"You're making it sound a lot more formal than it is. I don't know that they're on the same level - dragons in particular come in lots of kinds, some of which are much bigger deals than others - but they're all things I wouldn't want to poke. I also try to avoid dwelling on the remote possibility of ascension."

"Ascension? As in, you can become a god?"

"I am not even contemplating going there. It is theoretically possible for gods to have histories as non-god entities but they're kind of cagey about it and theologies differ on the details."

"Hm." Parvati is tempted to ask what Bella would do as a god, but decides not to poke at the subject, as it seems to upset her. "As far as I know, our gods don't work like that. Speaking of which, I think I wanted to compare characteristics of our world's gods, but I got distracted by the bar. What is...Khersis like?"

"He's, uh, very popular, a lot of the Imperium's legal and social customs are Khersian in origin. Depending on who you ask he either used to be a human good and proper, or he spent some time incarnated. His followers tend to be socially conservative and annoying and usually human or part-human."

"That sounds similar to mine, although there's been a backlash against religiously-influenced laws in my country. Mine reportedly spent some time as a human as well. There's also a stereotype that his followers are socially conservative, but that isn't at all evident at my church. What are the main tenets of his teachings? Mine's most famous for preaching about self-sacrificial love and kindness towards others. Well, technically he's most famous for some of the more socially conservative ideas, but those don't come up as much at my church."

"I don't really go in for the... details of theology. It has seemed unwise. Uh, there are Khersian orders of paladins? There's a law that anybody who's even a little bit human in their ancestry gets treated like a human because of the 'human blood, human soul' doctrine?"

"What do paladins do?"

"They're sort of like a cross between a cleric and a knight. They kill demons and undead and stuff, perform exorcisms, that kind of thing."

"Interesting. There's movies about religious authorities having the power to kill demons in my world, but as far as I know no one's ever had to put it into practice. Are demons a significant problem in your world?"

"They're not as common as some other nasties, but they're a problem when they show up. Part-demons can be bad news, too, but they can also be regular people, seems to depend."

"I see. So paladins are what priests or pastors might be, if my world had a problem with demons and other monsters. Is Khersis credited with creating the world?"

"Depends who you ask. Not credibly. Khersianity isn't that old."

"All right. My god is, but he hasn't exactly stepped forth to confirm it. There are definitely similarities between the two, but that could be coincidental, and anyway it's not enough to prove that they're the same person." Parvati shrugs. "Also, from the way you talk about him, yours seems more prone to smiting people who disagree with him. This isn't inconsistent with the way mine has reportedly behaved, but I feel like if mine wanted to smite people he would have shown up and done so sometime in recent memory. Does yours smite people often, or am I misunderstanding you?"

"Oh, no, not often, at least not lately. I just - want a lot of stopping distance between me and accidentally blaspheming actionably or developing too much hubris. So I'm careful about it to a degree that probably makes me look super pious to anyone who doesn't actually know me."

"Understandable," says Parvati. "Out of curiosity, if you woke up one day and found that your universe had picked a set of consistent rules and started following it, and gods, dragons, and fae were no longer a problem, what would you do? I'm only asking because this bar seems to be out of your universe's reach, so feel free to refuse to answer if you think I'm putting you in danger."

"Any actions you take will have consistent and logical consequences? Or am I being to vague?"

"Way too vague. I mean, I'd still want to know what those consequences would be. If, invariably and inexorably, every single time I sat in a chair it would catch fire, this would have ramifications very different from some other possible consistencies."

Parvati rubs her temple. "Yes, sorry, I suppose the phrase 'logical consequences' has different meanings in different worlds. You said people in your world have a sense of how things are expected to go. Let's say the universe's new rules fell within the parameters of that expectation."

"The sense of how things are expected to go includes gods and fae and dragons being potential serious problems."

"Right, I'd forgotten. Excepting the expectations of gods, dragons and fae? Or would that render your expectations of the world completely unrecognizable?"

"Pretty close to unrecognizable. I mean, would divine magic still work?"

"I don't know enough about divine magic to say. Is that dependent on the gods being able to randomly change the rules?"

"I don't know. I'm not a student of divine magic. It's dependent on them being gods... I'm not sure how well godhood of the kind I'm used to would hold up to - friendly causality."