"...I would have been very confused, since I didn't know on arrival that I was in a different timeline, and would probably have assumed that I was missing some time in which I'd managed to Fall and sought Atonement?"

"...When you told me earlier that you don't have a 'wonderful inspiring story', what were you imagining that an inspiring story of redemption would look like?"

"...probably having a conscience would be involved at some point in the process. I have not located one."

"Sometimes, when people grow up surrounded by Evil, their consciences are — missing some pieces that might have come easily to them if they had grown up somewhere else. But that is not the same as not having one."

"If you have prepared Detect Conscience this morning I will certainly let you use it but I think I don't have one."

He laughs good-naturedly. "I don't need a spell to detect something that's plain in five minutes of conversation." He taps his chest, right over his heart. "The part of you that's willing to obey Iomedae's orders about how to run your fort and not Urgathoa's, that would try to Atone if you lost your connection to Iomedae — that is your conscience, or part of it. It sounds to me like it's bound up with your sense of Law, but so was Iomedae's. There are people who reject Asmodeus from the beginning, and that would have been better, but we don't call that a redemption story."

"So I take it you don't think this will present a problem if deployed as a recruitment tactic in Andoran."

"Well, you'll want to be careful about how you present it. But — Andoran wasn't built just out of people who were always trying to fight Asmodeus, or even people who had an attack of conscience when they were nineteen. It's also built out of people who spent their whole lives serving him until the revolution was already over, but who are trying to do better now."

"...all right. I will want you on that, I'm not sure we can get far with only the present complement pledged to the cause."

"Of course. Do you have a teleporter with the range to make the trip?"

"Not yet. But we're going to be busy."

He nods. "While I'm here — Shelyn gave me three spells today that I didn't ask for. Clarion Call, which lets someone speak to a whole crowd or play the trumpet with their voice, Bestow Insight, which lets me give someone else a bit of my talent for something for a few minutes, and one she's never given me before, with the incantation Moment of Greatness. Do you have any idea where she might want me to use them?"

"...are you going to have to make a speech too? I have to make a speech but I don't know how many total speeches are expected."

"No one's told me to plan a speech! Maybe they're for your speech?"

So he can fuck it up LOUDER? "I suppose I can't rule that out. I am not accustomed to speechgiving."

"Well, if you think of something else they might be for, let me know! Clarion Call will last about an hour, but I don't know about the third one."

"Is it among your talents? I have - the skeleton of a very brief remark, but -"

"I used to give sermons back in Andoran, and I don't think this should be too different. What do you have so far?"

HE HATES THIS AND THIS IS ONLY ONE GUY HE HAS TO SAY IT IN FRONT OF "Ah, that - the Mendevian people have been through profound hardship, but that this has permitted some of its people to become... among the finest allies I have ever fought beside... and that I am certain it is possible to close the Worldwound and... am grateful for their support in so doing? Also I was going to do this, it seems - popular, and might distract from" the incredible shittiness of his speech "inadequacies in the wording." Angel sword.

"I think that's a good start," he says in an encouraging tone. "What are you hoping for people to take away from it?"

"...I'm not sure."

"I think it would be a good idea to figure that out, so you know what to focus on."

"...I don't think I have enough material for focus to be my problem?"

"Well, but if you know what you want people to take away from it, it'll be easier to come up with material! ...At least, that's how it is for me."

"I was told that just a few sentences would suffice..."