"Remember the clerics we debated," Gord forces out eventually, "when we made it back out of the Wound, and how we had to fight them and almost killed one before they agreed we were right about Gorum? And then we went around for weeks telling Gorumites the good news that they didn't have to wear that much metal armor anymore, and had to accept surrender even from demons, and fighting everyone who disagreed, and, and -" he dissolves back into giggles.

"That's not a good thing! We misled those people!" Looking back, it was really just a way to cope with - everything - after coming back to civilization, such as it was. Fighting people over what some god supposedly thinks has a bitter taste,now, because who cares, right, it's what the people thought and did that mattered. And they - he went around for almost a whole month picking stupid fights before he got his head on straight and remembered and started helping people instead. It's not a time he likes to think about, now.

"Norgorber picked us because he thought we'd do good, even without his interference. And he turned out to be right. But if he had been wrong, he would never have told anyone about us being his, and we'd be just another anonymous series of crimes done in his name. Or in Gorum's name, but probably Norgorber benefits from crime somehow, since he chose to be the god of it."

"And we didn't make Good until today. Maybe anyone who just - stood near Cherry today, and helped her a tiny little bit, would have made Good just from that."

"We don't care about alignments! They're just a way for Pharasma to justify fucking over some people!" It's a point of pride with him, that he does what he thinks is right no matter what some god or spell might say.

"That's what Norgorber said!"

"So you're saying we just did what he wanted, but also he'd win no matter what we did? ...That makes sense, we can't expect to win against a god."

"But - we did choose to do good! We ended up helping people! We thought we were using Gorum's power for Good, and it turns out we were using Norgorber's, but what does it matter? He'd win whether we did Good or Evil, so he didn't nudge us towards either, so what does it matter that it was him giving us spells and not Gorum?"

"I feel bad about misleading people, though."

Gord finally calms down enough to explain. "We thought - everyone thought Gorum wanted his clerics to fight it out when they disagreed, right? Gorum would choose the victor, and everyone would learn who was right. But it turns out that anyone can be chosen to defeat a cleric of Gorum!"

"Because Gorumites do sometimes lose, right? More clerics of Gorum are killed by non-Gorumites than by other clerics. Does that mean Gorum thinks they're all wrong?"

"It just means Gorum isn't more powerful than everyone else."

"But how do you know anyone is or isn't a cleric of Gorum? We didn't even know about ourselves! Even if someone got a vision or Commune, how can they tell which god sent it?"

"Why does anyone even think Gorum exists? All they can see is a bunch of clerics going around fighting each other! They only think they know what Gorum wants because someone beat them up and told them what to believe!"

"They - we already had all the clues! Only people really exist! Only people do things! Getting spells doesn't make them do it! Being clerics doesn't make them do it! They blame it on "Gorum" because they lack the courage of their convictions!"

"Of all the faiths, Gorum's comes closest to the truth. To telling people to fight for what they really believe in their own names, and not in any god's. But it has a fatal flaw that even we didn't really notice. Gorum's clerics still fight about what they think he wants. They might not really know what he wants, but that's a distraction, making them chase after the truth about Gorum, instead of finding out the truth about themselves. They should be fighting about what they want. It's not as if he'd take away their spells over it."

...this is a silly argument, because - 

Gordy turns to Cayden. "Does Gorum exist?"

"He does! And He has clerics, and He likes people to fight for things and to grow stronger."

"I don't think He has an opinion about metal armor, but I can't really claim to speak for Him on that."

"You see? Even the gods don't know what Gorum wants us to do about armor!"

"We already decided that was a stupid fight! But we did get them to agree to honor demons' surrender. I wonder if they ever really did it."

"All this would have been a much more important realization if we'd had it before stopping being a cleric - no, not that, before the world got fixed. We're not going to go around fighting Gorum's clerics because they care what Gorum wants too much. ...well, I'm not, anyway."

"I want to tell some people the truth, though. That I was never a cleric of Gorum. They can draw their own conclusions, but it's not fair to - I would be lying if I didn't let them know."

They share a look, and Gordy goes up to Azalea at the bar and waves to her while trying to signal that if she wants to keep reading that's fine and nothing's urgent.

She pulls a bookmark from the air and marks her place.

"Cayden's all done revealing embarrassing personal secrets?" she jokes.

"I hope so! And, uh, I'm not embarassed, or not about that, I had a - the kind of revelation that makes you feel really stupid about not seeing it before. And I'd like to tell you about it."

She stands from her stool and walks back over to rejoin the group.

"By all means!" she agrees. She is deeply curious, so she's glad that she doesn't need to valiantly not ask.

So they tell her the story of Gord, and Norgorber, and the revelation that came too late to help the other Gorumites while the world still needed help.

She blinks for a moment, figuring out how to respond to that.

"Gosh! I don't know how I would feel about that if it had happened to me," she says. "It sounds like it might be pretty disheartening, to learn that a god who you thought was on your side and had your back wasn't actually. Or, no more so than other people. But it also sounds ... validating, that the whole time you were trying to do good, and being condemned by the world around you for being Evil, that they had just been tricked into reacting that way?"

"I don't know. How do all of you feel about it?" she asks.

"Remember when I said I lost my ability to react appropriately because enormous and surprising things kept happening? I don't think I have it back, yet."

"Did we make mistakes that we can learn from? We assumed Gorum gave us power, and that was a mistake. But most of what we did with that power, we'd have done regardless."

"I kept trying to do the right thing. To help people no-one else would, to make the world better. But all my life I've kept discovering - or deciding - that I was wrong, and changing my mind and doing something else. And it looks like this is another of those times." This is surprisingly painful to say, after everything he's already told Cherry and Irabeth, but -

"It did matter that Norgorber was giving me spells, and not Gorum. Because of him, I detected as Evil. It made the demons and cultists take me in. Which saved my life, and I don't regret that! But it also made people like Irabeth - not cast me out, exactly, but not trust me either. Lastwall didn't want to hire me when I was Chaotic Neutral, but even Mendev wouldn't have taken me when I was Chaotic Evil. ...actually I expect they would have if the crusade was still going on. But no-one I'd want to work with would work with me. I didn't have allies, I didn't try to cooperate, and this was part of the reason why."

"And the other part was that I thought - if what I was doing was Evil, and the people who kept trying to stop me were Good, then to Hell with Pharasma and her alignments! So I stopped caring if people were Good or not, and I began to despise those who did care. People and gods both. I knew many people trusted Iomedae because she's Lawful Good, Irabeth was hardly the paladin first I'd met, and I thought they were - blinkered. Not thinking for themselves. Giving into the comfortable temptation of believing in a moral authority who can't be wrong because it's wiser than they are"

"Norgorber said I'm a, a case study in someone doing Good despite being saddled with an Evil aura. I don't think I've done as much Good despite it as I could have. Not just because it was harder, but because I - gave up too soon. Maybe there was a way for me to work with some Sarenrites or Desnans or Milanites or someone like that, but I missed it. And I regret that."