"That's pretty evil!"

"Leareth is...Leareth. I think he does evil things and works with evil people when he feels like those are the tools he has, and - well, we saw in Cheliax that if he has better options he'll take them." 

"All our trips home are horrible. That particular one was horrible because of the Lineas incident, but even without that, neither of us particularly get along with the family." 

"I'm sorry."

"How about you - did you grow up in Sothis?" 

"I did! My family's still there. We, uh, weren't anybody, my father and my uncles worked at the docks. I started working at the temple when I was nine because no one would hire me for dock work yet, too scrawny."

"Is it common for children that young to have to work, in Osirion?" 

"I mean, most people are farmers, everyone helps out around harvest time. In Sothis - it'd be ordinary to work but not ordinary to be the one supporting your whole family, I think, among poor children, and then wealthy merchants keep their sons in school a few more years. Mahdi went to school until he was twenty."

Vanyel nods. "...Were you the one supporting your whole family?" 

Shrug. "We had a string of bad luck. My uncle died, and my father remarried my uncle's wife - that's a normal thing to do, so she's not alone trying to support a family - and then my mother got sick, and there wasn't really enough money to go around, and - my father was much more materially and emotionally invested in his second wife. They got along better. They had a child together, by then. So he mostly stopped feeding us. Phrased that way it sounds like entirely a failure of character but it was much more about the circumstances? There wasn't enough money. And lots of people find it hard to pay attention to a situation they're importantly failing at."

"I'm sorry. That sounds really hard." 

"I don't much care for my brother or how he raised Van, but he did better by him than that." 

"It's a low bar. Turned out all right, though. We were hungry for a couple of years and then Abadar chose me, and he probably wouldn't have if I hadn't been working every daylight hour in his temple for four years."

“Mmm. It is lucky that it worked out. Did you have siblings?”

"Five of them, yeah."

"Wow. That's - a lot of responsibility you must've had, if you ended up supporting them." 

"Well, I certainly hope your parents are very proud of you now. - Er, if they're still alive, sorry–"

"My mother died when I was eleven. She's very proud of me, though she thinks I should retire from this adventuring nonsense and lead tours to Axis and have some kids. My father and I don't...actually talk...though I Lesser Restoration him every month because otherwise his liver will kill him. I don't...exactly know what I'm doing - either he'll make Axis or he won't, it's not like I think he'll someday have an epiphany." Shrug. "Once I was chosen as a cleric I paid for apprenticeships for my younger brothers and got my sisters married. They're all all right now."

"Oh. I'm sorry. That's - I'm glad your siblings are all right, sounds like they're very lucky to have had you as a brother." 

Vanyel wants to give Fazil a hug but feels awkward about it. 

Yfandes mostly hasn't been paying attention but she senses his worry. :Van, love, just hug him: 

So Vanyel hugs Fazil. 

Hug. "We're all very lucky to have Abadar. I can relate to -" He gestures in the direction of Starwind and Moondance's holding cell rather than try to come up with words for the whole mess.

"You are. I - didn't realize until recently that I'd absorbed Leareth's attitude, that all the gods are pretty terrible. And - just, the way Leareth's face looks when he talks about Abadar being helpful... It must mean so much to him, there being a god the right shape for him to cooperate with." 

"Your world's gods do seem pretty terrible! I guess I don't know as much what ours were like before prophecy broke. Abadar started selecting a pharaoh and stuff after that."