"I mean, even if you did kill someone with magic, I don't see why that would be any more of a problem than stabbing someone would be?" Weeping Cherry remarks with a quizzical look. "The backup system should still catch them and resurrect them in accordance with their advance directive. The thing I'm more worried about is mind-affecting magic. I want to add automatic curse removal to the resurrection pipeline, but we're still working on that, and I don't know what other weird magic effects we're going to need to prepare for."

A status update pops up on her HUD.

"Correction -- Cayden shared remove curse with us, and now it's being made available to everyone who wants it and being applied by default whenever someone is resurrected or enters a jurisdiction that bans hostile magic. We should really coin a word for those; the phrase is clunky."

Another update pops up for her, this one highlighting Irabeth's facial expression.

"Oh! And although it's not universal, many people who choose to go somewhere with the possibility of being tortured or killed choose to turn their pain receptors down or off first," she adds.

"Sorry -- it didn't occur to me that of course that wouldn't be obvious to you," she apologizes. "This has all been a lot, and I'm starting to get a bit fatigued. There are exceptions to everything, but I think most people who aren't going to mind hostile magic are the ones who are searching for some amount of adventure. And they can always teleport back to safety if they need to."

"Does that make you less confused? You should still definitely talk to other people if you want to, I just don't know if that note makes doing so less urgent?"

"That is much less confusing, thank you! I'm not used to magic and resurrections being free for everyone, yet."

"People can be hurt very badly mentally. And there is magic which just - takes over people's minds. Domination, which makes them do anything they're told, or outright possession, puppeting their bodes."

"I think some people will end up having very bad experiences that they will regret, even if they're rescued later. I would strongly advise them to start by talking to the newcomers under safer conditions, and maybe allow new spells on a case by case basis after having them explained by a trusted third party. Maybe there are other substitutes that some of them would accept, if they're not interested in actually being in serious danger?"

"But I don't think it's an emergency anymore. Maybe I should still talk to them later, or write to them like you suggested."

"Taking risks is the only way to learn and improve! We shouldn't advise everyone to always take the safest possible road. Some people will be hurt, and overcome those hurts and grow, and be glad they did it."

She nods. "I definitely think it makes sense to suggest to people that they choose what magic they want to be subject to carefully. I certainly don't intend to use any strange magic on myself until I understand it. I just don't want to do more than suggest, because it's ultimately their choice."

"But it sounds like we're maybe done talking about security, at least for the moment? So I want to circle back to what default environment we should provide people with, before they go elsewhere," she says, gesturing at the space station around them.

"Maybe I should have asked this question first, before we tried to design an environment -- what do all of you think the receiving environments should look like? Are we going to need to design separate ones for every species?"

"Many races live in similar environments, often together. I think it's more important to keep people together - families, friends, parties, neighbors. Most people have someone they trust, often their parents or priests. And they have people they'd worry about if separated, people who depend on them."

"We have to free people in danger or distress. This might mean almost everyone in Cheliax and Nidal, but that's not normal! I don't know how you'd tell who should stay together, if you don't have time to ask and they don't trust you yet. But you should be prepared to reunite separated people right away, as much as to separate people who need that."

"And then I think most people will still be very scared. Many won't trust you at first, and many will be heartbroken and furious at being torn away from their lives and possessions on Golarion, even once we tell them it's for their own good because Golarion might be a very dangerous place right now, and offer them new wealth beyond their dreams. Some people will probably tell you to return them to Golarion right away, and won't agree to wait even a few hours for the situation to settle."

"Since we can't talk to everyone ahead of time, I think we should have as many allied gods as possible send representatives here. Most people live in villages with a cleric or two, most commonly of Erastil or Pharasma, and less commonly of one of many other gods including Iomedae. I think we can trust some of Them, and contact more of Them after the fight starts, and convince or pay them to send a bit of Themselves or some of the Their outsiders here, to talk to Their clerics who can then reassure their people." Paladins will also do, of course, but there are more clerics by far.

"Figuring out what's best for everyone is too hard." This is half the reason Law isn't the best way to do Good. "Can't you let everyone change their own rooms, by asking the fixity field for things?"

