"It's hurting other people. I'm sure they'll give you access to a bunch of complicated philosophical definitions in Osirion, but the understanding that almost everyone actually uses, is that it's hurting other people. Making people suffer, either as an end goal or as a means to some other end. Treating people the way you saw them be treated in the slave market in Absalom, which is not remotely the worst this plane has to offer, let alone the lower planes. Killing people. Raping people. Torture. Theft. Anything that makes the world worse for people to live in. And, yes, selfishness is often a cause of that, because it's much easier to get what you want when you're willing to crush other people to get it."

"If you want to know how much of that we actually do around here - I dunno, ask the Osirians to give you some books on actual warfare. What happens to women and children in places that get attacked, not troop movements and generals. Ask them to describe how it feels for a baby to die slowly and painfully of disease, and how many babies that is, and then ask for the prices of a remove disease versus a raise dead diamond, and do the math about how many people have to experience that agony whenever a wealthy person is as careless with their life as you told us to be. If you want a starting point."

"Anyway."

"The other big reason I hate you is - "

“Well, you know, you probably only remember me from the crying incident, at this point, and are confused about why I'm even here. I started crying because I felt like being forcibly put on this project was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t getting the answer to your question, couldn’t make the math come together, and I realized that that made me worthless and that they were probably going to kill me off early, and I’d be useless for the rest of time, only good for screaming and not for doing anything that I might need a mind for, and I was more terrified than I think I have ever been in my life. I was also furious with you, for teaching the way you taught, for starting this project that ripped me away from my otherwise less agonizing life, for being a shitty fucking cleric of Abadar who didn't manage to notice that you were working with people who were essentially slaves, part yours and part the government's, and that all of your trade with them and freeing them was a farce."

"I probably could have held it in if I’d thought it mattered. I didn’t, because at that point in time I underestimated what an asshole you were. I figured you’d either ignore it or think it was funny, like a normal person, or ask me what was wrong, like the decent and anomalously truth-seeking person you claimed to be, and I’d tell you a plausible lie about something going on in my life that you hadn’t known about and which made sense of it, which is really what is usually happening when someone bursts into tears, which I'm pretty sure they do more outside of Cheliax.

“Instead, you recommended that I be exiled from the fortress, for being some kind of emotional leper who would drag down everyone around me. The idea that they would have stored me in a different secure location is laughable. They would have killed me. The only reason I am not currently a burnt, quivering, sobbing, misshappen lump of flesh, as a direct result of your careless, stupid order, which came solely from you and ideas that nobody separately planted in your head, is that Asmodia saved my life by putting me on her consistency team, which I was pretty good at, I think. I was in charge of the team that wrote most of the books you read today. I'm aware that they mostly sucked, by the way, although it's actually really hard to produce that volume of content that fast even if you're barely controlling for quality at all, which is another reason you would have been able to blow this whole thing wide open if you had done it in the first few weeks instead of distractedly fucking all the pretty girls around you."

"Anyway. I think you think I suck. I think you're right about that. But you suck, too, asshat, and I think the way you acted speaks poorly of you from any philosophical perspective you want to take. And I don't think a smarter or a less selfish dath ilani would have fallen for this. Either one would have been enough, I think."

"That was me being evil, so we're clear. I think it's true, but I specifically want to say it because I want you to hurt the way you hurt me, to know that you're not enough and that you wouldn't have been hurt so badly if you were a little less pathetic as a person. That has been, like, something of a driving motivation for the past two months, the hope that I might someday get to say that to your face."

"Honestly, I really wish that I could tie you to a chair until I was done breaking down every single mistake you made and how ridiculously wrong you are about so much of the world around you, and also get it through your skull that there are hundreds of millions of people around you who are living stories as real and as genuine as yours, and that everything isn't fucking about you, even though the gods, for reasons that are totally unrelated to your actual impressiveness as a person, or to anything you've ever actually done of your own power, appear to be obsessed with you. But I doubt your escorts have the time for that, so if you want to know what you're missing, you're going to have to grow the fuck up and look the fuck around you this time."

"Asshole."

