fianchetto | Glowfic Constellation

...Cayden did spent a long time trying to convince her that the mortals dying in the particular way they did is a different and worse kind of harm to them than all the other ways they die while living in the Pelagirs, which they must not mind because very few of them decide to leave? That the fact that all of them died at once - so instead of an entire Vale being disrupted by one mortal dying, it was a couple of mortals being disrupted, the other ones' souls are all with Her - doesn't mean it hurt them less, and it matters that mortals sometimes dying in the routine of things is - not surprising to them? and this would have been, if there had been time to be surprised about it, which there wasn't?

The ways they die by just living their normal lives in the Pelagirs are predictable, yes - not in the individual cases but they're all "the kind of thing that might happen". Is Vales blowing up the kind of thing that might happen? Presumably not, or it wouldn't have worked very well to convince that other mortal that it was enemy action?

It could happen, like all of these times when it did happen a very long time ago, but...all right, the Star-Eyed is amenable to the argument that it working so well to steer down that Foresight-path is related to it not being something that the mortals expect would happen just by itself?

So the ingredients are:

- some mortals decided to do a thing (follow and be resources for the Star-Eyed)
- they did this to get good-for-them results
- (the specific concept for the interaction of those two concepts is "trust": they "trust"ed the Star-Eyed to make it a good idea for them to follow Her)
- the Star-Eyed decided to do something that gave them bad results instead
- not just in terms of them being dead, but also this sacrifice turning out not to have a very important consequence they might have wanted on their own if they knew more
- and if you do something that harms someone who trusts you, you do the "apology" concept,
- where You acknowledge that You harmed them, and they trusted You, and that sucks, and You would like it to not be a stupid mistake to trust You in the future.
- optionally you also specify how it is going to not be a stupid mistake to trust You in the future.

That specific mortal survivor of the whole business looks REALLY fragile and talking to living mortals is expensive and difficult. The Star-Eyed could put those souls in Nirvana and practice with them first, to get down to a cheaper message length.

That is a lot of godconcepts, many of which are very puzzling! The Star-Eyed Goddess will diligently try to make sense of them, and - oh, maybe that is the same thing that Cayden Cailean was trying to say from a differently-baffling angle! Triangulating it from two directions probably means She understood it right?

So She can convey that message - maybe with practicing it first on the other souls She has - and then Her mortal will be more visible in Foresight and more able to do things even when She can’t provide very specific steering?

(It’s fairly clear that, while the Star-Eyed does seem solid on “a bad thing happened to Her mortal because of Her actions, which She didn’t see before and does now”, and to be generally on board with conveying information to Her mortals so that They understand better what She wants and are more legible to Her even if She isn’t sure of the exact mechanism by which this information would achieve that -

- it’s also the case that She has mostly not noticed a discrepancy between conveying a message that Her mortal would understand as “promising to do better”, while still on some level believing that all parties who disagree that it would have been a clever and reasonable plan if it had worked are being unreasonable and confusing.)

It would have been a clever and reasonable plan if all of the following were true:

- it had worked (it didn't)
- it was aimed at a goal that was in fact really important (instead of "seemed important at the time")
- that goal was also of interest to the people sacrificed in the plan (it might have been, Sarenrae's not sure)
- enough that they would have agreed if She could have asked them about it in advance (probably not! it takes a lot for people to agree that you can explode their whole family)
- ...or that She was planning to compensate them well enough that they would forgive her ("forgive" is the negative space of "apologize", like so, see) (reincarnating them in configurations that let them see their favorite people again soon MIGHT count, and She's welcome to investigate this question when they're in question-answering condition e.g. in Nirvana).

But those things are mostly not true. The Star-Eyed should, if promising to do better, have in mind a way to cause Her future plans to be better than this one, better even than it would have been if it had (merely) worked since that's only one of the things on the list.

Sarenrae is not actually sure this will make her mortal much more steerable. Maybe it won't. But if it's a stupid mistake to trust you then all your followers will be people who make stupid mistakes.

...The Star-Eyed would, in fact, previously have been very sure that Her goal was also of interest to Her people and that they would understand why it was important! The soul-that-wasn’t-exactly-mortal that She had been trying to deal with was really terrible! It was associated with Cataclysms and all of Her people clearly agree those are very bad!

She did, in fact, try the kind of plan where She asked Her people to do something, and over a very long time a large number of Her people were willing to die in service of that, and it never worked. This time, it was even clear in Foresight, as well as likely from past information, that sending Her mortal a vision wouldn’t work! (Sending a vision to a Healing-Adept specifically is not very expensive or difficult, if it’s an instruction to do a specific thing that She can track in Foresight.) The Star-Eyed Goddess is unclear why not, the problem isn’t that Her mortals receive the instruction and ignore it, the problem is that they fail.