Gord is maybe a bit unclear on how many requests are or can be automated by the field without demanding Cherry's personal attention. If she's as powerful as a god, she ought to have lots of attention for prayers, right?

Desna can tell them about many races unknown on the surface of Golarion! They live in the Underdark and the deep oceans and the many Orvian Vaults. Some of them definitely require different environments. As for who they trust and want to be with or without, and what languages they speak, it's anyone's guess really.

"You can try copying the place they came from. If you're sure it's not their culture's equivalent of a Chelish torture chamber. Bland might be best as a default."

She takes diligent notes on Desna's descriptions of unknown species.

"So first of all -- yes, they can request the area change however they like," she explains. "But unless we want to mind-read everyone by default, which seems hostile and might not work on races that don't have human-like brains, the environment does have to start off being some way. And stay that way long enough for people to process the explanation of how to ask for things, at least."

"But Irabeth has hit the nail on the head with the difficulty of telling who should stay together. Explaining what fixity fields can and cannot automate is a little difficult to do briefly, but 'anything that a very dumb Axiomite could do by following an established procedure exactly' might give some of the right intuitions," she elaborates. "So we could say 'put families together', but not everyone wants anything to do with their family. We could say 'put people who were close together in the same room', but that puts people's torturers near them. I'm tempted to go with 'put people who are related, were near each other, and aren't distressed in the same room' and everybody else gets a separate room with an explanation of how to look up their family and allow them into their room."

She taps her lip.

"Do you think recording an illusion of a priest of Pharisma or Erastil explaining what was happening would help? Or is the benefit of hearing it from one of them that people would already be familiar with their local priest?"

"If it's someone they don't know, who claims they're a priest or paladin of the right god and swears they're safe and we're trying to help them, that might be good. You would need to know which god's followers to show to who."

"It might be better to show everyone many gods' representatives standing together. If we can get all the Good gods on board, and at least some Neutral ones, and they all agree to a shared message, that would be very impressive."

"The problem is getting people to trust the message. That's why it would be best if they already have a cleric or other empowered servant, because their god can send them a sign they would trust, and then the rest of the people would trust them. Would that require letting the other gods into this world?" She looks at Cayden and Desna.

"That would certainly work! We could let only a little bit of each god here, so they couldn't overpower us. We'll probably end up inviting our most trusted allies anyway, to get their help in helping the refugees and in case anything goes wrong."

"But don't rely on that too much. Sending people visions is hard for gods. Even if there's no lack of power, most gods can't talk to mortals intelligibly, or they leave them with a terrible headache. We ex-mortal gods can help, to a point, but we won't have enough attention for nearly that many people at once. Iomedae could talk to Her people, but I'm not sure about Erastil, and Pharasma certainly couldn't."

"Many people don't worship any Good or Lawful gods. And what gods they do worship, they don't trust, or they know - correctly - that the gods wouldn't go out of their way to help them. If you show a demon or a demon lord cultist or  Asmodean or even some random orc a panel of all the Good gods, they'd be terrified, because they think those gods are their enemies, and in a lot of ways they're right. And they don't have clerics they trust - well, I guess the orcs might have clerics of Gorum. Or they might have clerics of gods who oppose our alliance!"

"We can show the message only to people we think will like it, and not tell the others right away we're allied with the Good gods. It might backfire later when they find out anyway! Still, I think not telling demons they're in Iomedae and Desna's power on the very first round after kidnapping them might be best."

"Maybe if there were a way to detect what gods someone worships, we could then show a message from that god if one were available?" she suggests. "I feel like we shouldn't show any messages right away in any case -- since one unexpected and startling thing just happened, we should give them time to acclimate and not make the room change too much except in ways that they request. That's why I was originally planning to leave a scroll, something that they could investigate and read when they were comfortable."

She thinks for a moment.

"I wonder if we could make what options they have more legible by using spells? Like, you know how having uncast spells feels like something, and you can tell the difference between them, even if you can't tell what they do exactly? Maybe we could just grant everyone spells covering the most important capabilities, like teleportation and tongues and so on. And suddenly being elsewhere and able to cast spells probably communicates that gods were involved (because they grant spells), and that they are on your side at least as far as empowering you."