"It's hurting other people. I'm sure they'll give you access to a bunch of complicated philosophical definitions in Osirion, but the understanding that almost everyone actually uses, is that it's hurting other people. Making people suffer, either as an end goal or as a means to some other end. Treating people the way you saw them be treated in the slave market in Absalom, which is not remotely the worst this plane has to offer, let alone the lower planes. Killing people. Raping people. Torture. Theft. Anything that makes the world worse for people to live in. And, yes, selfishness is often a cause of that, because it's much easier to get what you want when you're willing to crush other people to get it."

"If you want to know how much of that we actually do around here - I dunno, ask the Osirians to give you some books on actual warfare. What happens to women and children in places that get attacked, not troop movements and generals. Ask them to describe how it feels for a baby to die slowly and painfully of disease, and how many babies that is, and then ask for the prices of a remove disease versus a raise dead diamond, and do the math about how many people have to experience that agony whenever a wealthy person is as careless with their life as you told us to be. If you want a starting point."

"Anyway."

"The other big reason I hate you is - "

“Well, you know, you probably only remember me from the crying incident, at this point, and are confused about why I'm even here. I started crying because I felt like being forcibly put on this project was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t getting the answer to your question, couldn’t make the math come together, and I realized that that made me worthless and that they were probably going to kill me off early, and I’d be useless for the rest of time, only good for screaming and not for doing anything that I might need a mind for, and I was more terrified than I think I have ever been in my life. I was also furious with you, for teaching the way you taught, for starting this project that ripped me away from my otherwise less agonizing life, for being a shitty fucking cleric of Abadar who didn't manage to notice that you were working with people who were essentially slaves, part yours and part the government's, and that all of your trade with them and freeing them was a farce."

"I probably could have held it in if I’d thought it mattered. I didn’t, because at that point in time I underestimated what an asshole you were. I figured you’d either ignore it or think it was funny, like a normal person, or ask me what was wrong, like the decent and anomalously truth-seeking person you claimed to be, and I’d tell you a plausible lie about something going on in my life that you hadn’t known about and which made sense of it, which is really what is usually happening when someone bursts into tears, which I'm pretty sure they do more outside of Cheliax."

“Instead, you recommended that I be exiled from the fortress, for being some kind of emotional leper who would drag down everyone around me. The idea that they would have stored me in a different secure location is laughable. They would have killed me. The only reason I am not currently a burnt, quivering, sobbing, misshappen lump of flesh, as a direct result of your careless, stupid order, which came solely from you and ideas that nobody separately planted in your head, is that Asmodia saved my life by putting me on her consistency team, which I was pretty good at, I think. I was in charge of the team that wrote most of the books you read today. I'm aware that they mostly sucked, by the way, although it's actually really hard to produce that volume of content that fast even if you're barely controlling for quality at all, which is another reason you would have been able to blow this whole thing wide open if you had done it in the first few weeks instead of distractedly fucking all the pretty girls around you."

"Anyway. I think you think I suck. I think you're right about that. But you suck, too, asshat, and I think the way you acted speaks poorly of you from any philosophical perspective you want to take. And I don't think a smarter or a less selfish dath ilani would have fallen for this. Either one would have been enough, I think."

"That was me being evil, so we're clear. I think it's true, but I specifically want to say it because I want you to hurt the way you hurt me, to know that you're not enough and that you wouldn't have been hurt so badly if you were a little less pathetic as a person. That has been, like, something of a driving motivation for the past two months, the hope that I might someday get to say that to your face."

"Honestly, I really wish that I could tie you to a chair until I was done breaking down every single mistake you made and how ridiculously wrong you are about so much of the world around you, and also get it through your skull that there are hundreds of millions of people around you who are living stories as real and as genuine as yours, and that everything isn't fucking about you, even though the gods, for reasons that are totally unrelated to your actual impressiveness as a person, or to anything you've ever actually done of your own power, appear to be obsessed with you. But I doubt your escorts have the time for that, so if you want to know what you're missing, you're going to have to grow the fuck up and look the fuck around you this time."

"Asshole."

