"That's, uh, kind of concerning. —Anyways." She looks at Fernando. "What you're doing now would definitely count, if you were doing it in Andoran. They might let you off easy but only if you could say you wouldn't do it again. But there's lots of ways to fight Asmodeus without, uh, specifically going out of your way to serve Baphomet."

So, some of that he can't use.  Andoran seems to go easier on you if you're pathetic, like a desperate mother or slave or halfling.  He can't exactly turn himself into a halfling or whatever.

Some of it seems... kind of obvious?  Like of course you shouldn't be an idiot and pray to Urgathoa for a removal of or protection from disease... maybe she can target other people instead of you but praying for that is obviously Evil!  And punishing someone for cheating people in business dealings is what a sensibly lawful (i.e. not Cheliax) should and would do.

Andoran goes easier on you if you can show repentance.  That fits with what he has heard third hand.  Fernando can't exactly summon up feelings of repentance, but he can conjure up a little doubt about most of his life decisions with only a little bit of introspection, and with the right framing that is kind of like repentance?  He hasn't heard of the framing "lack of virtue" before, but he can kind of guess and with a few weeks to learn Good theology he could probably get it right.  He can practice right now... torturing Asmodean priests into breaking oaths... is a lack of solemnness, because it is really really funny?  No wait, it's a lack of mercy... except Good is allowed to kill Evil, that seems kind of worse than torture?  He can probably just ask at some point on the exact dividing lines.

But the more important question is a bit bigger in scope.  There is no point in betraying Baphomet (for real, and not just enough to pass a truth spell) if he's ultimately bound for the Abyss anyway.

"Do any of you know how long it takes someone to make Neutral from Evil?  Or like, if it varies, if you have a ratio in tortured Asmodean priests to years of giving all you can afford to poor and living in solemn self abnegation or whatever the maximally Good earning way is?  Just a very loose estimate would help.  And if you could also make an estimate of years of freeing slaves via piracy for someone that just made Neutral to eventually make Good?"

Hopefully the last part isn't just propaganda against Andoran and that really is the national past time?  He wouldn't want to risk it while he's still Evil himself, but it seems like a reasonable way to improve the Maelstrom to Elysium and if he dies then the Maelstrom should be tolerable.

"It's sort of hard to tell, there's a spell that can show someone where they're going but only priests of Pharasma get it, but from what anyone's been able to tell it definitely depends. It took me a few months to start channeling positive after I got to Andoran, but I don't know exactly when I switched over. ...And, uh, I hadn't been torturing people for Baphomet. People'll sometimes say very loosely that you need to do as much Good as you did Evil, but it's not like there are... numbers... for how Evil it is to do any particular Evil thing.

Uh, in terms of things I know can make a difference — it takes longer the more Evil you were beforehand, obviously. It's faster the more Good you're doing, like, I think it helped that I was a priestess, there's loads of ways to help people if you're a priestess. It matters whether you actually care about doing the right thing or whether you're just scared of going to Hell. It hurts a lot if you're still doing Evil — you don't have to be perfect, but — you can think about it like — a Good person wouldn't be looking for excuses to keep doing Evil things? And so if you are that suggests you're not really serious about doing the right thing, you don't deserve to be treated like someone who's actually trying, and it means you've got more to make up for. And then there's lots of other things people say might make a difference, but those are the ones that people mostly agree about."

Justice is pretty unimpressed with people who are just trying to get out of Hell, but it's not like she wants Asmodeus to have their souls. This guy shouldn't have that problem, at least, the only way he's going to Hell is if he gets Maledicted there.

"How much do you know about afterlife trials?"

“Uh… your God and any other God that has a use for you argue over your soul before a judge of Pharasma, winner gets you sent to their afterlife?  Alignment detection indicates which way the judge will be strongly leaning towards, barring particular good arguments for one God over another?”

He had kind of assumed the judge sends you to the God’s specific afterlife domain but, now that he’s seriously considering betraying Baphomet, he admits to himself he’s not quite sure about that?  Even devoted worshippers of Dispater or Mammon still end up in Avernus, right?

That's closer than she was expecting from someone Chelish, so she really can't complain. "That's on the right track. Each afterlife can send a representative — supposedly Nirvana sends one to every trial — but as far as I know they don't have to be connected to a god."

"We might not know if they did, though — I don't think they do, just, I don't know for certain one way or the other. But it's kind of hard to imagine the Chaotic afterlives having, uh, that kind of rule."

She nods. "We don't know very much about how the trials work. But we do know that they aren't just adding up everything you've done in your life, they're trying to figure out what sort of person you are."

She traces a little branching path on the floor. "The way it was explained to me once was — we all choose what path to walk down, and some of those paths are full of Evil deeds, and if you keep walking down them they'll lead you to damnation. But no matter how far you walk, you can always choose to turn around and get on a different path." She mimes this with her finger. "Even if you've gone a long way down the path to the Abyss, so far that you never make it back to where you started, if you choose to turn around and put yourself on a different path, and you're committed enough to that path that Pharasma's court is very sure you wouldn't have just turned back around again, the court will judge you for the path you were on when you died."

