"- I guess. He's almost two thousand years old and planning to literally create a god and working for him means I have to be mind-controlled not to share his secrets. Other than that he's all right, though. My boss at the last place I worked was way meaner."

"He told me about the plan to invade Valdemar. Since I'm going to be scrying for him, as soon as I can crack the spell."

"...Yes, that's the plan." Calib doesn't seem happy about it. "I think he's - still hoping he'll find another way before the final go-ahead. And...I heard he maybe had a lead on that. Don't know anything more than that, though."

"I mean, Golarion magic might change stuff. Though he said that even before that he was - exploring alternatives."

Calib brightens. "Oh, that's a good point - I don't see how yet, but I'm not Leareth." His arms tighten around her. "I really, really hope it works out that way."

"Yeah, me too." She has no real preference. 

Her routine continues, week after week. Leareth checks in every so often. He asks for Eagle's Splendour too, once she figures it out.

Spring comes, somewhere or other, and this means trade routes are open, and an order is sent down for pearls, they should arrive in a few weeks for her perusal.

Exciting!

Carissa causes endless explosions and eventually gets Dispel Magic and Haste and can't think of a good justification to be working on Enchantment Sight so she doesn't. She wants to cast Dispel Magic on herself but if it works he might notice it's gone.

Instead she announces once she's finished Leareth's fanciest headband that aside from the pearls her next project is going to be glasses of permanent Detect Magic for herself. She thinks it'll speed along her research if she can see magic like Velgarth mages can.

Leareth is very grateful for his headband and impressed with her progress. He thinks that's such a reasonable next project! He would be very frustrated, himself, if he had to study magic without even being able to see it at the same time as he's casting it.

It never bothered her before, but it does now. 

She gets to work on it. She siphons spellsilver for invisible sewing needles. 

She knew a guy once who had sniper goggles. Improved his distance vision. She has no idea how it worked, but - she can cause as many explosions as she wants, and she has time. 

Leareth knows that Carissa is planning something, and he ends up guessing at the outlines of what without even meaning to. He's not reading her mind that often, nowadays; mostly he studies the new magic and re-checks his god design now that he's SMARTER and - has dreams, every so often, in a snowy wilderness, speaking to a Herald who looks like a tired silver-haired man but isn't, yet, is really just a boy...

Leareth hopes Carissa knows what she's doing, right now.

He hopes he knows what he's doing. It's been a long, long time since he last felt this unsure of his footing. Enough that he doesn't remember what it felt like, then, and so this experience feels very new and strange.

A few weeks after a box of very fine, very expensive pearls arrives for Carissa to examine, Leareth shows up as she's finishing her magic explosions for the day. "I would like to speak now, if that is all right with you?"

"Of course."

"Walk with me?" He starts walking without waiting for her answer. "I am curious whether you have thought any further on - what sort of god you would create, if it were up to you. I am not looking for a well-structured essay, right now, off the cuff will do."

Why is he SO TERRIFYING she not-thinks that and all associated lines of thought. 

"I think that maybe there should be several of them," she says, a bit inanely. "There are some gods where the concept sounds good but I don't like their church much in practice, and if there were gods of different things, but they got along and you were allowed to pick, there could be healthy competition."

"I see. Would it also work to meet this preference if, instead, there were a main god with multiple facets or aspects, which had different churches? ...Note that I am not sure 'churches' in the sense they exist in Golarion map well to what we have here, but I am somewhat hoping to create a god that is more interested in communication and coordination with mortals than our current set, so perhaps the Golarion-style churches are not a bad model to build from."

"Most churches don't do that but I don't know why not. There are lots of Hellknight orders and that seems to work okay....I also don't actually know that much about religion in places that aren't Cheliax, one wasn't really supposed to."

It's...nice, somehow, to hear her admit that. "Yes, I think you have a limited window onto how things are done in Golarion, but unless I can find your world and judge it a good idea to open communications, we are starting fresh here anyway. I do think a difference is that Velgarth gods are - less specific and bound, in a way, they are not gods 'of' nearly such specific concepts. To the extent I wish to create a god 'of' something, they would be the god of - protecting the interests of mortals, I suppose. Which is complicated because there are a lot of us and a lot of interests to represent, sometimes conflicting ones."

He paces in silence for a bit. "...I am curious to hear your thoughts on that too, actually. If - you imagine you yourself were the god of human interests, and you were called on to respond to a dispute between two human countries, what factors would you take into account?"

"Gods rarely weigh in that directly. I guess I'd go off Law. What the treaty between them says, what keeps them both stably ruled."

Nod. "That makes sense. Law is a very good concept for this, actually. I do not think any of the current Velgarth pantheon is very Lawful - or very Good or Evil, come to think of it, I sat down with a list and tried to categorize them and they seem to cluster around neutral. Having a god that is - predictable, consistent, keeps commitments and promotes a world where mortals are rewarded for doing so also, is - in significant part what I wish to build here."

"Law is really important. And lawful countries go to war less often; they have to both think a war is a good idea, instead of it kind of just happening by default. Almost all of Cheliax's conquests were bloodless - or at least that's what it is desirable to believe about how they went - because you shouldn't have to fight a war, if you can trust each other to keep your word and you know how the war would go."

"Indeed." Leareth glances over at her. "I would be curious to hear you unpack 'that is what is desirable to believe about how they went' - is there propaganda on these conquests that is broadly understood by clever people within Cheliax to be that, or something else?"

" - everyone knows that what's in the history textbooks is what's important to believe, not - what they believe in other countries or what you'd have believed if you were there at the time. But you like it when I distinguish between those."

"Yes, I do." He looks at her, pensive. (He is especially terrifying with that expression.) "Beliefs are for making predictions about the world, and the outcomes of possible actions, right? And - for you it was very important to have accurate predictions of how others, especially authorities, would respond to certain beliefs you held. That is a perfectly valid type of belief; there would have been very real effects had you been caught having the wrong thoughts, in Cheliax." A flicker of distaste-unhappiness in his expression. "However, it is important to disambiguate now, because we are not in Cheliax, and the prediction I care most about, right now, is whether following a given policy would lead to lives lost. That is...a very difficult fact of the matter to guess at from history books, even in countries that do not punish thoughtcrimes; what is believed in other countries may not be a much better proxy for it. But you can see that it is a different question, right, and it matters what question you are using your beliefs to answer?"

She's not sure if there's some double meaning she's supposed to take away from that. "I think lawlessness leads to lives being lost. But I don't know."

Leareth is quiet for ten seconds or so, walking.

"I expect you are right," he says finally. "Anyway, I had better get back to my work, so I will let you be. But...think on it. It is important."

He peels off, leaving it unspecified whether 'it' is the kind of god that needs building, or the kind of belief that matters here in Velgarth, or something else.