…The confusing part is that - okay, so She thought it would be…agreed on, by most of the mortals…that the one She wanted to stop was terrible and worth stopping? And the thing is that it wasn’t, or wasn’t only, a different god outsmarting Her, when the plan failed. It was…quite a lot of the thing where mortals try to do things without steering, that aren’t perfectly predictable in Foresight. A lot more of that, from more different mortals, than is ever pointed at trying to stop most deaths!

So they…must have wanted the incredibly frustrating not-really-mortal to stay alive? Why??

Sarenrae doesn't have a great view of this. Maybe it was (or seemed) very useful at some mortal level thing the two of Them don't have a good angle on.

Well, it doesn't matter now, since Vkandis did a Cataclysm to kill it. (Which only even worked because it seems Her mortal had succeeded at the hardest part, making it so the soul wouldn't just pop right back up again somewhere else, and the plan just somehow failed on the second half, actually killing it. All of Them had managed that at least a few times before so why in the world did Vkandis even need a (small) Cataclysm for it??)

...The Star-Eyed will go back to staring in bemusement at "Sarenrae is not actually sure this will make her mortal much more steerable. Maybe it won't." It's - not exactly that Her reaction is 'then why should I care'? She's already been sold on caring about at least one thing that She wasn't tracking before! She's open to it! It's more that She...cannot actually get purchase on the relevant concepts when She can't figure out how it's supposed to change something in the world that She can perceive (so, visible in Foresight, or usable as a resource.) That's what communication is for, isn't it, having effects on things? So if She sends Her mortal a message and it doesn't have one of those effects, then it's hard to feel like any information was conveyed at all?

So, she wants the resources for some kind of end, right? Like preventing Cataclysms, but not literally only that thing.

Yes! A lot of things! She even agreed to Cayden that the whole preventing-Cataclysms part made it harder to get as much of -

- the humans are meant to live in a world that feels small and understandable to them, that's what they're shaped for, a Vale of a few hundred people where everyone can know everyone else's name (this is not exactly the terms in which the Star-Eyed Goddess thinks of it but Cayden can infer) - a world where they know what to expect for their children and their children's children, where there's a path for them to follow that makes sense to them -

(the vision of the Summerlands as She recognizes it, the small communities and their traditions since time immemorial, the network of relationships and people supporting one another, children growing up with the safety-comfort-certainty of a well-understood world and place in it where they fit)

(and the terrible not-quite-mortal, not that it matters anymore, was making the world less like that everywhere it touched, which the Star-Eyed really should have meant that Her people also had an interest in Her goal)

Okay, that helps Sarenrae get a good look at this, it's not Her Thing so she didn't have great clarity. ...Sarenrae thinks She understands the next concepts but is not sure She can explain them, can She refer the Star-Eyed to Shelyn here?

The Star-Eyed Goddess would appreciate that! All of the gods from Sarenrae's world are very hard to understand but triangulating the hard-to-understand from a third angle might help some more.

Shelyn introduces Herself. Her Thing is relationships between people, when they care about each other - oh, the Star-Eyed does soulgluefriends too, Shelyn is very charmed by the concept - and Vales are a lovely way for people to live! Well done.

So, mortals think all kinds of ways about each other. There are soooooo many flavors of love. A Vale is big enough to have most of them (though not specifically "two incredibly weird people who are weird in the same way find each other out of many millions", but that doesn't have to be the Star-Eyed's preferred flavor, that's fine). It will have parents and children and friends and romances and avuncular mentorships and grandmas and - ohhhhh hertasi are so cute look at that, that's a new fun flavor, what to call it, "hidey caretaker"? - anyway it has all those relationships and -

- the relationship between each one of those mortals and their god.

Gods and mortals are not the same. But they can still have relationships. Mortals are usually aware that gods are a different thing, but - they are prone to thinking of it as more like how humans and hertasi are different things?

In every single Vale, the Star-Eyed is a tribe member.

If a human tribe member blew up their whole Vale on purpose the Star-Eyed would probably not incarnate that soul again.

Shelyn has a very interesting kind of visibility on mortals! It seems useful! The Star-Eyed Goddess is following, so far, She can follow most of the concept-threads and She thinks that with more explanation and practice She might, even, be able to match it up with things that She can already see...

....that was not something the Star-Eyed Goddess knew. That is genuinely new information!