“That seems less quantifiable and less assured than I would have hoped, but potentially faster?”

Faster if he can genuinely commit to a Gooder path, which he doesn’t think he can.

Also that explanation might be Andoran propaganda aimed as assuring their pirates that stop detecting Chaotic Good after murdering one too many slavers.

“There is one spell I’ve heard of… Atonement.  Do you know how affordable it is in Andoran?  And how it interacts with Pharasma’s court?”

"Uh, I know it's really expensive but I don't know how much, do any of you know?"

"It requires the same type of incense used in Commune spells, so the price fluctuates slightly depending on the growing conditions that year. It's consistently more expensive than a Cloak of Resistance, and less expensive than a standard headband."

"And it only works if you really mean it. I think the only time I've ever heard of someone getting one is Councillor Liberty, and she stepped down from the Council after — uh, she was a priestess of Milani, I think that's why she bothered with the spell."

"And the adventures who went up against the nightmare-faerie." 

"I think that might've technically been a different spell? I don't think they could've afforded the incense, and getting mind controlled is pretty different."

He doesn’t have a headband himself, the cult didn’t quite have the funds to buy one (even if it would have meant he could squeeze an extra spell or two in his scaffold) and his group hadn’t lucked into robbing anyone rich enough to have one.  Also, he thinks he see an obvious loyalty-test sort of perverse twist to the whole concept of paying so much for an Atonement.

“If you’re actually committed to Goodness, I suppose it usually makes more sense to donate the money to people in need of charity than to spend it on buying an Atonement for yourself?”

He’s pretty proud of himself for seeing through that little puzzle.

Nod nod! "Yeah, exactly."

Oh good, he figured out the right answer!  Andoran seems kind of manageable if the loyalty tests are about that difficulty.

He could move on to safer topics, like planning spell preparation for tomorrow, but they haven’t actually threatened him once, and he’s curious about other things…

“What exactly does your God (Desna, right?) in particular teach about Goodness?”

Why... does he think... she's a Desnan. She's... travelling? She's... in favor of people being free? He hasn't seen her free any slaves, or pass out any secret Good romance novels, or anything. 

...If they make it back safely Haven's going to think this is hilarious.

"—Uh, I'm actually a Calistrian." She gently taps her holy symbol. "I can tell you what sorts of things she teaches, there's plenty that's helpful for doing the right thing, but she's not technically Good, if it makes a difference. I mean, I do also like Desna, I know some of the sorts of things priests of Desna say, but I'm not a priest of Desna myself." Her girlfriend's a priestess of Desna but she doesn't really want to bring that up in the middle of enemy territory.

"I'm a Desnan as much as I'm anything. The regular kind, though, she doesn't give me magic."

“Oh, I thought you said you had Fly prepared, so I assumed Travel Domain, which I thought meant Desna or maybe Cayden?”

A Calistrian is actually better for him, she should appreciate torturing Asmodean priests to death out of revenge?  Unless he has actually been doing that Wrong and she’ll be extra offended?

“Uh yes, I would like to hear about both Gods if you wouldn’t mind.  It’s hard to get accurate information in Cheliax.”

Even his more recent theological education has been too pragmatic to cover non-Evil Gods.  (It was mostly focused on not offending allied cultists of other demon lords or allied Druids.)

"Okay. Uh, first thing, you don't become Good by picking a god and trying to exactly copy what they do no matter what. Or, like, I'm sure there's people who do that who count as Good, but the point of being Good is to do the right thing, not just to obey the Good gods, or anyone else."

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a leather strap with little symbols of a rose, a butterfly, a sword with a wing, and a wasp. "So, I'm a Calistrian. The short way people describe Calistria is that she's the goddess of revenge and lust — that's not perfect, none of the short ways people talk about the gods are perfect, but it's good enough. 

There's a few different ways people to think about the vengeance part, I'm going to... talk about a couple I like, I guess? One way is — there's a lot of people who think that just because they're strong or powerful or important, it's their right to hurt other people as much as they want. Slavers working people half to death in the fields, noblemen forcing themselves on their servants, priests of Asmodeus torturing a midwife to death because she favored Pharasma too much. And — none of that's okay. It makes me angry to hear about people like that just getting away with what they're doing, day after day after day, and it should make people angry to hear about things like that, and we can give the people who do those things what they deserve and no one will have to suffer under them ever again.

And there's a related thing of, if people who're strong and important know they can get away with whatever they do, they can hurt people as much as they want, but if they know there's people who'll stand up to them and take revenge even if it's hard and dangerous and scary, then some of them will be less awful. This doesn't work very well in Cheliax but it sometimes helps in other places.

Another way is — when the souls of those sorts of people's victims cry out, Calistria hears them, and she's with them, and she will help them show that just because they're weaker doesn't mean other people can get away with hurting them without consequences. Uh, sometimes, at least, gods can't do everything and I don't always get how they decide, but even when she can't help she's still on their side — anyways. Uh, some people'll talk about how it's important to 'fight fair', but — that just means that whoever's the strongest gets to do whatever they want. You've mentioned trickery a couple times, Calistria's in favor of tricking people, or poisoning them, or swearing a solemn oath to them and then breaking it, or whatever, if that's what it takes.

