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.

Thank you for updating my probability distribution on what proportion of secret criminal sects you manage shockingly directly. It would however be useful to know more about the deviation from average, even if I may gain information of the overarching distribution from your revealed information.

One may believe whatever they wish to believe that plays into their biases.

These four are likely to play well together.

But will they succeed? Your estimates seem overunderconfident/miscalibrated in light of (53 citations of varying Horsemen capabilities, dangers in Abaddon that are not merely the Outsiders, semi-consistently worse outcomes than a prophecy supplied distribution would imply, poor prophecy convergence there even outside of those roughly-known adversarial selections, etcetera.)

Here is the updated version, as I was missing most of those negative prophecy behavior citations.

Despite this the plan remains optimistic. I have a decent amount of private information on top of what I have shown the two of you, which I possibly can not share even under a standard hiding information clause.

This was the problem with Norgorber: He was too unwilling to be caught for a crime, which lowered the value of being Neutral on the Law-Chaos axis in the first place.

There are many ways the agreements between Gods can be broken. Milani had been fined (post-facto paid with interest + opportunism fees) more than a dozen times for certain unlawful interventions. This could still end up net-positive for her, which was part of the benefits of the Chaotic alignment, but she could not skip paying if she got caught. Well, she could, but it would be of significantly lower utility for her. Typically the expected utility of breaking the Contract was lower than keeping to it.

Aroden was supposed to uphold the God-agreements made between most of the Gods. This wasn't an inherent part of being Lawful: you could simply uphold your end and just not help the breaking. But being Lawful made you an excellent choice for one of the Gods that notice and start the call to put a stop to (or merely inform of the fine) agreement-breakers. He needed as much budget as possible, and so he had volunteered. The Lawful alignment had been chosen for many reasons, even if it had been a natural fit.

So Aroden would be forced to fine Norgorber for breaking the agreement if he were caught with 'sufficient' evidence — there was no sharp delineation, of course. Just general knowledge that Norgorber had most likely broken the Contract of creation in some manner was not enough for him to be required to report or investigate. (Otherwise he'd have to investigate all the Chaotic Gods). Certain Contract rules had different stipulations for how they must be investigated — such as releasing Rovagug — or had truly astronomical fines.
If this plan seemed like it would work, Aroden would be more than willing to pay his fair portion of the expected fine/cost.

However, Norgorber was ideologically committed to not being found to have broken the law.
Of course, the statement that He was not willing to tell Aroden about certain secrets was information on the face of it.

For mortals this would hold true, but Norgorber was a God. There were decent chances all information had been legally obtained (if Norgorber had not felt an urge to commit a crime for the sake of it), but also decent chances that it had not. Thus Norgorber was using this as part of his general systematic methods of maintaining uncertainty about which world they were in, illicit or licit secrets, because of his aversion to being caught at all (and obviously the fine).

Yes, yes. I could admit to a crime, be the shame of all criminals everywhere (not that I am one), lose a third of my reputation, see my lease in Axis skyrocket in price, and then maybe bother around Abaddon myself because Godly rents are kind of expensive. I don't want to, you know this, shall we continue?

Agreed. 
(There were times when his calculations for Norgorber's expected-value for humanity fluctuated below what would have been the next best option of waiting for another Starstone challenger, but then sometimes the wily God pulled out a plan like this; a Crime domain did help)

She was busily reading through the notes at a slower rate than they were discussing. There was an interesting revolution going on in a Taldoran province led by a surprising individual — some duke or whatnot whose father had been a Paladin, egged on by an ambitious court sorcerer — which could end up going well with some twisting and luck.

She placed twenty percent that it was Norgorber deliberately distracting her, but she had yet to see a point in the conversation where it would be better to interject.

These four mortals invoke the general team of four that Abaddon provides us as a backdrop. Better than the current Horsemen in fact, only Charon remains intact from the early days and they're not exactly unified anymore.

Your chosen four don't fit the concepts; except for the one who worships me.