Is it, like, Her mortals would be sad if She stopped existing, or - went away and abandoned them? (The disruption when a mortal in one of the Vales decides to leave forever is also something She can see and that She tries to steer for less of, that’s part of why She prefers places that work more like the Vales and less like literally every place the terrible one ever had anything to do with, you would think from looking at the results that it actively valued mortals leaving all the others they had relationships with forever.)

The thing that happened wasn’t either of those things, and…Her mortal does still want to be Hers, She can see that very clearly, at one point She thought Cayden wanted Her to dissolve the pact for it and She thinks that would have been doing another terrible thing to it…

She just. She didn’t know that She had that. This…thing, that isn’t exactly a resource but kind of is, it didn’t - it wasn’t what it looked like to Foresight, even if She’s now unsure what She thought it looked like instead…

Her mortals would be sad if She stopped existing or if She abandoned them! And also they really were not expecting Her to kill them. They thought they were safe with Her. Being good to them will mean making them safe with Her and demonstrating that She is sorry for hurting them. That will protect and nurture this resource She didn't know She had that has been so badly damaged, even if it hurts in the short term.

Which is in some sense literally the exact same thing that both Cayden and Sarenrae were very patiently telling Her repeatedly, but it's convincing this time.

...How does She. Do that. She still can't see it, which is why She couldn't understand before why everyone was being so insistent about it and then repeatedly acting like She was missing the point. She thinks she understands it now but She has no feedback on it. And is also suddenly more confused why the mortal in question, the one that's still alive, does even still want to be Hers.

That's a very loyal mortal She has there who loves Her very much. Like so, look, it's bittersweetly pretty, see?

The mortal needs to hear that She is taking good care of the souls from the Vale (and that needs to be true) and that She will take more care in the future and that She understands now how the mistake happened and it will not recur. That will be a good apology.

The Star-Eyed has gotten various advice from various other gods and Sarenrae said that She should send the other souls from the Vale to...Nirvana? What is that, She didn't clarify at the time. And also that She could practice the apology on them so that She could say it better to the still-living mortal, but She doesn't want to wait, now, and it isn't actually that difficult or expensive to send a vision, the mortal is a Healing-Adept.

...She is not sure she understands now how the mistake happened. Or...She did underweight the cost, but She doesn't have an alternative idea for a different plan that would have worked, see, She told Sarenrae, for some unclear reason it never ever worked when She just tried to communicate directly to selected mortals of Hers that it was important, and She doesn't– She isn't sure it was worth a Cataclysm for Vkandis to kill the frustrating terrible not-mortal (if He should even get the credit for that, it only worked because Her mortal, the one She hurt so badly, did manage the hard part of making the terrible soul actually-a-mortal).

But She is very confused about something related to how the other mortals relate to the terrible one, and Sarenrae didn't have good visibility of it either, but - there was all this tension here, in the past-Foresight-web, that's what it looks like (or at least this is Her understanding of it now, the conversations with Cayden and Sarenrae helped a lot with the framing and interpretation of it) - this is a lot of different mortals, coming from a lot of different unexpected places - including some in very close Foresight-proximity to her mortal - are trying very hard to steer for something on their own reconnaissance, and apparently they were steering for the terrible mortal not being dead since that was the result...

It feels impossible to actually understand the mistake until She understands that.

Maybe they like this mortal even though the Star-Eyed does not. Maybe he is very charming when you get to know him.

…Mortals who might cause Cataclysms should probably be dead and stay that way no matter how charming they are, though? Also it was going to do - (a complicated and less-clear godconceptpacket of the Star-Eyed's understanding of Leareth's plan) - and that was going to kill so many of the mortals! That was a very important part too!

Maybe it doesn’t matter, like She said to Sarenrae, since that mortal is dead regardless of whether or not it was reasonable of Her to aim for that or reasonable of the mortals to try to stop Her.

But…it’s a different message, if She translates “I should not have hurt you this way, the cost was too high no matter how important the aim was, and I won’t do it again because I understand now how much it hurt you” into speaking-to-mortals-concepts and conveys that, versus if She also includes “and it was not even the right thing to aim for, because of __________, and now I understand that” or just "and it probably won't come up again since that mortal is dead now". It’s not just different in terms of the concepts They can talk about here, it looks like it would have different effects.

Cayden seemed very firm that She shouldn’t draft a message off its effects in Foresight without making sure that everything in it is something She understands and knows is true. Also that wouldn’t even work in this case because She can’t see far out enough to tell which way is better, either for Her own goals or - for fixing as much as possible of hurt-like-the-way-mortals-hurt-each-other-but-by-Her that her mortal suffered, which She supposes is also one of Her own goals now.