Another way is that I really really hate Asmodeus, and I don't know how you take vengeance on a god but kicking him out of his country seems like a good place to start. And while we're working on that, we can help people get out, and be safe and free and happy, and stop his servants' plans, and so on, and he doesn't like that either.

...There's a couple other angles but, uh, mostly they come up when I'm arguing with Sarenrites. Which, speaking of — all of that's the sort of thing you've got to be careful about, obviously. I've heard of Calistrians doing things like... tracking down someone who wronged them, and killing that person's entire family in front of them, because it would hurt them more — that's wrong and Evil, people shouldn't do that even if it feels like it'd be satisfying. And — Pharasma doesn't really think like people do. Sometimes even if someone hasn't really done anything wrong, but what they did is the sort of thing that would be wrong to do to an innocent person, Pharasma still decides they're Evil for it. I think it's more important to do the right thing, no matter what Pharasma says, and the last time I checked I was Good, but I don't totally understand how she decides between Calistrians she's alright with and Calistrians she isn't, besides people who are doing things that are obviously messed up."

She... does not actually want to give a guy she just met sex advice. She's just going to skip that part of being a Calistrian for now.

"Uh, and I get Fly from the Azata domain. And her symbols are this pointy dagger thing, and wasps, and sometimes hives of wasps but that one's not as common. And she lives in Elysium for some reason — I asked someone once and she said 'well, wouldn't you rather live in Elysium if you got to pick', which is true, but you'd think if that was all there was to it there'd be way more gods there."

Does he have any questions, or should she move on to Desna?

Oh, there’s another domain that gives Fly.  Sounds like she picked a useful domain (is that how it works?).  He hopes to get Fly copied into his spellbook soon, but all his spare income might be going to bastard orphans or whatever.

“I’d pick Elysium if I got to pick, but maybe they don’t let in Gods that won’t stop torturing people and that excludes all the Evil and some of the Neutral ones?”

It actually sounds like torture or killing people’s families in revenge isn’t actually a deal-breaker for Calistria, but it is Evil, and this cleric is personally against it.

“Do you know if Calistria gets her Evil and Chaotic Neutral clerics with her in Elysium or if they get sent to the Abyss and the Maelstrom?”

If he could get his activities retroactively counted as following Calistria, and make Chaotic Neutral and then maybe being her follower would get him sorted into Elysium?

"Uh, so with the warning that there's a lot that's hard to say for sure about the afterlives — as far as I know they still get regular trials, if I had to guess I'd guess that they're more likely to have a rep from Elysium and the Maelstrom but I don't think that's a guarantee of anything. I've heard people say it's not that hard for them to move from the Maelstrom to her part of Elysium, but I don't know how hard 'not that hard' is, and I also don't know if those people were, uh, making things up." And if she doesn't get Maledicted she thinks it would be nice to run rescue missions on Calistrian-types in the Abyss who haven't done anything really awful, but that's not the sort of thing anyone should count on.

"Making Elysium's not really the point, anyway. If I wanted to make Elysium for sure I wouldn't be running around in Cheliax where I might get Maledicted."

He suppresses a surge of irritation bordering on anger.  Avoiding an eternity of torture is in fact the entire point!  But probably a Calistrian priestess who is risking her life to get revenge on Asmodeus (but not too mean revenge with actual torture, even though she allegedly doesn’t care about risking the Abyss) wouldn’t get that.  Possibly chaotic clerics are all irrational like this?  It would track with the chosen of Baphomet’s and other demon lords he’s met.

“Could you tell me more about Desna?”

"Okay." She taps the little butterfly symbol. "Uh, Desna's the goddess of — a lot of different things, really, travel's the biggest one people care about but she also likes dreams, and the stars, and dancing, and I don't know that it makes sense to say she likes luck but she's definitely connected to it. The thing that ties those all together is — freedom, and especially free choices. Pretty much all the Chaotic gods have some kind of connection to freedom, but with Desna it's what brings everything together. If people're free to travel, they can choose what they want to do with their lives. If luck's on someone's side, they can make choices without having to always worry about which ones are the safest. People's dreams let them — see what things could be like, see what it would look like for things to be okay, even if when they're awake it seems like everything is terrible. The stars are — uh, the stars are kind of doing two things at once. The obvious one is, you can use them to navigate, even if you live somewhere like Cheliax where no one'd ever let you see a map. —We have a map, you can see it if you want, it's not very detailed but it's better than nothing. Uh, anyways. The other half of it is, around some of the stars are other worlds, and those worlds are full of new kinds of people, and new ways of living, and different spells that no one here's ever heard of, and it's possible to learn to walk among them — I don't know how much of that's true but it's something Desnans say. And then dancing is — the sort of thing people choose to do when they're free, when no one's making them do anything."