With the help of Norgorber and Milani he could see them better. Two male humans, a male halfling, and a female elf or half-elf. All decently powerful already. The halfling had the markings of a fighter/rogue, and was mildly a follower of Him.

(A phantom predicted pain of His once purely human emotions, that it would not save them from Abaddon)

The halfling, with these three lenses, drew into focus.

Power. That was what Jalar had realized he wanted from a young age.

Others were stolen from because they were, to put it simply for those who may fail to understand: Weak. Unable to protect themselves.
Partakers of taverns could be insulted because they were weak; different in manner but weak nonetheless.
He was weak for his stature was small. A grown man could lift him and throw his halfling frame through a window with ease — as had happened more than once.

Power was two wickedly-sharp long daggers. Power was a ring that made his skin harden. Power was not needing to care for anyone else, except for those you wished to. 
Power was the feeling of another's hips under him.
Power was simply being better, stronger, smarter, and luckier.

Norgorber only lightly received his attention, in the sense that any thief whispers a quick send-off when they are picking a lock under the moonlight.
Irori, but self-perfection was not quite power in Jalar's mind.

Aroden was the only God he could be glossed as following for he attended the Church once a month and paid his tithes. It helped him grow stronger mentally he felt, hearing the tales read from the book by the Cleric, of the rise and fall far beyond his own little city.

The power of becoming a God was what Jalar respected, but he also was not enough of a fool to think he had the capacity.

Thus he served as dedicated hired muscle. Intimidating weak shopkeeps for protection money. Dealing with guards after a job goes hot. Breaking into a building through force or by his pair of lockpicks. Protecting the spellcasters when they were hired out.

Jalar had few vices, for his primary vice was whatever let him feel in control of himself. And the best way to feel in control was to be in control, which power let you do.

At best he fits War, but he does not fight for fighting's sake, for a cause, as revenge, or anything that easily lies in War's retinue.
The remaining are blurrier, but I see now how they would be no better than he.

Only the far outcomes of the plan have them even trying at taking the place of all four, see Section 94,211 for an overview.

Simply having four tightly-knit is enough. Here are some statistical early tests, though I had to pay Daemons to avoid them eating these souls who knew each other in life. They tended to do better than a group of five or three, even in cases where they had less group cohesion. Have the full observational data as the sample size is so low, quite unmistakable. 

They all got eaten or horribly tortured then eaten or had their souls warped into magic items.

The test cases are also not as good as the four I've chosen.

Those weren't even prototypes really, just tests of whether a simple group of four would be distortionary enough to gain observable benefit.

That one is closeish to War helps too, I believe, and I expect they'll all grow a tad closer over time. Petitioners tend towards the behavior of the Outsiders of that plane, this draws out the Death, Famine, and Pestilence oriented attributes in them all.

I admit to intrigued uncertainty.

Let me analyze in more depth.

More of his shards coalesce into one.

Audacious would be a choice word to describe the proposed plan. It does not break any God-agreements that I know of, even private ones, so We should not have to fear invoking alliances beyond the natural incentive of Evil Gods to not let humans into positions of power within Abaddon. Which should hopefully be minor, as long as they are not being directly displaced.

Personally, I'm proud of Asmodeus not intervening. Some combination of increased tyranny in Abaddon due to an expected fewer souls getting eaten, more interactions with other planes to allow trade, and a guarantee that we'll try to encourage the four (were they to gain power) to not petition Pharasma to change the ability of petitioners to choose Hell over Abaddon. With some restrictions, of course. Here's the full preliminary contract.

...

A tenth of the contract terms in Your favor are ones Asmodeus has already bound Himself to by other agreements. Two-tenths are inconsequential to Him in the timespan the contract is limited to, unless We exceed all Your estimates. This clause would allow Him to trigger notable costs to you through relatively simple payments via an Abaddon proxy. 

Possibly have Abadar look them over as well. See if you can turn that three-tenths into a clause that Asmodeus'll not argue for any of them to go to Hell in court to knock out some failure modes, and a bit more nonintervention.

