Oh Shar, why is her party so naive?

"It's-- the thing Good got, in exchange for Malediction, is that if you're sorry for what you've done and you call upon Nirvana when you die and you really sincerely want to go there, they'll take you. There's a hymn that they teach kids-- the chorus goes 'No matter who you are or what you've done / Nirvana is for everyone.'" 

He can't be sure that's true or true here and he's not even sorry but he hopes it is. "Unless you're maledicted."

"For now."

"Hopefully not forever."

"--if you don't have Zon-Kuthon you guys wouldn't have Shelyn, right? Neutral Good goddess of love and beauty and art and peace?"

"We have Sune, goddess of beauty, love and passion, but her followers are not necessarily... peaceful..."

"...Very tempted to do a Shelynite sermon. Honestly didn't predict about myself that this was the god I would try to bring to a different planet, really would have thought it would be Calistria."

"I don't think there's anything I could do to stop you from introducing either."

"I'm not introducing Calistria. I don't think Astarion needs to be stabbier. --Goddess of sexual pleasure, sex workers, and revenge."

"You wound me." Oh, what he wouldn't give for a God of revenge who listened.

"Here's my sermon. I didn't exactly go to cleric school so everyone pretend I'm actually good at this."

"Every year, on the holiday Crystalhue, we carry around a doll called the zonzon doll. We give it gifts. We tell it happy things that happened to the year. We apologize to it for the wrongs we've done over the course of the year. And then we cast the doll into the river, so it can float to Zon-Kuthon and he can celebrate Crystalhue too.

"Erastil brings the rains and makes the soil fertile, so we can stay alive. Sarenrae redeems those who can be redeemed and destroys those who can't before they can hurt anyone else. Shelyn is the goddess of art and beauty and love. Because Goodness isn't just about not dying, or fighting Evil. It's about making a world that people want to live in.

"Nobody wants to be Evil, not really. I fought a Reaper of Reputations cult-- nasty, nasty people, they worship a god of secrets and manipulation and forbidden knowledge, they destroyed people's lives for the thrill of knowing that they had power and they could. And the head of it was the most miserable man I've ever met. He didn't have friends and allies, just tools. He was too nasty to have anyone who really liked him. He didn't get to have simple pleasures, because everything he did was about being better than someone else. He was scared, all the time, because any moment he was on his guard was time someone would knife him in the back.  

"The first person trapped in Xovaikain was Zon-Kuthon.

"Happiness doesn't come from power or domination or cruelty. Happiness comes from friends and family and lovers, and making things that are both useful and beautiful, and going for walks in the sunshine looking at the flowers.

"That's why Good will win. Because the only reason that people choose Evil is that they're wrong, or that they have no other choice. 

"Every year, Zon-Kuthon gets a zonzon doll from everyone who celebrates Crystalhue, and something like it from everyone else who worships Shelyn in all the worlds. And the zonzon dolls tell him that there's something better out there. He doesn't have to keep being the god of suffering and pain. And, like water wearing away at the rocks of a dam, someday he's going to listen, and Xovaikain will open, and everyone in it will be free. 

"Nirvana is for everyone."

The idea of a zonzon doll is... nice. A reminder of the good that has happened in a year, a chance to atone without the pain of saying it to the face of everyone you hurt. (The idea that you have to lose the doll tickles her.) 

It just wouldn't work.

The idea of a world where everyone wants Good, because Good is happy is nice, too.

It still wouldn't work.

The natural state of the universe is the void. The void,  more than anything, wants to go back. Everything that has ever existed is doomed to be lost.

Health and happiness and beauty and ugliness, the worst pain you've ever felt, the food your mother made that tastes like home, the effort you put into making and talking to a doll-- to have it is to lose it. 

Though seeing how he feels about the Reaper of Reputation, she's not going to say anything. (She has friends. She just can't remember them right now.)

It's... still a nice idea though. 

"You put it beautifully. Shelyn herself would be proud."

"It's good the someone is looking out for the reasons we go out and protect people that are greater than 'make sure they don't suffer.'"

Shadowheart is having emotions! They don't seem like the kind of emotions it would be helpful to notice or acknowledge in any way. (...also, he feels like a piece of shit.)

Wyll is MAYBE less bad that Cayden supposed. MAYBE. Not a lot of paladins who will acknowledge that there's something more important in life than being a paladin. 

To Gale: "See? I'm trying to seduce you with my pretty words."

Oh no, a sneak flirtation attack! He wasn't prepared! "There are worse ways than a peaen to the goddess of beauty, I suppose." He is at risk of spontaneously combusting. Help.

"Imagine all the worse paeans I could write. A paean to the virtues of illiteracy. A paean to the experience of walking in wet socks. A paean to your toe hairs."

"I'm sure you could find the beauty of those. Though you would have to try hard to sell me on illiteracy."

Look at these lovebirds. Gods.

They walk on. It's afternoon when they reach a church of Tyr.

"The God of Justice," Wyll explains. "His followers are likely already doing all they can, but their information may be helpful."

"Sure, let's go in. Shadowheart, do you want to stay outside and keep an eye out for anything awful coming down the road?"