To: Conradia.

Why is your name Conradia? Isn't that a little confusing?

To: Zmavli

"The name my parents gave me was Asmodia. It's a common girls' name in Cheliax. When I defected at the Worldwound, renounced Asmodeus, and joined Conrad's side, it felt...wrong, to continue to adopt that name. I wasn't owned by Asmodeus anymore, so obviously I shouldn't be named after Him. During that time, I called myself Dia.

After Conrad ascended, I thought: 'Well, I used to be named after a god, and here I am, serving a god and generally being dedicated to one. The only difference is that, this time, I chose willingly and knowingly to be dedicated to Him. And also, I am rather resentful of Asmodeus for the whole causing me to suffer for an entire quarter of my life thing.' I thought that it was both meaningful and petty to, at that point, name myself Conradia. So I did.

I don't think anyone at the Bronze Orchard is confused about me having that name, since no one else does. I suppose if Conrad's church expands and Conradia becomes as common as Asmodia then it might be a problem, but at that point I'd surely be at the Silver Garden. In any case, they can just call me by my surname, Sabater."

Hey Conrad,

Whatever did end up happening to you after the last time we met?  Actually, I probably shouldn't ask that, it's fucking Cheliax.  It definitely sucked.

But I do wonder, despite myself.  Curse my overgrown sense of responsibility.

And more generally, who's this Damian fellow?  How'd you meet him?

To Elias:

How often do you have altruistic feelings? Do you act on them?

— Curious Sarenite

To Vlipa:

What's it like being a sword? Do you want to become stronger? If the high priest of Conrad died, who would you go to? If the entire Bronze Orchard was destroyed, what would you do?

To: The Misplaced Patron

"You're real? I had kind of assumed that like...you were some sort of fever dream or elaborate Illusion spell after you two left without me. I'm currently at the Worldwound now, fighting demons. Got to second-circle a while ago. Cheliax does not suck – Cheliax has the best, most disciplined army in all of Golarion, and I have a really cool greatsword and new combat spells now. Which I mostly got by giving my superiors sexual favors by Alter Self-ing into beautiful women, since I have a talent for polymorph spells.

Damian is my boyfriend. We met at Ostenso Wizard Academy. He's great. We're part of the same unit at the Worldwound."

To: Curious Sarenite

"Fuck off. I am incorrigible and cannot be redeemed. I'm ordained now, so don't try to convert me. I'm done with Sarenrae.

But to answer your question, I don't think I have altruistic feelings in the way Sarenrae defines the term. I care about my allies because it's what Conrad would want, and because it's pragmatically useful to care about the state of your allies. If they're hurt, then that affects their effectiveness. I don't help them just because I feel sorry for them, b-baka! If they're just moaning and complaining, then they can suck it up."

To: extent_of_foxes

"How are you talking to me right now? I only talk to the High Priest of Conrad.

Yes, I want to become stronger. For me, that would mean getting more enchantments on myself. Sadly, that's both economically infeasible and infeasible in terms of expertise: Conradia is not bonded to me unlike Conrad, so she can't as easily place enchantments on me. Placing enchantments on a weapon becomes progressively more difficult the more previous enchantments there are, because you need to have great skill to make sure the magic doesn't destructively interfere.

I would go to the their successor. Usually, I already have someone in mind. It's not necessarily the most powerful person in terms of martial capability, though. The way they think is also important, since the High Priest has veto power over people entering the church.

I would probably try to revive the church, if we're supposing that all the people who live there also died. If all of Conrad's ordained died, then presumably He would scramble to find some other people to ordain, and I would go to them. I have the ability to both fly and teleport once per day (but only myself), so it wouldn't be that hard to get to them."

To Vlipa:

Like this! Hah!

How often does the high priest shrink you down? How often do you get wielded by experts at using a greatsword of your quality?

To: extent_of_foxes

"I'm not sure how to explain the experience of being a sword is like, since I've never been human. Neither Conrad or Damian has cast Polymorph Any Object on me so that I can know what it's like, and I'm not particularly interested in knowing. I do think that humans are more susceptible to boredom than I am. I seem to be incapable of experiencing the emotion.

Often, most of the time, actually. I don't mind – before I was enchanted to be intelligent, I had already had that enchantment a long time ago. 

I only sometimes advise the High Priest. It's not like I always have deep insightful spiritual revelations to bestow. If one of the stronger antipaladins or warpriests are going out on a mission, then I might elect to join them by having one of them wield me. It's very pleasing to be wielded by someone skilled. I don't think I can explain what being a sword is like to you, because I don't know how to explain the pleasure of your steel slicing through flesh. It's very good: you should try it sometime."

