Carissa Sevar: "it's like war. There's not a single best military strategy that defeats all other military strategies. There are things that work out best for a range of possible things your opponents might be doing, and you can't be engaged in the best possible tactic against anything they might be doing, there are tradeoffs. 'best disease-fighting system' sounds less ridiculous than 'best war-fighting system' but I think only because we know how to fight wars so the tradeoffs are obvious."
Keltham: "Well, perhaps, perhaps. But let's consider some much simpler case than complicated oppositional games. Do you have locks, here, which go by knowledge? Say, somebody has to punch in a series of numbers, or spell out a sequence of words, to open the lock?"
lintamande: "No. Wizards use magic for locks. Everyone else...I think uses mechanical ones, with keys."
Keltham: "There's a dath ilani proverb to the effect that a key and a code is more effective than just a key or a code, because keys can be stolen as codes can be spied on. But maybe that doesn't apply if there's a first-circle spell that makes keys only work in the hands of authorized holders...?"
lintamande: "...mostly I don't know how you'd do a lock with a...code. I've never heard of that."
Keltham: "Buttons labeled 0 through 9, you've got to enter six numbers in the correct order to open the lock... I would not have thought that would take a very complicated mechanism, it seems very simple compared to other mechanisms. Heck, with sixteen buttons, just needing to depress the correct eight buttons in any order, while leaving the eight other buttons raised, would provide significant protection. That seems very easy to visualize as a lock; though, making it not be externally obvious when you have some of the buttons correct but not others, would take more work..."
"Well, anyways, in dath ilan, there are locks which require a key, or numbers, or both, depending on how strong you want to make them and whether you're more worried about stolen keys or spied-on codes. And security issues like making sure that somebody can't tell which numbers are being depressed by listening to the sound of the clicks, or not having the interior mechanism of the key be examinable from the outside of the key before it's inserted into the lock, stuff like that."
"Is there such a thing as there being one best code, or one best key, that you could use to fend off the greatest possible number of thieves, and then no better code or better key than that could exist?"
lintamande: "No," the class choruses.
Keltham: "Isn't that, in some sense, contradictory to the very notion of intelligence? If you can measure intelligence with numbers, and keep going past 20, past 30, past 100, shouldn't there come a point where the greatest possible and most perfect intelligence can determine the one best possible code for a lock?"
lintamande: "- I guess eventually you could come up with a number so long and hard to specify that no one less smart that you is capable of generating it, and that'd be the best possible code for a lock."
Keltham: "Well, it's good that you don't just say 'no' and give up on the question! In dath ilan, once you get past the kind of locks that parents use to keep young children from wandering into the workshop or the," no word for that then where do they do it, "cuddle-room, you get what's called Keeper locks, though they also appear on the more powerful weapons the military is allowed to own. One component of a Keeper lock is a kind of key that's physically impossible to duplicate, though it has to be refreshed each time it's used; the other component is a game that never plays out the same way twice, with rules of a form that our brains can learn subconsciously without ever figuring them out consciously. The knowledge that gets you inside consists of you having learned to play the lock's game, after a few days or hours of practice and occasional refreshers; and you don't consciously know what the game's rules are, so you literally can't explain to anybody else how to get inside, even if they drug you."
"But let's say the lock just has ten digits and six numbers."
"Can an entity with Intelligence 100 determine the best possible six-number sequence that every such lock should use?"
lintamande: "No," they chorus again.
Keltham: "Well, why not, exactly?"
lintamande: "The only thing that makes a code good is that no one knows it."
Keltham: "So use your Intelligence 100 to pick out the best possible code that people are least likely to guess."
lintamande: "...well, if it's in every lock, then they'll just put a bunch of sl-employees to work trying it on one lock, and once they get it they'll know all the locks."
Keltham: "Ah, well, perhaps. Let's look at it from the other side; if there's a ten-digit, six-number lock I need to get through, can I use my 100 Intelligence to discover the single best sequence to try on a lock like that?"
lintamande: "...yeah, you could mindread the creator and figure out what rule they used to set it."