Also, Milani, you see I brought You here too for another reason, let's step aside so Aroden can bargain with dear Asmodeus —

Jalar glanced around at the two others behind him, them crouching as he merely stood. Glancing through the keyhole again he gave a sharp nod to his back, pushing the door open slightly to take a peek.

Standing on the opposite side of the room is an ethereal woman dressed in the garbs of a Cleric of Good, if a bit ostentatious. She's got her hands tied to the wooden post behind her.

"Oh, you poor souls, may Sarenrae forgive you." She proclaims to the two guards to the front of her. As she speaks, her eyes briefly flick towards the door before snapping back to the guards with an expression of innocence and pleading. "I would see no more evil done today, wouldn't you be so kind as to let me go free?"

"Listen lady, we don't want trouble with the Dawnflower's faithful," The first guard says gruffly, looking at her guardedly. "But you was snooping around where you shouldn't have been."

The other guard has his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. "She can't be allowed to just walk away. If she squeals about what she saw to the authorities, we'll swing for it." Being a part of the authorities yourself doesn't protect you from a Cleric reporting you with evidence sitting around. Or at the very minimum, it is a far greater uncertainty.

The first guard nods grimly. "Aye, can't have that. Only two choices then — silence her permanently..." He pulls out a dagger. "Or...?"

He trails off. 

The question hangs in the air. Can she convince them, somehow, that she can stay quiet without getting her pretty little throat cut?

Oh, she could. She was sure of that. They so desperately didn't want to be killers, even if they took money from demon summoners, that it practically shined to her. A teasing word, an implication of friendliness and hoping for their redemption, with a tinge of innocent fear and they'd let her go with nary a spank much less a blade.

But she didn't have to bother, and not having to bother could be so relaxing at times.

Of course her hands were tied. Nothing you could do about that. Unless you were.. a thief or a Half-Elf with far too much time on her hands or even a mildly competent individual in her perfectly honest opinion.

Hands unclasping from behind the pole she raised her fingers together. Blindness.

"Hey! Who turned out the lights —"

Untel sprang forward, a grin on his face that quickly diminished as he saw the two targets in the room. Still he swung his khopesh much like an axe into the calf of the closest man, the one not blindly swinging his blade around the room.

A crossbow bolt shoots out from the doorway into the chest of the blind guard.

Within the next round he'll be skulking through the backdoor to ensure there's no one else here, even though Zyth signaled it was empty. Always better to check.

As he passed, a knife was stabbed into the side of the blinded guard and Jalar looked at Zythren with a raised eyebrow.

"Jalar! How nice to meet you here! One moment." Leaning over to untie her put her about level with him. Once she was done, her ankles feeling much nicer with fresh air running over them, she looks up with a smile which spoke more of amusement than friendly relief. "I'm so glad you were here, helping those two to realize the extent of their mistakes would have taken a bit more effort without, uh," A glance over as Untel stopped the guard's swinging blade with a hand around his wrist. "your assistance."

"That you needed our help in the first place is a damn shame." Jalar scowls at her, internally glad that he could at least do it with her kneeling for him to look her in the eye which made him soften (which was exactly why she did it, which made him try to unsoften but it was hard to get that annoyance back). He runs his hand over his stubble. Stress. "If we'd been on the otherside of the city, your little orphan-sent message would have reached us just as soon as they got finished gutting you for whatever Balor they have on the other end!"

"Really now, I doubt they're quite so interesting as to have a personal Balor liaison." Verbal poking. "But yes," Had to give him something to hook onto. "it would have been better were I to have stayed a tad further away." Or, more realistically, had prepared Invisibility, but relying on hiding always felt so cheap when she could usually hide in plain sight. "Still," she felt the need to correct him, "I was in no real danger, those two were practically begging to be pushed around." 

"At least bring Reyven along to watch your back." He sighs, running a hand down his. Glancing about and then looking at her, he asks "Was there at least anything at all of interest?"

"Now. Where are those demon-summoning sons of whores?" The tall gray-haired man growls, the edge of his khopesh red with blood. He took little pleasure from killing patsies or bribed guards or whatever the hells these two were. "Tell me." The guard was still alive, and if the little man told him where some of those fucks were then if he were still alive by the time Untel got back then he'd heal him.

