If Norgorber were to have prepared for godhood — for he had not thought any ascension would happen so trivially — he may have guided himself to better domains.

Challenge and selfishness perhaps.

But crime was good enough. Crime was what he was used to.

Perhaps he never would have ascended, backed by Evil Gods as he was, in such a counterfactual. It had never been worth it to check. Nor did he particularly like the thought that a better prepared version of himself would thus fail. 

He committed no notable crimes in Axis directly. It is in-fact a challenge for a God to hide significant acts from the powers in this realm.

(That and there were those waiting for him to falter specifically)

Axis was always for sale however. And he owned his domain, and all the souls within. Crime was not meaningful solely from the breaking of law. 

But petty crimes against his own followers were not what Norgorber considered dear to his heart. 

What he considered dear was seeing the crimes (halfway experiencing them with how a God's mind can work) of mortals unfold. Their successes. Their planning. How they pulled away from failure, adapting to make success happen.

And then their inevitable fall. It was not a safe profession. 

But despite their fall, their souls tumbling into judgement, he was there to catch them.

.. as long as they were Neutral Evil.  

And they were required to be devoted enough to him. A hard requirement, that cut out far too many of his dedicated and more casual thieves alike.

He had stretched this with deals in the afterlives, and cults provided a strong way to gain those souls, but too many.

"Aroden." He said directly to the other God. There was no need for them to be within mortal distances of each other, though they very well could be in the plane of Axis.

"Milani." He said to a further away distance. He had no restriction seeing Her, for She was not a Chaotic Good mortal any longer, but She simply did not have the presence in Axis that Aroden held. Both through alignment with it's nature and lack of power. Though her heart had never been in Elysium.

He shuffled over the metaphorical equivalent of reams of notes.

Aroden sampled some noise. Then chose how much He allocated towards immediately analyzing the information and ensuring there were no plots sprouting amongst the many futures He would want to avoid.
(One had to be paranoid with Norgorber, the man in life had prided himself on getting one over on others even whilst helping them, this had not changed after his ascension)
((Thus predictably paying most of this shard's attention to or away from the information could also be turned against Aroden, so He utilized a simple probabilistic strategy))

Most of His focus flitted over the supplied information. The majority was already known to Him. Some of it was accessibly-new, in that receiving it unconditionally He was no longer bound by a handful of minor secrecy agreements; and of course there were some legitimately new pieces.

Abaddon. The Neutral Evil afterlife, and one of the pet causes of Norgorber for clear reasons.

"This would increase Evil's power."  She noted disapprovingly at skimming the preliminary projection.

She had a complicated relationship with Norgorber. On the most obvious part: he was Evil. A human evil, but an evil nonetheless. When She had realized that this God of Crime would ascend, She had seriously considered if perhaps it would be better to strike him down (and be struck down herself). It hadn't. 
On the other hand, thieves and criminals knowing secrecy, planning, and simply being larger in number helped in her domains. Sneaking in scrolls and weapons to cities was easier than it had ever been. However, for every thief or assassin that pushed on unjust rulers there were another dozen that extorted the people or an assassin that worked as the underground arm of those in power.

The main piece He brought to the table was an in to the Evil afterlives.

She considered Him net-negative thus far.

"Continue reading Princess."

Norgorber, on the other hand, liked Milani. More than he liked Aroden really. He wasn't against Laws (or as he considered it: Deals between people) innately, he was Neutral as they say, and he was certainly for better luxuries and the like. But that didn't make him more than friendly with Aroden. Still more than he was with any of the other Evil Gods, really. Milani, though... revolution provided such an exciting time for crime. Why, he had stolen the crown of a Princess in the middle of a Milani-ite revolution, which had thoroughly impressed upon him that She was his favorite Goddess.

(It amused him to push some of his more dedicated cults to dismantling a regime's old non-them criminal network after such a revolution, which both helped and harmed the new government with its now stronger but more loyal criminal underworld. He wasn't sure she'd quite noticed how direct those were.)

She didn't bother anything approaching bristling. For She was not instantiated in anything remotely like a mortal form as he was — it was a waste of thought.

She read.

"Over the long run it would, yes, but the long run is locked in." His voice, for it was almost literally a human voice though with the more efficient speech of the Gods layered over it, was sly. The general thrust of Aroden's plan was becoming obvious to all the Gods by now, as the futures slowly grew crisper about the weight stones He had set in the path. Fabric drawing taut wound through the fulcrums he had designed. Norgorber liked the plan, truly, despite it (inefficiently) falling entirely within the Contract's stipulations. It still shifted the game board in a kaleidoscope of subtle fashions which could be exploited by both his own worshipers and himself.

