--- Rania ---

Rania was confused.

Dov was crying, and her other friends were consoling her, and it was all so very, very strange.

Who in the world was Thomas, and why did he die before even being introduced?

Dying was bad, but as Rania understood it, it usually at least served a purpose.

For example, Iggil, the daughter of the shaman they had met in Northpass all those weeks ago at the start of their adventure. The spirits had told her who Iggil was, and that she had died in a Cataclysm Containment Zone. Her death had been tragic, and Rania had cried over it. But she still understood that it had served an unavoidable purpose. Her death helped to establish adventures as adventures.

After all, if nobody ever died on an adventure, it would no longer be an adventure, now would it?

Suffering and conflict were necessary parts of the humanoid condition because it made the universe more interesting. Naturally, uninteresting universes existed to a lesser degree than interesting ones. This was perfectly obvious if one understood anthropics and quantified ontology and some basic decision theory. This was very important and fundamental knowledge that every person should know.

It was sort of how nobody would read a book if there was no conflict in it.

Since uninteresting universes existed less than interesting ones, it was an unavoidable fact of life that sometimes people needed to die tragically in order to make life more exciting for everyone else, and thereby make the universe more real.

This had always been intuitively obvious to her, but now that she thought about it explicitly, it sounded kind of terrible.

Generally speaking, dying was bad. Nobody liked dying. She was pretty sure that even fictional characters did not like dying. But if she was fictional then she would still prefer to be in a fun and popular story with conflict, than in a boring one that nobody would read or watch at all. And that meant that she would accept a risk of dying.

She wondered if there was a way that they could have their cake and eat it, too. Maybe it would be possible to have adventures without people dying, somehow? It sounded really cool as a concept. She didn't think it was possible, but maybe somebody had managed to write a book without any conflict in it that still had a high degree of ontological quanta? Which was to say, a story that was fun and popular and that she would enjoy reading.

She resolved to bring up the topic at some later point. Clearly now would not be a good time for it, with how distraught Dov was over Thomas' death.

Thomas, whose death defied her expectations.

When people died in stories, they did so in specific, narratively appropriate ways.

Thomas' death made no narrative sense at all.

She understood by now that reality often wasn't like her books. Maybe this was one of those cases? But then again, she also knew that the spirits liked stories a lot more than people knew. And then there was also Tonos to consider. She knew that the others all had differing opinions on how much story logic could be trusted. Lilian would answer very differently from Atrog, if she was here.

She tried to make sense of Thomas' death, and drew up short. It was almost like Thomas just died randomly and not for a preordained reason at all. Like some kind of background character. His death wasn't optimized for maximum emotional impact on the audience, as would be proper. Instead, it looked like his death was optimized only for maximum emotional impact on Dov. This was very bad, because it made Dov sad.

Apparently, Thomas was one of Dov's boyfriends, but he had never been mentioned to Rania before. From the way Dov reacted, he was clearly meant to be an important character, but he was killed before he could be established properly and the audience could connect with him. That was just bad storytelling! After all, the emotional impact of a Named Character's death was much stronger than the deaths of Innocent Civilians.

It was actually really confusing to think about. Her ethics books said that unnamed Innocent Civilians counted just as much as Named Characters when they died. This completely contradicted all of her novels, where she found it very tragic when a Named Character died in a dramatic scene, but she often didn't really register when thousands of Innocent Civilians died in a side note. Her ethics books said that the former case only felt worse, but actually the second case was objectively worse because the Innocent Civilians counted just as much and there were more of them.

She thought that was a good thing, strangely enough. If just a small amount of very visible suffering generated a lot of emotions in the audience, then the universe could be made interesting with very little total suffering. That way the universe could have high total quanta of ontological realness, but most of the background characters could still live happy and fulfilling lives.

Sort of. Ethics was hard, and she hadn't really figured everything out, yet. But she was trying her best, reading all of the books that Atrog gave her even when they were boring. And that was what mattered the most!

But even though she had done her best to understand how ethics worked, and how the universe sometimes didn't really seem to care, Thomas' death was still really confusing to her.

Dov cared about him, and Rania really hated to feel her friend's emotional anguish right now. But at the same time, Thomas was not established to the narrative, so his death wouldn't satisfy the audience's requirement for drama. His death didn't serve a purpose in making the universe more real. It was a pointless death, and that made it extra tragic.

She just didn't understand why she hadn't known about this Named Character beforehand.

She spent a few minutes talking to Pebble and the other spirits about it, but she got conflicting responses.