Keltham: "Let us suppose that mindreading is not possible; clever guessing is. You cannot determine a single correct code with certainty, just that some codes are more likely than others. I put to you, then, that the code which is most likely to open the lock, is the best code to try entering into it."
lintamande: The students agree with this, but suspiciously.
Keltham: "Well, for concrete example, if a silly factory makes all its locks with a default code of 012345, and occasionally some silly people forget to change the default code, then 012345 might be the best code to try entering - it may only open one in ten thousand locks, because very few people are that silly, but it will still open more locks than any other code."
lintamande: "Or if there's a number that's lucky in some religion, so people change their locks to that."
Keltham: "Wait, so they actively change their lock to one that's... Can you tell me whether or not you're joking about that being a thing people would really do? I haven't actually met anyone with Intelligence 10 in my life before and I don't know what that's like."
lintamande: "- yeah, people do that."
"I mean, we don't have that kind of lock, but people do that sort of thing, they have magic item passwords that are famous magic item passwords, or the names of their kids."
Keltham: "All right. Duly noted. You people seriously need to raise your average intelligence level before somebody accidentally blows up what's left of the planet."
Keltham: "To resume where we left off: Having thus determined that 012345 is the best, the most optimal code you can possibly try on a lock, I put to you that, clearly, the optimal strategy for opening a coded lock is to repeatedly try 012345 on it until it opens. Agreed?"
lintamande: Suspicious chorus. "Noooo."
Keltham: "Why not? Seems reasonable to me. If you have the optimal best method you should keep using it."
lintamande: "I guess if the lock has a persistent tendency to change its own password to 012345, because it has fond memories of the workshop it was created in," Meritxell says.
Keltham: "Careful with that kind of cleverness. There's another famous dichotomy between being smart enough to think of correct answers versus smart enough that you can take any answer and come up with a weird way for it to be correct. In real life, entering 012345 repeatedly into the lock is stupid even though it's possible to imagine an exotic circumstance where it isn't. I'm not saying you should never think the way you just did, I'm saying that you should always clearly label it inside and outside as having come up with a clever weird circumstance under which it would make sense to do something that is in real life stupid."
Keltham: "Anyways, I'm glad you all now agree with me that the best way of getting through number-sequence locks is to repeatedly enter in 012345 on them."
lintamande: "...you just said that was stupid!"
Keltham: "That was some other Keltham. I'm the Keltham who thinks that repeating 012345 is a great strategy, and he's going to keep lecturing you on that until one of you manages to talk him out of it by explaining exactly what he's doing wrong."
lintamande: They giggle nervously.
"If it didn't work the first time, then it'll only work this time if the lock magically changed, and changed to this specific code, and you haven't got any reason to think it did that so you might as well just set a construct to trying all possible combinations in order at this point, before you try any twice."
Keltham: "Wait, so you're saying that 012345 isn't the best code to try? What's the better one, then?"
lintamande: "Any of them which you haven't tried yet!"
Keltham: "I'm confused. If on the first turn, 012345 is the best combination to try, and the lock hasn't changed, it should still be the best combination to try on the second turn."
lintamande: "...no, because if it were right, it would've opened the lock, so now you know it's wrong."
Keltham: "So what you're saying is that my knowledge about the lock changed, but not the lock itself? I suppose I could buy that. Doesn't that mean I'd have to keep on changing which things I tried as I observed the results and my knowledge kept changing, though? That sounds inconvenient and difficult and not very Lawful, really."
lintamande: They're so confused!
"I mean, you probably want to build a construct," Pela, who has been arguing for this solution for a while, says more firmly. "Which just tries every number in order. And you expect that it's one of the remaining numbers until you've tried them all."