Healing was tough work when you weren't God-touched, so he felt that this was quite generous.

His tactics were blunt and unlikely to work. "They're not here darling." She rolls her eyes and stands fully, her (half-)Elven height matching his. "Left these two to guard unknowing of whatever is in the warehouse, using their authority to keep out any casual interest. Might be some demons laying in ways if you head in deeper. Do keep an eye out for Revyn, though." There was nothing back there, but if there were traces then the demon hunter would be the one to isolate the sources. Mostly it got him elsewhere that wasn't around her.

He snorts, but immediately heads to the back door that the guards had been, well, guarding. "I'll deal with them, witch."

She smiled placidly at his back. "Not a witch." She mutters, having lost that battle with him long ago.

"Now, Jalar, drag that one over here for me to ask a few questions before he bleeds out."

A full three percent of souls that land in Abaddon are instantly annihilated or absorbed by the terrain.

All the planes have peculiar landscape features. Abaddon has both the most mundane: destruction from grand wars of the past, vast naturally formed mountain ranges, and lakes where the River Styx pooled. Forests of mundane trees, even if of long evolved-away variations.
And the most esoteric, if we were to ignore a few locations within the depths of Hell or rather specific corners of the Abyss. Designed from the ground-up mile wide towers that had stood since before man was brought into the world. Features with no observable past even to the oldest that cared to look. Terrain that breathed. Locations where space-warped, hideaways of daemons both big and small. A burning sun of gamma rays and negative energy that rose in the center of a vast desert once every turn of the week, burning away all life within its range. A forest of fruiting trees that all but the most hungering of daemons avoided.

Abaddon was among the worst in terms of horticulture choices.

The River Styx swept through a shocking portion of the realm. A mockery of the River of Souls; the waters went far deeper, for they were in-essence darkness unending. There was no outer darkness of unutterable things to lie in wait in those depths, there was the void. It acted as the natural extension of Charon: Death.

Charon (and His servants) went through the grand river by boat or wings. Many new souls arrived upon the grand safe shores of Abaddon, where few Daemons strayed (the glittering thread lines of the River were ever so near, a grand temptation but not worth gaining the attention of the overeager Good guardians). Charon boated most souls across in time, into the waiting maws of throngs of those who claimed their status as His servants or many waiting unallied Daemon.

Not all decedents were torn to shreds and consumed. If one were to be buried with coin, Charon would simply nod and take this as his payment, your ride sheltering you at a safe location upon the far side. By ancient agreement for that still held some weight here, or perhaps it was merely an amusement of the Grim Reaper.

Most those with coin were eaten by a Daemon within the next few days, far outliving those who lacked.

If one were to appear in the River Styx, or foolishly try to swim across to an empty piece of land just right there, then gone you would be. For just as every creature in Abaddon it ate away at the edges, and so the River Styx would find itself a fraction of an inch wider, ever closer to the glowing threads.

Spontaneously appearing at the mainland, far away from the far shore, was the greatest chance of success. But petitioners were not given a choice of where they entered into this land.

'Success' as defined by a proper chance of becoming a Daemon. Those in life who knew power would find that their souls held a strength to them unlike but not entirely dissimilar to the power they had held past. That was the taste the Daemon's craved. These would find themselves ahead as Daemons, able to bully and consume the lesser forms.
Those away from the shores were oft assumed to be powerful enough to at least be wary of, for it was not unlike the more human powers to take fair guises or for petitioners to rise quickly given the slightest handhold.

There was no diffuse continuous transformative power as in the Abyss, nor the strictly regimented levels of Hell. There were very few weak souls (or quite many if one considered the lambs in Awaiting Consumption), after which the level of capability jumped sharply to the main population of horrific Daemons. Then beyond those teetering disparate towers of allied power were some under a Horseman and some not.