"Some gods mark their clerics in a way their allies can read, but not all, so you can't always tell with magic. Our allies might just give us a list of all Their clerics, though. And they usually have their god's holy symbol, to cast with. Unless they're trying to deceive people."

"We could give them a Commune, but it would only work if their god was here in Cherry's world and had enough attention to answer all their worshippers, which might mean they didn't have enough attention left back in Creation."

"Giving all the clerics cure wounds and restoration and tongues would be a very friendly message to send! Teleport might be a tad confusing, since that's a wizard spell, but if you give all the wizards cure wounds and restoration, they'll either believe you're Nethys, or just switch to worshipping you instead of Him if they don't." He grins.

She groans and shakes her head. "They can all go join the cults on Pluto, if they want to," she says.

"I didn't just mean giving people who already have spells magic, though," she continues. "Although now that I think about it, I haven't seen anyone from Golarion who can't cast spells. If those little brain-structures they attach to aren't present in everyone, giving someone spells would involve brain surgery, which we should probably avoid doing without consent. What would a non-Cleric non-Wizard think of being given spells?"

"Only powerful paladins get spells, well after we're chosen, so it's not really a surprise by then. And when I first became a paladin, it was something I'd wanted for a long time, something I prayed to Iomedae for."

"So I don't really know what getting spells unexpectedly might be like, for someone who might not even worship any god very devoutly. But I think - being chosen by a god is a great honor. It's rare, and it means you're special. Not because you have powers now, but because you were the best person out of hundreds or thousands for the god to empower in the first place. The one most aligned with a god, the one best able to carry out their wishes. The one most worthy, for some gods." She glances at Gord.

"People who suddenly get magic will assume they're clerics, because that's the most common and reasonable way by far for that to happen. Or they might think they've awakened as sorcerers, but that usually happens at a certain age and anyway if you give them Cure Wounds it will be obvious that they're clerics. But they won't ever imagine everyone in the world has been chosen as a cleric, that just - makes no sense, in the way the world normally works. So if you want them to assume they've been given spells by gods, they will also assume it's because they have an important mission, or they need the spells to defend themselves or others, or something like that."

Gord nods thoughtfully. "I became a cleric unexpectedly, it was a very confusing moment in the middle of a desperate fight, and I also got the ability to channel and some other stuff. But I already worshipped Gorum, and I was strong enough for alignment detection, so even though it was a surprise, it still made sense. The surprise was that it happened then and there, not that that kind of thing happened at all." Which was the only reason he risked using unfamiliar magic instead of swinging his sword, and avoided a glorious death.

"Not everyone can cast spells, at least not the way we normally grant them. You can let people use magic by having the fixity field do it, but really giving them the spell is different."

"It's obvious why Wizards have to be Cunning enough, but even clerics need to be Wise, and Wiser for higher circle spells. It's not just that they'd use the spells unwisely, you can cast a Wish drunk and nothing bad will happen - well, nothing worse than a regular Wish anyway - minds need to have a certain... structure to them to be able to hold spells, and that's part of what Wisdom describes."

"About half of humans have enough Wisdom for first circle spells. More, if they're raised well and never go hungry or sick and are taught as much as they want to learn. Some other races have much more on average, or much less."

Why do even gods have to talk about racial statistics deep breath.

:You can make people Wiser with Wishes or Miracles!:

Gord has just realized something - "if you want people to think they're clerics, or like clerics, you'll have to give some of them wounding spells and channels instead of cures. That's what the Evil gods do, and some people worship Evil gods."

"We're not going to pretend to be Evil gods!" 

"I don't want to lie to people either! But if you give everyone cures and healing channels you'll make some people very very confused."

"...maybe that would be good, actually? What would Asmodeans think if they got Cure spells, which Asmodeus doesn't give out? Maybe they'd be convinced that Good has triumphed and no-one is beyond salvation."

"Why are you looking at me? I don't understand how Asmodeans think."