Pebble and many of the other spirits agreed with her at first and said that it was narratively unsatisfying and should have been planned out better, but then some of the other spirits spoke up and claimed that Thomas was totally well established in his own narrative.

His own narrative. That was a shocking thought, but it made sense. Thomas was from a crossover with Dov's story. She had already been amazed by all the inside jokes Dov had made since they got here. Those jokes had hinted at a complicated backstory, but this felt like so much more.

Dov's backstory felt so rich and detailed, much more so than Rania's own backstory did.

It was almost like it really happened!

Maybe that was what Dov meant, all those weeks ago when she claimed she didn't have a backstory, but lived experiences?

Were all of the things she talked about actual events that really happened to her in her past before they met? That sounded so much more real than her own backstory felt.

Then another shocking thought occurred to her: Maybe it was her own backstory that was strange and unusual, and not Dov's? Dov had claimed that everyone had lived experiences instead of backstories, not just herself. Maybe Rania was different because she had a Secret Origin Story? Rania's own backstory sometimes felt to her like it was just tacked on as an afterthought. She usually shied away from examining it too closely, because she always got confused by it. She knew that her parents had 2.5 children, but she had difficulties visualizing what her 1.5 siblings looked like. What even was half a sibling? Rania wasn't sure.

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Maybe other people did not have inconsistencies like that in their backstories?

Could it be that everyone else's backstories were real events that genuinely happened and existed for their own reasons, independent of narrative conventions?

Rania was amazed. If this was true, then the universe was greater and richer than she had thought possible before.

It would imply something very important about Thomas, too: Thomas was a real person with real agency who really existed. Or had existed before he died. Even if Thomas had never been established as an important character to Rania or the spirits she knew, he still mattered. Dov cared about him a lot, and it didn't matter that Rania had never heard of him, because Dov had, and other people had too. Thomas must have been important to some people, even if Rania had never heard of him before.

Her head was already reeling, but she extrapolated from this further and had yet another mindblowing epiphany: Even if she hadn't heard about Thomas a few minutes ago, he would still have existed and been important. Did that imply that there could be other people out there who were never mentioned to anyone at all, and whose names neither Rania nor her spirit friends ever learned, but who still lived full lives of their own?

The thought reminded her of a saying she had heard: Everyone is the hero of their own story.

She had always found that saying weird, but now she thought she finally understood it. Everyone had a name, and everyone was a person. Rania might not know people personally, but they still had names and backstories, or life experiences or whatever, even if they never encountered Rania before.

She had abstractly known this was true before, from reading ethics books, but this experience really drove it home.

It was all so very, very different from how spirits thought about the world. So different from how stories worked, too.

The sound of a loud sob brought Rania back from her thoughts and into reality.

Dov was still crying.

Her friend needed her right now.

She joined the others in consoling Dov. She could think more about all this some other time.

Half an hour later, Dov had mostly calmed down again and they were all just sitting around quietly.

"Xilly, can I ask what you are up to? Are you working on anything new?" Galanys asked.

She was speaking out loud instead of using Dov's telepathy, because the psychic feedback of her anguish had gotten pretty exhausting.

Dov scrunched her eyebrows at the question. "Galanys, are you trying to distract me?"

"Yes, I am. You have a tendency to get absorbed in a thought. It's not healthy, so a distraction is in order. Let me know if it doesn't work."

"If it doesn't work? Oh! Because if it works then I will be too distracted to notice that it worked."

"Exactly."

"I like the way you think, Galanys, and thank you for watching out for her like this." Xilly responded. "Fortunately you have asked the right person to provide a distraction, because I am in fact working on something very distracting right now. Roughly forty percent of the people I tell this to call me mad, which is a whole twenty-six percent over the baseline."

"Wait. Fourteen percent of people call you mad when you explain your ideas to them? And this is normal to you?" Atrog asked.

"Why, yes it is. Science is about pushing boundaries. If that doesn't ruffle the feathers of the establishment, are you even doing real science? Mind you, at this point I basically am the establishment, at least in the Cursed Lands. But still, it's the principle of the thing.

"Anyway. I am trying to develop a method that can turn an existing person into a Davlash. That way everyone will get to be whatever they want to be instead of being restricted by what they were born with."

"You want to change a person's species?" Atrog asked.

"I want to provide a way for people to do so if they want. I'm not planning to force anyone. Mind you, I don't see a reason why anyone wouldn't want to take the offer. Once you are a Davlash, you can simply turn back into whatever species you were before. It's the pareto-dominant choice.

"It will also make people much more resistant to disease, poison, and even aging."

