"Does Valdemar allow the worship of evil gods? Annihilation gods?"

"I meant to ask about that? You have actually evil gods? I'm not sure that we do! ...I'm not sure we have good gods either, not in the sense that I think you mean by alignment. I honestly don't know what most of our gods are even working toward." 

"There's a god of torture. Separate from the thing where Hell tortures people for hundreds of years, Hell does that in order to accomplish Asmodeus's goals which are unclear but I think more complicated than 'maximize torture', unlike Zon-Kuthon, who seems to just care about torturing people."

"Um. Why. Do you have a god. Of torture. Why is that even a thing." 

"Uh myth has it he was a more normal god and then he tried travelling between the words through the dark between stars and met something that twisted him but I don't know if there's any truth to that and it would've been a very, very long time ago.

Rovagug makes more sense! Rovagug thinks that existence is bad and it'd be better if all people had never been and he tried accordingly to destroy the world."

"I...guess...that's a consistent position to hold." 

"It is. Like, cultists of Zon Kuthon are just very confusing to me but cultists of Rovagug seem like sincere true believers that actually everything is bad and should stop. We fought a big worldwide cult of Rovagug, a couple of years back."

"Your torture god has humans who worship him and work for him? Gah. Um, how do people even end up doing that." 

"I don't really know. Probably they're like 'hey I want to torture people maybe I should work for the god of torturing people'. I guess in some ways I prefer them to the ones who go 'hey I want to torture people, I'll be a well-liked merchant who gives to the church and then buy myself some...'"

"Are there, um, people who do that? That would break our Laws, in Valdemar, I'm not sure if any nobles have tried before - or gotten away with it in secret for a while - but they would get caught at some point..." 

"It's illegal here too."

Nod. "Well, I'm glad about that at least." 

"Let's go talk to the water elemental."

Nod. "I'm ready." 

:You be careful, all right?: 

"Yes, I'll be careful." He pets her neck, then moves to stand by Mahdi. 

And Mahdi pops himself and Vanyel and Fazil back into the room where they were before. 

The water elemental has been lashing angrily at the walls.

Shields first, lots of power. Then Vanyel reaches out with Mindspeech. :I am very sorry for making a promise I could not keep; I had misunderstood and thought you were summoned here, not trapped fully. My friend has his spells now. Do you still want to go home?: 

Yes the water elemental would like to go home!!!

All right. Well, some squishy meatthings are coming with it, because that's how the Plane Shift works - they'll have air, and can get themselves home again promptly, but can the water elemental tell other elementals not to be alarmed or something when they arrive?

(They'll also have shields, but Vanyel isn't sure the ones he's holding now will carry across, and it'll take him half a second or so to get new ones up, unless the Elemental Plane of Water is weird magically in which case it could take longer.) 

The water elemental will mention that these meatthings betrayed their word LESS than the PREVIOUS meatthings.

Fazil casts Air Bubble and Freedom of Movement (which, he explains, lets you move and cast as you're accustomed to underwater) and pulls out a little metal rod attuned to the Elemental Plane of Water, and then - "we're supposed to hold hands, I suspect it'll work as long as I'm touching it but probably not while you have a wall of force up against it -"

:I have to take down my shield so that my friend can touch you and bring you home: Vanyel tells the elemental. :Do you promise not to hurt us?: 

It's really easy to hurt meatpeople by accident.