Jalar hated Abaddon already. it wasn't just the moans or prayers to Sarenrae that the handful of other people he saw threw to the skies as if those would help them. It wasn't just the dead colors, a gray lifeless grass and a darkened red horizon. It wasn't just the fact that he was going to die horribly, and forever this time. 

Okay. It was mostly the last one.

He was scared. He was weak like he hadn't been in so long. He held all his strength but his armor and weapon were like shadows, vague representations of what he had worn and used which might take a hit but just felt lacking.

His only consolation to the end of his tale was that he had a dozen gold and silver coins in his pockets. They might buy him passage, were the stories true. 

(They probably weren't, a small scared part of him that he had never quite expunged whispered pointing to preaching from the Church about the evil of the Evil afterlives and most of the Neutral. That Hell gave up all limited pretense to torture, the Abyss grabbing you and reforming you into a beaten servant, and Abaddon there to consume you until nothing remained.)

"Jalar? That you?" Came a voice from the fog, the rogue stepping out in just the same manner as he might from shadows. 

"Yep. Both dead, huh?" Reaching into the coin pouch he passes over two gold coins,

At the confused look on his friend's face he clarified. "Just in case, give that to the boatman. Old story, you know?" This made him realize he wasn't quite sure where he'd even heard that story, of Charon accepting coin for passage. Perhaps he'd heard it in the church one day, or when he'd badgered the Cleric about his likely final destination. And had been told he'd prefer Abaddon if he could not bear being weak under the power of another for long.

(Sometimes his mind objected to the Evil label, insisting that while he knew he wasn't a nice society positive guy, he was more Neutral. Especially with all the Demon killing he had to do. Apparently wasn't enough, not that he could quite remember the trial beyond a flash of arguing and then a final choice. That they considered Revyn 'Evil' just made the likelihood of him being pronounced non-Evil seem like it had never been an option.)

"Alright." Revyn was the embodiment of calm. Peace. Serenity.
Or he tried, and mostly failed, but telling himself that this was merely another mission worked. In and out, with a terrible fate if you got caught. Not that there was an 'out'. Maintain awareness, watch for potential targets — no, wait, he can't pickpocket a daemon can he?

Maintain awareness, watch for potential threats, evaluate them based on how many horns dripping with ichor they had and the color — he had never actually seen an illustration of a daemon.

Damn it. He'd know it when he saw one.

There were what felt as countless shades about them, petitioners who they could only slight see through the fog. As if they did not care for these lonely souls and thus they failed to matter.

He bit his cheek at the sight. Was this merely how one saw the unknown fellows in the afterlife or were they echoes of long consumed souls? "Untel has decent chances of not being here, maybe he chose Hell the big idiot."
Or maybe they were Chaotic. Or chose the Abyss. Or maybe Untel managed Neutral, that man did far more slaying the creatures that lurked in the night than Jalar ever had.

"There's no way that Zyth would be caught dead choosing the Lawful option." He said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

It was the jokes that really drove home where they were.

Abaddon; where their souls would be torn apart in the hungering maw of some monster.

But the terribly out of sorts atrocious attempts at humor also drove home that there was only forward. Fear was weakness, and despite himself he must be stronger than others.
Even if he didn't feel like it. Like he wanted to just beg the Gods to give him another chance. Wanted to wish he had at least been a proper Norgorberite and perhaps gotten passage to Axis. Wished maybe that he'd reconsidered the Abyss or Hell as options, at least they'd not have this terrible uncertainty. Desired to slap his younger self upside the head until he got work that did not include 'grand larceny' anywhere near it so perhaps he'd get Nirvana if not Heaven.

(The dismal wasteland made it hard to keep any sort of mural of that shining city in his mind, much less the empyrean golden peaks)

"Calm down. Let's find our way to the river, if you're sure of it. Some survive, yes?"

Jalar blinked at Revyn before shaking himself physically. This place gave him the creeps.

'In stories' he did not say.
"Of course." He turned to look about. Off in the sky was a great sparkling sight, shining with some power he knew not. But far out of reach. Was it Heaven?

Looking down on them in disdain.