That did sound pretty cool to Rania. At first she was worried because turning everyone into the same species sounded kind of boring. But if everyone still looked the same as before then they could still have the same adventures as before.

The spirits in the room suddenly started chattering about this a lot. They were all very opinionated! Most of them said that it was totally off-theme and should be forbidden.

A few of them even called for something called a "reset" if Xilly succeeded. Rania didn't know what a reset was, but the way the spirits said it sounded super ominous.

She was happy to see that Pebble shared her own opinion on the topic. He argued with the other spirits that this was totally a cool idea because it added a lot more build flexibility into characters. She wasn't super sure what that meant either, but she was happy that he was on her side.

"It does sound like a good idea to me." Atrog said. "But I am worried that this may have unforeseen consequences. I mean no offense, but followers of Unir have something of a reputation for ignoring the political consequences of their actions. For a simple example, if people of all species suddenly grow older without having the social norms of long-lived species already in place, it could cause a massive overpopulation problem."

Xilly gave a mildly amused smile in response. "Some offense taken. I have in fact discussed this with experts. Although I understand that you have good intentions, so I welcome the criticism. The basic takeaway is that, yes, this will probably have a lot of unintended consequences and it will very likely break something important in unforeseen ways. But we still believe that it is worth it for the long-term benefits. We can't predict everything, so we will just have to tackle one fundamental problem of the humanoid condition at a time.

"Also, let's talk about your example of overpopulation. Doesn't overpopulation still sound better than people dying of old age?

"I invite you to the following thought experiment: Imagine a world in which aging never existed. This world has an overpopulation problem. Imagine that somebody in this world makes the following proposal: 'Let's introduce a mechanism into people's bodies that makes everyone gradually get weaker and sicker over time until they die. That will solve the overpopulation problem. We will call this mechanism 'aging'.'

"Doesn't that sound horrifying? Clearly it is better for people not to age than for people to age. Just because aging has historically been a thing doesn't mean that it should get a preferred treatment by society. I would be against it if someone were to invent aging, therefore I am also in favor of abolishing aging if it already exists."

Atrog looked contemplative for a few seconds, then nodded. "That is an odd way to think about things, but I understand your reasoning."

"It really isn't complicated or strange." Xilly responded. "The basic argument is quite simple: Death is bad, and it would be good if there was less of it. I am working on that. As my father found out, ethics is often much simpler than we make it out to be. Make more good things happen, and fewer bad things. It's just that people get hung up a lot on edge cases and lose track of the basics."

Rania liked that. Make more good things happen and fewer bad things. It was a simple rule, and it would be so cool if reality was more like that.

"Those edge cases could matter a lot, though. I agree that introducing aging into a society that doesn't have it would be horrifying. But that thought experiment doesn't actually match reality. Our society has developed over millennia with underlying assumptions that would get completely overthrown by your inventions. Even if the end result is good, a lot of people might die in the process of getting there."

"You can't make an omelett without breaking a few eggs. Besides, I am certain that many of these side effects will be positive. Davlash are shapeshifters who can look however they want. If everyone is beautiful then nobody is, and that will change social dynamics for the better. It's sort of like how biomancers have a reputation for being less shallow than most people. They can fix ugly, but they can't fix asshole, so they pay more attention to people's personalities."

Before Atrog could respond, Xilly went on.

"Turning people into Davlash to cure aging and disease is only the first step of my plan, actually. Later on, I plan to fix mortality in general. Many supernatural creatures can come back to life. Humanoids can't. There must be a way to fix that. My current plan is to extend Davlash abilities so that they can absorb angel DNA and become immortal that way. But none of my experiments in that direction have worked at all so far, so it's more of a long-term goal."

"...absorb angel DNA?" Atrog asked incredulously. "That sounds very ...ambitious?"

Xilly smiled. "Well, you didn't call me mad, so I won't count you among the forty percent, but judging by the way you just said that you were certainly thinking it."

Rania did not quite know what to make of this idea.

Absorbing angel DNA to become immortal and able to come back to life?

It sounded super complicated and overly ambitious, and the spirits were now arguing even more vehemently than before that this was not on theme at all anymore.

Pebble argued back that the comparison was unfair of them. Clearly Dov was from a different narrative that followed different rules.

And sure, maybe it was a bit ambitious, but it would make for a cool sequel, wouldn't it?

Rania had to agree. It was a bit much for right now, but turning people into immortal angels sounded like a really cool plot hook to her. She would read a book like that, provided that it had an appropriate amount of adventure, of course.