Back home, Belos forced everyone to join a coven, like the healing coven or the bard coven, and locked away all the rest of their magic so they could only use that coven's magic.

This place has the guilds. You have to choose between one or the other. If you refuse, you lose all the things they give you. You don't even get to keep the weird little ID things everyone has to use in this world. Most of the time, you need those to get a job.

They take everything and you have to survive on your own.

[He looks thoughtful, as he tries to articulate his thoughts about it.]

The rebellion against Belos had to hide and work in secret but at least we were rebelling. We were fighting against him, his secret plans to kill everyone, and the entire coven system. We had enough freedom to at least do that, even if the odds were bad.

But nobody's fighting the control of the guilds here. There's a lot that's good here and I'm still freer because Belos is gone, but there's still that. And this time nobody's trying to overthrow the system.

[Being unaligned is a lot like how the Owl Lady must have felt all those years on the run. Before there were finally others willing to rebel with her.]