Letting his eyes wander was a challenge. Such a sight even from so far that it was a mere smear of color appealed to his senses more than taking another step on this ground.
There on the horizon was a darker light. Like the arrival of the sun in the morning, but a deadened greyish red that he innately knew would never rise.

He started towards it.

Heaven cannot by glimpsed from Abaddon, as planes do not quite work like that.

Stories told in ages past may give a different impression, where the difference between Demon and Daemon was less clear, they spilled against Hell's gates in numbers beyond any that had been within Creation up till then. This was accomplished through entirely standard methods of Planar Travel, if not ones trivially accessible to even Archmagi.

The River of Souls is the primary piece of the mechanism which underlies transport between planes for souls, sliding between these distant nonspatial realms almost as its own plane.
Unlike other realms, where vast welcoming entrances await where souls may be deposited, or are equivalently mass teleported into the true center of that plane's power, Abaddon's welcoming party is desolate just the same. A vast Shore of undeveloped land, for Abaddon is too full of squabbling bottom feeders and the uninterested for there to be a proper entrance to the petitioner's doom.

In principle, the unfortunate souls could build an ever-rising tower to escape back out through the River. This has never been done, for a lacking of personal power, and those Astradaemons lurking. The River is not quite one way, but finding the right tool to push against the flow is not one that very many mortals or immortals succeed at.

The Shore itself is larger than the vast majority of Golarion's many cities, but that means it is quite small for the output of so many world's dead. It is the only form of general entrypoint that souls have into Abaddon, barring the usual accidents.

It is safe from being a slide into a gullet purely by virtue of Charon's decree.

Charon is the Horsemen of Death. Old Age. Decay. The tearing down. Tripping down the stairs.

What is Charon? He has existed for centuries. Thousands of years. Longer. A God but unlike the others.

He is not consumption as are the standards of Abaddon in these ages. He is an alternate path that never took for he cared not. It died with him watching.

Charon is old. Bound by rules. In some manners not quite an agent in the same way as the other powers of Abaddon. Not entirely dissimilar to how a mortal may not quite be an agent by a God's indiscriminate light. Limited in goals. Limited in directedness towards even the goals this being professed to have. Far more static in its fundamental nature than humans, but far more powerful at the same time. He has no specific mortal form that he takes, merely having acquired one by virtue of mortal expectations.

The water was deep.
Not dark. It got brighter as one saw further. A terrible white far below, his eyes seeing further in this non-physical form.
He dared not look again. It was the same white as was seared into his mind by the River of Souls.

As the completely typical pair of a halfling-fighter and a human-rogue arrive at the edges of the water, a boat pushed out from the fog. Ripples of sluggish water echoing outwards. Slowly rowing the boat came, but ever so smoothly, towards them.

This was no small craft, perhaps capable of holding upward of a dozen people, but there was only one there now.
A skeleton of a man, or man-like thing. But the bones were the wrong shape in parts. Sharper. Distorted. A cloak was cast haphazardly about its shoulders, less being worn and more being attached.

"Uh, -"

Before Revyn could say a word, Jalar gave a deep bow.
Not out of politeness exactly.
Rather out of the deep unbiding fear. Which served quite well for making one polite, really.

He hates it for making him afraid.

He hated it just as he was sure he would hate a devil, but perhaps worse. The power a being like this must have, which it held over him like a guillotine in every moment of its presence.

Revyn followed suit awkwardly.

Empty eye sockets observed the duo. No words came forth. He laid down the wooden oar.

The arm stretched out, bony fingers lacking sense or flesh. Not quite like a restrained by muscle human digit might, for they bent inwards sharply where the joint might have been like a claw. False muscle, almost like bone, stretched up its arm.

Revyn was quicker to unstartle than Jalar, and he put his own coin into the creature's most respectable Horseman's hand. "Buying passage safely across." He said. Not. Hopefully. Merely stating facts, of course.

He followed, depositing directly into the waiting 'palm'.

The bone fingered hand retracted, and then gestured towards the boat. It would be a long voyage, for safe locations are never near to the originating Shore.