Keltham: "Wouldn't it be better to build a Lawful construct instead of a Chaotic one, which repeatedly used the optimal number instead of, like, all these other non-optimal numbers? I'm definitely gonna do that if you don't talk me out of it somehow. Gonna be a great construct. The best. Optimal."
lintamande: "- trying every number in order is plenty Lawful! Law has nothing to do with - doing the exact same thing over and over!"
Carissa Sevar: (Carissa, who is going to be able to resolve the bet this evening, proposes everyone double-or-nothing on their is-Keltham-a-sadist betting.)
Keltham: "If it's the best thing, you should do it over and over. If it's not the best thing, you should do the best thing instead. If that isn't Lawful, then what is Law, exactly?"
lintamande: "It stops being the best thing once you've tried it!"
"Law is - if you're doing a dumb thing, and you think it's Lawful, you're probably just confused about what Law is, it doesn't mean you have to do dumb things."
Keltham: "Well, perhaps I am confused about the Law because I thought it said to do a dumb thing, but then what is the Law actually? Can it be explained to me or do I just have to enter whichever exact codes you tell me to?"
lintamande: "I don't think approaches to guessing a password can be Lawful or Chaotic. And we've been telling you the thing you should do, which is try all the numbers in order!"
Keltham: "All right, speaking more seriously now. It's easy to tangle yourself up with paradoxes of what is best, what is optimal, especially when you define the word even slightly different ways, see it from slightly different angles across two times you used the word. There's a mistake that young dath ilani make - skewing male rather than female, though also some girls and not all boys, of course - where they can't quite accept the fact that older children know more than they do and have higher measured cognitive powers, and some of them get fascinated with the ways that you can tangle up your reasoning and 'prove' that you're actually better than the older children because you're more ignorant than they are, or smarter than the optimal way of doing something."
"It's one of the things where, when a boy makes a mistake like that, the older children and the Watchers don't try to talk him out of it, and let him go on believing it for a few years, so he can have his enjoyment and also learn a valuable life lesson when he's old enough to more carefully disentangle all of the paradoxes. This valuable lesson is that paradoxical-sounding questions have non-paradoxical answers, if you define everything precisely enough and don't mix up your words. Even if you cannot see the answer yet, you should expect that such an answer exists. Confusion exists in our minds, not in consistent mathematics."
"In this case, I could formalize the solution by saying, for example, that there is such a thing as a best sequence of codes to try, given your state of knowledge about the lock, and that repeatedly trying the most likely first code forever is among the worst possible sequences. Or I could say that, since our knowledge changes with each observation, the best second code to try, given the results of observing the first code, is not equal to the best first code to try. This, I realize, may not sound particularly better than any of the other arguments you were using against silly-Keltham, but they fit into larger frameworks I can talk about later. A dath ilani would tell you that you're mistaken in thinking that there's no Lawful approach to guessing a code; you can use math to describe your beliefs about which codes have which probabilities of working, describe mathematically how those probabilities change with each observation as successive codes are ruled out, and that math then describes the next best guess. That doesn't mean you can do better by thinking explicitly in math, of course, instead of just quickly typing in possible passwords that seem likely; but the math does exist."
"On a larger scale, the point I want to make again is about that dichotomy between optimality and diversity, the reason why you don't want to take a single stalk of corn and plant exact copies of it all over the country. When we talked about the case of the lock and its codes, we got two different angles on a way to resolve the children's paradox of it apparently not being best to just use the best answer. The first angle is that of the adaptive adversary, the corn blight, the master criminal considering the lock; the more regular we make our own answer, the more the adversary's adaptivity or intelligence is able to analyze and defeat it. We use randomization as a way to make it harder for their own intelligence to grasp; there's nothing paradoxical about the idea that, the more random something is, the less knowable it is, the more it may inconvenience some other mind. It's the kind of variation that's valuable in the disease-fighting systems inside human and corn, the kind that makes it harder for diseases to learn our defenses."