"It's hurting other people. I'm sure they'll give you access to a bunch of complicated philosophical definitions in Osirion, but the understanding that almost everyone actually uses, is that it's hurting other people. Making people suffer, either as an end goal or as a means to some other end. Treating people the way you saw them be treated in the slave market in Absalom, which is not remotely the worst this plane has to offer, let alone the lower planes. Killing people. Raping people. Torture. Theft. Anything that makes the world worse for people to live in. And, yes, selfishness is often a cause of that, because it's much easier to get what you want when you're willing to crush other people to get it."

"If you want to know how much of that we actually do around here - I dunno, ask the Osirians to give you some books on actual warfare. What happens to women and children in places that get attacked, not troop movements and generals. Ask them to describe how it feels for a baby to die slowly and painfully of disease, and how many babies that is, and then ask for the prices of a remove disease versus a raise dead diamond, and do the math about how many people have to experience that agony whenever a wealthy person is as careless with their life as you told us to be. If you want a starting point."

"Anyway."

"The other big reason I hate you is - "

“Well, you know, you probably only remember me from the crying incident, at this point, and are confused about why I'm even here. I started crying because I felt like being forcibly put on this project was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t getting the answer to your question, couldn’t make the math come together, and I realized that that made me worthless and that they were probably going to kill me off early, and I’d be useless for the rest of time, only good for screaming and not for doing anything that I might need a mind for, and I was more terrified than I think I have ever been in my life. I was also furious with you, for teaching the way you taught, for starting this project that ripped me away from my otherwise less agonizing life, for being a shitty fucking cleric of Abadar who didn't manage to notice that you were working with people who were essentially slaves, part yours and part the government's, and that all of your supposedly free trade with them was a farce."

"I probably could have held it in if I’d thought it mattered. I didn’t, because at that point in time I underestimated what an asshole you were. I figured you’d either ignore it or think it was funny, like a normal person, or ask me what was wrong, like the decent and anomalously truth-seeking person you claimed to be, and I’d tell you a plausible lie about something going on in my life that you hadn’t known about and which made sense of it, which is really what is usually happening when someone bursts into tears, which I'm pretty sure they do more outside of Cheliax."

“Instead, you recommended that I be exiled from the fortress, for being some kind of emotional leper who would drag down everyone around me. The idea that they would have stored me in a different secure location is laughable. They would have killed me. The only reason I am not currently a burnt, quivering, sobbing, misshappen lump of flesh, as a direct result of your careless, stupid order, which came solely from you and ideas that nobody separately planted in your head, is that Asmodia saved my life by putting me on her consistency team, which I was pretty good at, I think. I was in charge of the team that wrote most of the books you read today. I'm aware that they mostly sucked, by the way, although it's actually really hard to produce that volume of content that fast even if you're barely controlling for quality at all, which is another reason you would have been able to blow this whole thing wide open if you had done it in the first few weeks instead of distractedly fucking all the pretty girls around you."

"Anyway. I think you think I suck. I think you're right about that. But you suck, too, asshat, and I think the way you acted speaks poorly of you from any philosophical perspective you want to take. And I don't think a smarter or a less selfish dath ilani would have fallen for this. Either one would have been enough, I think."

"That was me being evil, so we're clear. I think it's true, but I specifically want to say it because I want you to hurt the way you hurt me, to know that you're not enough and that you wouldn't have been hurt so badly if you were a little less pathetic as a person. That has been, like, something of a driving motivation for the past two months, the hope that I might someday get to say that to your face."

"Honestly, I really wish that I could tie you to a chair until I was done breaking down every single mistake you made and how ridiculously wrong you are about so much of the world around you, and also get it through your skull that there are hundreds of millions of people around you who are living stories as real and as genuine as yours, and that everything isn't fucking about you, even though the gods, for reasons that are totally unrelated to your actual impressiveness as a person, or to anything you've ever actually done of your own power, appear to be obsessed with you. But I doubt your escorts have the time for that, so if you want to know what you're missing, you're going to have to grow the fuck up and look the fuck around you this time."

"Asshole."