"- These are unusual times, Provost. I'm not free to seek out any quest, and I've not the cleverness for a riddle, but I'm only here through Sarenrae's generosity and so can't claim to have earned any boon through my own actions."

"If I only gave boons out to people who earned them what would the point of giving out boons be?"

"Find a solution to the sorrows of Rahadoum, then, when Cheliax is free."

"There is no solution to Rahadoum that I can provide," she says apologetically. "They starve and freeze and die dried out and worn and scarred because they have set their feet on a path I cannot turn them off, nor would they thank me if I could." She glances to Lucy. "Rahadoum rejects all servants of the gods, for better or for worse."

"And this makes them starve and freeze and wither? That seems, uh, concerning."

"The gods provide through their servants good harvests and clean water and protection from the elements healing, and the churches charity and banking and welfare, and the Speakers of the First Law of Rahadoum have made a pact with the asura, old enemies of the gods, to destroy any servant of theirs who sets foot in the nation."

"Whhhhat is an asura, and also, like, how are we defining 'servant' and 'god,' here, like, I have done things at the direction of Sarenrae and Lastwall and also people keep deciding to worship my dad." 

"Lawful Evil outsiders, the original inhabitants of Hell before Asmodeus conquered it," says Morgethai. "They're trying to carry out vengeance against the gods by making everything the gods ever did something they all regret." She is not, in fact, happy about Rahadoum being unwise enough to contract with them either, but is part of the 'it's very cool that someone is trying to build a country with no gods' school. "I can send a message to the Council of Elders to ask what they think of you - if they didn't send one of the lantern archons in my waiting room, in which case the problem may be solved!"

"One of the--I see. Well, I can take individual actions towards Rahadoum, but actually patching their cleric-related deficiencies seems like it would be a huge commitment, possibly bigger than I could fulfill even if that were the best se of my time, which it almost definitely isn't." 

Unhappy Sarenrite.

"They're being very patient!" Biscuit?

And, yes, Morgethai agrees, she just isn't going to say so.

Unhappy Sarenrite is VALID. Lucy will slide a little closer and put a hand on his shoulder. 

"Probably we can leverage my absurdity into some kind of solution, just, not one as simple and straightforward as 'I glow at it, it's all fixed.'"

Unhappy Sarenrite appreciates it.

"They want to solve their own problems, which is very noble of them but means that any problems they can't solve aren't," Morgethai says. "I expect they'd want you to resurrect everyone in the country and make them all immortal if they decide they like you but I don't know if they check how the dead people feel about it."

"In Absalom I inadvertently resurrected a woman who was distressed to have been wrenched from Heaven and have consequently tightened my standards. --Also I don't think just me glowing at someone is going to make them immortal, my light, like, runs out--I'm distributing lamps through the church of Sarenrae, I could do that, you know, not through Sarenrae, but the thing about churches is that once you know you like the god, the church is pretty much vetted." 

"Not as true as you'd like!" she says. "There's an archdevil of heresy out there and a lot of demons like pretending to be clerics, and in Minkai all the churches are run by nobles instead of clerics or are hiding in the mountains. But Absalom is much too busy selling people things to try to persecute priests when it could sell them things instead."

"--Well, if I actually asked for an explanation every time I went 'what the fuck,' I'd do nothing but receive exposition for years, so let's just go 'ah, yes, Hell sucks and devils suck' and move along. What's your best guess at what would happen if I gave a handful of lanterns to the government of Rahadoum and told them to be Good with them." 

"They'd put them in the main cities and everyone who learned about them and wasn't a secret god-worshipper would bring the their family members into the light every time they died or got hurt or old," Morgethai says promptly, "except people they executed."

Kais nods. "The new Speaker of the First Law has said that Axis and the Good afterlives are bribes and the Evil afterlives are threats, and a man of virtue should reject both." He sighs. "I wish he served a better cause."

"...In the absence of resurrection lanterns is he proposing everyone go to the Maelstrom...? Whatever, the important thing is that people get healed. I could probably also do something for plant growth but with healing you can just put them in the cities and people can visit when they need healing, vitalising the fields wouldn't centralize like that..."

"He thinks that you should follow your conscience and ignore the consequences to your eternal fate," Kais says. "But he'll use the lanterns on everyone but executed criminals, to free them from the trap of afterlives."

"It is, alas, true," says Tiriac quietly, "that food is a problem that will need to be solved eventually, when one takes into consideration just how many people starve to death every bad harvest. Better transportation can do a great deal to alleviate this, but only divine spellcasters can cast Create Food and Water."

"Magnificent Mansion," she tosses out.

" - If one is your gracious self, no doubt, but few arcane casters have reached the seventh circle."

"I'm guessing the answer is no, but it would be remiss of me not to check the obvious thing--would it by any chance solve all of Rahadoum's problems if someone were to go beat up the asuras."