"But the other viewpoint on the lock and code is the more important one. It's the reason why, if your team has been having trouble solving a problem for a while, you might want to add a new person who thinks less like the rest of you. It's a resource that a field of corn stalks has for adapting to a sudden shift in the environment, a new weather extreme; if the crop is more diverse, maybe some hardier stalks will survive to be replanted next year and then do better against that environment. It's the kind of variation where you're trying things in many places, and, because of that, trying overly similar things in many places is something that yields less expected profit to you."
"There are dimensions of society in which you want everyone behaving differently, so they can explore a space instead of all crowding together into one corner of it. There are dimensions of society where things go pretty well so long as you do something the correct way, and start to go poorly if you do things much differently than that. There is a tension in dath ilan between positions, between people and factions, between ideas and arguments, about that question - not just about particular cases, but about the sense in general of where all society should move on that spectrum. Whether it is more important in general for everyone to do things a bit more differently, in our future, or if the problem is more that we're falling too far below some standards and we all need to improve in those ways together. There are lots of particular cases in dath ilan where people might hold different opinions and not just one general opinion; but there is a sense that this general dimension of existence is one where the exact balance is important to a society."
"Dath ilan has terminology for this dichotomy of strategies, between the search to find the optimal best answer and use it, versus trying many different answers to be more resilient against unknowns and explore a space more widely. Though I've been deliberately substituting the words 'optimal' and 'diverse', in this language, instead of the two Taldane words that the translation spell tries to automatically output."
"If I say the dath ilani words directly, for these two directions a society can move along this dimension, they come out in this language as:"
"Lawful."
"And, Chaotic."
lintamande: Elias Abarco is not an eighteen year old girl and is not going to gape wonderingly at Keltham because EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE. No one would notice, since he's invisible, but he nonetheless has too much dignity.
Carissa Sevar: Some things make sense. And some things are even more confusing because -
- why not say that, humans can understand that -
Ione Sala: Reality is so very large and pretty and connected when you catch a sight of it. She wants to see more.
Nice, Ione thinks all the way up where her conscious mind can hear it.
Keltham: "I was on the side of Chaos, of course. Lawfulness seemed so very boring. I was quite sure we had enough of it already."
"There's a saying in dath ilan that always sounded to me before like sententious pro-Law propaganda, whose depth of meaning, I think, I never really appreciated until I came to Golarion."
"It's the saying that even Chaos is almost entirely made of Law."
"Some variation in the corn stalks is useful for resisting disease, or having any survivors if an especially hot summer comes. If you scramble all the tiny spirals entirely and insert completely new information, what you get is not much higher levels of useful Chaos, you get a plant that entirely fails to form. The wildest, most diverse crop that still manages to live at all must be almost entirely regular and using almost completely standard forms of everything for its species; otherwise it comes out, not weird and warped, but simply a dead seed that fails to germinate at all. When you're adding a new and different mind to your team, full of wild ideas, they should hopefully be speaking mostly grammatical sentences that make sense, and not uttering random words and random sounds and twitching around wildly on the floor. The full absence of Law is not diversity, but randomness, noise. In many cases, nearly all the random ways of doing things get you pretty much the same effect, there is not much difference in contribution between a person wildly twitching on the floor in one way versus a different way, they look much the same from outside. Even diversity has to be almost entirely made out of shared order, and climb high up on the scale of optimality away from the level of noise, in order to be effectively diverse."
"Even Chaos is made almost entirely out of Law. I thought it was something of a sententious old proverb, that was emphasizing one particular viewpoint on an underlying truth that seemed overly trivial. I wanted to think thoughts that nobody had ever thought before, sure, well of course I didn't want to do that by thinking random words, obviously. I wanted to start companies or invest in companies that nobody else would have thought of, that no other investor would invest in, I wanted to show that the way I thought differently was better and worthy of further exploration. Of course, if I wanted to pull that off successfully, it would be a matter of art and skill, governed by laws, with relevant history to study and relevant investigations to do. I thought that sort of thing didn't belong to Law alone. Chaotic people like me could say it too, so there wasn't anything especially Lawful about it."
