unrepentant evil is discerned and judged? Presumably it's not God doing it if he wants Hell to stop being a thing."

"I don't know why. God had revealed to me that He cannot change it."

"Has he revealed to anyone why he's so stingy with the communications?"

"God had revealed that we typically do not understand His full meaning when we pray. Perhaps you could pray and see if He responds."

"How do I do that, I haven't before."