(And for Norgorber to push along in the background. Aroden surely believed that Norgorber would find some way to assist, the God just couldn't act on that. He would have gone through on this plan with-or-without criminal assistance.)

"Why now? Why not five hundred years ago?" Aroden was running a tight budget, and Norgorber could not quite manage this plot himself. It was partly that none trusted Norgorber (though that was oft due to lacking an understanding of mortals), but also a worry of upsetting the equilibrium.

Abaddon had been as it was for millennia now. A constant gaping maw shredding souls, with little care for the agreements of the Gods, as foul Astradaemons plucked souls straight from the River. Yet also a weak power directly, with only four powerful ords who exceeded God's in some manners whilst being worse in others and middling Godly backing.

It had survived for a variety of reasons. One significant being that Pharasma, for all Her hatred of the destruction of souls, held that Abaddon was a place of desolation. Hell and the Abyss both preferred the current state as well, for they had argued in such a way to allow those souls to damn themselves in another way.

That, and Godwars were never cheap. The Horsemen, even if the Horseman of Death was the only one remaining of the old days, had spent that entire time entrenching themselves. It had just never been worth the expenditure to directly combat them relative to other alternatives.

"Section four thousand nine hundred and forty-six."

If Aroden's eyebrows could rise they would.

Four was a powerful number in Abaddon. All realms had to deal with their conceits in some fashion. The Maelstrom held great walls of unbridled matter/magic to guard the newly formed (petitioners and other Things), for not all are quite ready to be altered. It will never stand long, but another may be created anew. The Boneyard held great paths carved by many feet, towering trees pruned to point the way to their facsimile of civilization — for Law and Good but also Evil and Chaos are selected out. The Abyss, for all its Chaotic nature, trained and cultivated many breeds and kinds of monsters from what a Demon Lord considers the chaff.

Abaddon was destruction. Destruction for destruction's sake. Yet not arbitrary destruction. The titles of the Four Horsemen all represented a sort of mortal tearing down. Death/old age/the eventual grinding down of positivity. War/mutual destruction/encompassing failure. Pestilence/cancer/the tearing away. Famine/the blighted change/the ever lacking. Four had ruled, and four echoed far into the nature of the plane. They had lasted longer than the Maelstrom had protected its inhabitants at scale. From the beginning, possibly constructed by Pharasma Herself.

That shuddering echo gave it a certain power, they both knew.

Just as it was intrinsically easier to invade Hell the closer one was to a tyranny, as even the most troubled could in principal be healed in Nirvana, or that deals would always be made in Axis: the Four simply rang clear and true. A simple delineable factor of the plane.

That was his plan.

"How are you avoiding claiming their souls?" Milani asks, her attention now piqued. "You'll have Me, or Aroden, have the local law alerted at the right time so that your four humans are killed through some curious chain of cause and effect I am sure. How are you not claiming them?"

The minor domain I have in Abaddon is simply a well-defended shuttleport. I have deals with certain Daemons to ferry faithful who do not meet Pharasma's limited 'devotion' criterion, though Pharasma imposes tariffs on this sort of deal. 

(His default mode of thought is to hide. There was little cost for this to be known, but it could always have been useful to have the secret. Most Gods would not have cared to risk peeking into Abaddon.)

((That it was known to be more than a simple permanent Time Stop + Plane Shift to Axis was a secret, but not the secret.))

I shall simply have it be that they never get past the entryway, even if they were to coincidentally arrive. I expect Abaddon in general to have no objection to me skipping a few mortal souls even if they count. So I don't expect that eventuality to come up. 

That doesn't return their faith in You.

Norgorber shrugged. Only one of them is enough of a worshiper to certainly be claimable. The others are 80% a no. Also I am permitted to commit crimes against my subjects: oh wait, it isn't a crime then.

That is still a moral crime.

(But worth it)

How are you going to end up with these four... what are they anyway? Criminals presumably, but I can't quite see them all except for that one with the anger issues. He donates to my Church.

Local Mafia. Generally know each other already.

Specific locality highly encouraged unconditionally working with each other with minimal fucking around, as they started being crowded out of the city by Tian Xi demon cultists. 

How much more group-oriented and trusting than normal?

I refuse to elaborate.