To Conrad:

For some values thereof!  ...Y'know, good on you for finding a way to be not particularly horrible about being Evil, with the way you got no, stop typing hot, past me's fingers, it's honestly not, even if it's not a foul trade it's still contributing to the exploitative [bleep]ers doing the thing to those who aren't interested.

...'Most disciplined' sure has a double meaning, doesn't it?

If you were going to become a god, what do you think you'd not do with godlike power?

Hey God!Conrad:

How many of those things have you done by now?

To: Bronze Orchard Management

Hey, want to buy a few thousand counterfeit magatamas? They're almost as good as the real thing, and a lot cheaper!

To Felicia:

What experience in the Bronze Orchard has been your favorite so far? What's been your favorite not involving drugs, sex, or mind-affecting magic?

From A Curious Neutral Philosopher, to current Bronze Orchard inhabitants: What's the most Evil thing you've ever done? If you can't pick one, how do you think you came by your current alignment? If you don't want to answer the question, what kind of incentive would change your mind?

(in preference order: Agnes, Felicia, Elias, Conradia, Rendon)

To: The Misplaced Patron

"Huh? I'm...confused. Being Evil means you're horrible to people. That's like – the whole point. 

Hah, yes. I don't mind getting punished, though. Going through pain makes you stronger. Many people can't handle it, though, but that's because they are weak and I am strong. No matter how hot your kiln gets, you're never turning clay into steel. Besides, I don't really get punished much. Damian usually uses his social status to get me out of harm's way. He says he ought to be the only one who gets to punish me.

Godlike power. Hm. Well, I would certainly use my power for the benefit of Cheliax and Asmodeus, of course. I'm very loyal. I would certainly not use it to run away. I don't think I'd give power to those who weren't deserving: those who don't strive for it. Probably, that means I won't oracle people. I...I'm not sure what I'd do with godlike power because I'm not sure what orders Asmodeus would give me, see. Presumably if I become an archdevil or a malebranche I'll take orders directly from Him."

To: The Misplaced Patron

"God!Conrad here. Welp, I did end up renouncing Asmodeus in the end, but I didn't run away per se. I served out my whole term in the Worldwound. Well, I suppose I ran away in the sense that Damian and I used our spells to bypass Chelish departure questioning when we wanted to cross the border to get back to the Worldwound. It's very easy when you have Dimension Door, Nondetection and Invisibility. It's very good that I'm a combat wizard, so I let Damian copy those from my spellbook. He was a Security wizard at the Worldwound.

I still don't make anyone my oracles."

To: Kirisame Marisa

"...what are magatamas? And why would we want them? We're not opposed to counterfeiting – we are Chaotic Evil – so long as the counterfeits are of equal quality to the originals. We have no idea what they are, though."

...

"After consulting our libraries, it seems that magatamas are some sort of comma-shaped design motif? Though the way you speak of them implies that they're items."

To: extent_of_foxes

"Damian is associated with those things because Shelyn kind of has domain over the other beautiful things. Also because He's Evil. But ultimately, he accepts all types of pleasurable experience, even mundane ones. When Nero – the Damianite wizard who developed our special enchantment for shapeshifting comfortable chairs without using up tons of spellsilver – created the first successful prototype, he was awarded a cleric level by Damian, simply because He was so pleased at his invention. It was more of a symbolic clericing rather than something done pragmatically, though. Nero hasn't been awarded any further cleric levels. We're all still proud of him.

We're thinking about selling the furniture: right now, our costs of production are about 50gp worth of spellsilver for chairs and 100gp for sofas, and 200gp for beds. That's in the range where rich nobles would love to buy our product. The thing is that we're transporting our items via Teleport. That's great if you want to sell weapons and headbands, but not so much if you want to sell chairs. The volume-to-price ratio is unfavorable. Usual Bags of Holding cannot fit chairs, let alone sofas.

But to get back to your question, I think it's the food. Yes, beef stew is what most of the Cauldrons of Plenty produce, but they can also make a Heroes' Feast for twelve once a week. We have fourteen Cauldrons total, so that means that there's two Heroes' Feasts every day. We have a rotation so that everyone gets to have it. Currently, I partake of it once every month, plus a day or two. It's important because Heroes' Feast has the effect of Neutralize Poison and Remove Disease, and when you're living so close together and fighting demons that could infect you with demonic plague, it's very important to take prophylactic measures against disease.

The food produced by the spell is always supernaturally delicious. You should try it. Heroes' Feast is a more flexible spell than Create Food and Water, so it takes little effort by the enchanter wizards to modify the enchantment slightly every month so that we get a different Feast each time. I think anticipating the next time I get to eat at that table is very motivating – it's the highlight of my month, most months."

