It's free for the class. 

Okay then.

So they get her her unnecessary language spell and then the class can start.

The class is her and some teenagers in identical dress. 

The topic today is the nine afterlives. (They seem to thnk there are precisely nine, or at least nine that 99% of people from this plane get sent into). The goddess Pharasma sorts everyone into the appropriate afterlife by alignment when they die. 

The chaotic evil afterlife is the Abyss, full of demons which torment you and then eventually consume you, though the details vary by which demon rules whatever realm you find yourself in. There are illustrations and some harrowing tales from resurrected repenting former evildoers. The neutral evil afterlife is called Abaddon, and its monsters called daemons. It's dim and foggy and the daemons eat you. The lawful evil afterlife is Hell, where people are systematically tortured for eternity by devils aiming to destroy their capacity for free will and make devils of them. 

The chaotic neutral afterlife is the Maelstrom, which shifts too much to build anything in it but whose souls are incorporeal and can therefore endure it, though eventually having all your experiences be totally unpredictable and unrelated to your actions leads to madness. The true neutral afterlife contains the option to instead grow in character and pick an alignment, or to be a bureaucrat of the afterlife, or to just wander around. 

The lawful neutral afterlife is Axis. It's a city, or a million different cities all tucked in neatly around each other and connected by portals that means no two are ever far apart. Each has their own laws, and so each forms its own distinct, safe and peaceful culture. There is no scarcity. Many gods have realms there. Abadar's realm is Aktar, one of the largest districts of Axis, and at its center is the First Vault where he has a copy of everything that anyone has ever made. 

People can visit Axis. It's expensive but it's a good idea for many people who struggle with faith and need to see something to be motivated to get there. Abadar makes Aktun so safe that even mortals can travel there, for the cost of a plane shift, and encourages this so they'll take away ideas of architecture and city design in addition to inspiration to be lawful.

...okay, maybe this plane has some of its own afterlives.

The lawful good afterlife is Heaven and it is a very large mountain with different levels that correspond to your spiritual needs. In one level, for example, they teach philosophy. ...lawful good people tend to claim that Heaven is better than Axis, just harder to describe, or alternatively to acknowledge that it's not as pleasant as Axis but it does the important work of combatting the forces of evil. 

The neutral good afterlife is Nirvana, and it has angels that guide you to enlightenment. It's reportedly restful and beautiful. The chaotic good afterlife is Elysium and it has harsh wilderness with no civilization but this is reportedly less disastrous than one would expect since its residents are mostly good and self-sufficient. The main problem is that it's really hard to get to a good afterlife, and no civilization anywhere in the world gets more than 30% of their people to Good (it can be as little as 1%) and the chaotic afterlives that aren't good, suck.

In light of that, where you want to go as an individual might vary but the obvious civilizational default is lawful neutral. Most citizens get to go to Axis. Only about ten percent are evil and damned to Hell, lower than anywhere else they know of. That's Abadar's wisdom - he created an afterlife that's good for ordinary people and that relies on virtues that can be taught in the material world. More about that next class. Questions?

Bella wants to know how the statistics are collected!

Scrying on a sample (from birth records) of two hundred now-dead citizens of Osirion, every year.

...that's honestly pretty cool.

How far does "everything anyone has ever made" go?

It contains a perfect copy of all the works of mortals; some people say that it also contains concepts, or also objects of the natural world, but this is less certain. It is said that Abadar created it when he saw early mortals first attempt to put their possessions in safe places to survive harsh weather or other mortals. It's disputed whether that means the very earliest works of mortals aren't there; the church holds that they are, but they didn't hear this from him personally. 

Okay but does that include, like, people's diaries, or just their attempts at prose in the sort of medium that gets shared?

It includes things like diaries also, those are works of mortals.

...'kay.

Some other people have questions about the various afterlives and about why other places aren't lawful neutral ("well, if the laws suck then most people aren't very good at being lawful just for the desirable afterlife, and if you try to be lawful according to some code other than the law or the code of a religious order it's too hard for most people to succeed. And in most places the laws are quite bad. Abadar is loved across the world, though.")

As things wrap she asks if there's a syllabus for the rest of the sequence of courses she could have a look at.

There is! 

She joined partway through a cycle. The remaining classes are:

Teachings of Abadar: war and peace

Teachings of Abadar: wealth and commerce

Teachings of Abadar: when to disobey a law

Teachings of Abadar: why injustice?

Laws of Osirion: towards what ends is law designed?

Laws of Osirion: the Pharaoh

Laws of Osirion: divine guidance

Laws of Osirion: comparison with other societies

Then it starts again with:

History of Abadar

History of Osirion

The Book of Numbers

First Obedience

The World To Come

She writes this down in Pax to allow prioritization in the future and thanks the teacher for her time. When will her business license be ready?

Probably tomorrow but maybe the next day what with the confidentiality waiver.

Okay.

She goes back to the inn, pays for until her apartment will be move-in ready. Has dinner.

This time no one bothers her.

"War and Peace" isn't one of the most interesting sounding courses but she doesn't yet have other things to do with her time, so she shows up, after spending the day scouting around in the vicinity of her apartment's neighborhood for where to get groceries and a change of clothes and such. (She knew Prestidigitation before she left but doesn't think she'd better use it. Not for laundry.)

Abadar's teachings on war are that it is very bad, both because it leads to lawlessness and because it destroys commerce and wealth. There are gruesome historical examples of the lawlessness and evil of war, which the teenagers mostly seem intrigued by.

This does not mean Abadar is never willing to go to war, and there is a digression into the history of various attempts by the forces of evil to destroy Axis and how Abadar led the other gods of Axis in repelling them. But it means wars are usually bad and Osirion should only fight them at gravest need and not just to be expansionist like some other countries. When there is a war, Osirions needs to remember to be lawful anyway; it's much harder but Pharasma, who sorts the afterlives, does not care how difficult you found your circumstances, only whether you rose to them. If you are a soldier this means you need to obey orders even if they lead you to certain death (and if you die heroically, you might be resurrected, maybe by the pharaoh's own hand, anyway). If you are a civilian this means you need to continue to obey the state if it's legitimate and the church if the state isn't. (The state is legitimate as long as the pharaoh, Abadar's embodiment in the world, still commands it.)

There are laws of war. No breaking parley or falsely surrendering. No use of spells that damn people to an evil afterlife regardless of the alignment of their soul, or that destroy or entrap the soul; no poisoning the water supply or salting the fields; no rape; if you take slaves all the usual rules about that apply; don't kill people who surrendered or who can't hurt you, except if they've been duly tried. 

What are the usual rules about slaves?

The children of slaves are born free, and you have the same duties to them as to other children of your household, until you free their parents. You can't rape slaves or maim them and if they complain of this and are found to be telling the truth they'll be taken away with no compensation.

Okay. That's not enough of an emergency to take her life into her hands about. (...she needs to stop thinking like that before something is.)

There's a citizen's interest group called the Council of Freed Slaves. Its members have five seats on the pharaoh's advising council and she could involve herself if she has opinions on slavery policy.