To: Bronze Orchard Management

Magatamas let you cheat at stuff! I think they work on people's souls or something, not really sure. So I used a counterfeit magatama—oh, yeah, the counterfeit magatama deal is that they're not made by a ~real artisanal millennia-old magatama crafter~, but they basically seem to work as well? A friend and I raided a really spooky mine for the raw stones and used cheap magic to carve them, and it pretty much worked. Some "real" magatamas are probably in the bulk shipment, they fell off the back of a treasure ship or something, but I forget which ones. Right, anyway. I used a counterfeit magatama to copy some procedural memory about multicategory theory from one of Lambek's grad students, and it was just creepy as Hell, and it faded out after a while which I'm kinda glad about. Not for me, studying is half the fun, you know? I'm a little worried about the Chaotic Evil thing whatever that means, but honestly I don't think you can do much in the way of really bad unethical magatama tricks, besides cheating at stuff. Anyway, every ethically questionable organization could use a few thousand counterfeit magatamas. I'll throw in a free copy of Higher Operads, Higher Categories too because I'm not going back to that stuff until I'm done being creeped out. It's a great deal!

To: Kirisame Marisa

"What do you mean by cheat at stuff? Is it...a Wish-type effect?" 

Excited murmuring.

"Could you demonstrate to us how to use them, and then potentially grant one of them to us as a sample so that we can independently verify how it works? We would like to choose which one is given to us as the free sample," so that we don't potentially get cheated. "As for us, we would likely pay you in magic items. It seems that you're a scholar, so you would probably be interested in magic headbands that boost aspects of your mentation, especially Intelligence.

Although this depends on what we assess the value of the magatamas to be for us, we would likely offer you a Headband of Mental Superiority +2/+2/+2 (16,000gp) for either a portion of them or the whole lot, if you like having balance, or a Headband of Mental Prowess +4/+4/+0 (40,000gp) if you don't value Splendor. The numbers describe the boosts to to your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma respectively. We can craft headbands for you that have higher boosts, or have a different arrangement of boosts, but we would need time to make them.

We have other items popular with scholars which we might additionally offer. A Ring of Sustenance negates your need to eat and drink, and allows you to only require two hours of sleep per night (2,500gp). Enchanted mithral bucklers are popular with combat wizards, since they're light enough not to obstruct spellcasting. I'm not sure if you are one, but you might be interested anyway. We have a mithral buckler +2 (5,005gp). Cloaks of Resistance allow you to resist or throw off hostile magic more easily. We have a Cloak of Resistance +3 (9,000gp) in stock."

To: Bronze Orchard Management

I mean, you can read stuff off people's souls! And use it! I don't even know what kind of magic you do around here but I just sorta use it like it's an orb for scrying magic or something, except instead of scrying someone I get information from their soul, like their strengths and weaknesses and special ability and favorite food and whatever, and then I can download some of it onto myself temporarily. They can't be used too many times in a row, need to magically cool down or something, but that's why you buy in bulk! Look, I can steal the skill from a trumpet player I know! I already stole their trumpet. Not the one they were keeping their soul in or anything.

▶ Attachment: amazing trumpet skill MUST LISTEN.wav

I have no idea what you're talking about with some of that magic item stuff. I could always use more intelligence and less sleep! Not sure why I'd want to resist magic though, you just dodge it!

To: Magnus Sundheim

Do you have bards in the Bronze Orchard?

To: god!Conrad and god!Damian

What are your plans for the far future? Are you worried about Asmodeus? Are you worried about Iomedae? I have deals with both of them, see attached.

If this conversation is unproductive this fragment of me will forget the information you tell me, if you wish.

To: Conradia

How did you defect at the worldwound? Do you mean you went through the worldwound to the Abyss? What happens if you try to serve Conrad and He doesn't want you? If that had happened to you, would He have let Cheliax arrest you for defecting?

To: A Curious Neutral Philosopher

"I don't think I've done anything particularly Evil. I'm too weak to show up to alignment detection spells right now, but if I was to guess, I think I'd be True Neutral. I've been helping the church kill demons which is both Lawful and Good, but I've also been helping Chaotic Evil people, so I think it's a wash.

The High Priest told me that Conrad turned away from the side of Law because Asmodeus had grossly misrepresented his true tenets and how Good and Evil, and Law and Chaos actually worked (although He didn't turn away from Evil). Anyway, Rendon said that he wants me to 'truly understand what being Good and Lawful means' so that, if I chose to truly follow Conrad when I'm older, I'd have done so with full knowledge. The priests say that if you want someone to be loyal to you, then you have to take the risk of fully baring what you are to them: otherwise, they're going to be loyal to a false version of you."