"Even Chaos is made almost entirely out of Law, in a fashion governed by higher orders, mathematics, whose name in Baseline also tends to translate into Taldane as 'Law'. I have gotten to this place, Golarion, I have heard what many of your 'countries' are doing. It is pretty clear that even the factions called Lawful seem to be confused about many things. And I am resigned at this point to the fact that at some point I am also going to have to go and somehow straighten out all the Chaotic parts because it seems pretty likely at this point that all y'all are also doing that part all wrong."
"In conclusion. The value of diversity in your heritage, and its nature as a kind of resource that strong optimization uses up - especially variation that has the nature of useful variations rather than destructively random variations - is another reason why, if you meet a human visitor from another plane with 18 Intelligence, it's a great time to make an exception to any usual social rules about not just subsidizing the very best men to have 144 kids apiece, because the diversity of your heritage will actually go up when you add in some kids from a smart alien, and some of your kids may think a little differently and be more useful to add to projects. This concludes my sales pitch; I have added in many of the caveats that I knew about, but I may have been biased in my thinking about them nonetheless; I have tried to give you the knowledge you'd need to do your own thinking about it independently."
"Any questions?"
lintamande: "In your conception of Chaos," says Meritxell, "what would a Chaotic god be like."
Keltham: "That is a really excellent question and I just flatly do not understand where, say, Calistria fits into this picture. One guess is that there are additional things wrapped up in the divine version of 'Chaos', besides the dath ilani words that translate into it, which would make sense of how women being vengeful at men could be especially Chaotic. Another guess is that I don't understand your society well enough to understand how Calistria is a move in the direction of wider exploration or less centralized planning."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa thinks she has an idea of that, actually, but she doesn't want to be that person who wants to talk about sexism every day like she cares what happens to other people.
lintamande: There's another few questions, none all that deep; the class is still a bit theologically startled and no one's really quite sure what's heresy here.
Keltham: Keltham, who's already worrying that he stretched the endurance of his students and he can't see this because of Cheerful Cheliax Dignity, restrains himself from any overly deep answers. Afterwards, he attempts to dismiss the class for the afternoon; later on, after he's rested some, he's going to try learning wizard spells with the last of his day. (Well, his workday, anyways.)
Ione Sala: "Teacher," says Ione Sala, with a faint smile that's all she can manage, and a voice that should be more seductive but isn't, "can I stay a moment after class and ask you something in private?"
(No sweat. Calm. If she lets herself feel too much, she'll sweat, and that will be visible. Don't think, don't feel, nothing except what's necessary, now.)
Keltham: Keltham tilts his head, weighs the matter, nods. He has no room on his schedule left for today, but he can as easily say that to her in private, and doesn't exactly want to - discourage people from asking.
Carissa Sevar: - well, that's bold.
Carissa files out, succeeding at looking totally unthreatened by this and actually succeeding at being mostly unthreatened by this. The kid has barely talked, she's getting a late start.
- which is suggestive that there's something up here that Carissa doesn't understand -
She turns invisible on leaving the classroom, and turns around to slip back in.
lintamande: "Move along," Elias tells her telepathically and also curtly.
Carissa Sevar: - so this is not about flirting with Keltham.
She moves along.
Ione Sala: Ione considers possible options, she has to, there's no choices except thinking, now. If she leads into words that sound like - like what she's planning to say - then the security team won't, they won't jump to conclusions, right, they'll know Ione knows that there's security there - but people don't always think what you wish they would think -
Ione casts Detect Magic, and while Keltham's head is turned watching the last students go, she gives her best significant, solemn nod to the invisible security team.
Keltham: Keltham doesn't particularly see it.
Ione Sala: When the last students are gone, and of course the security team is still there, Ione approaches Keltham. "Did you mean what you said about - how dath ilan sees Law and Chaos?" she inquires in a low voice, now trying to look serious, and not seductive at all.
Keltham: "Yes...?" Keltham is more surprised than disappointed.
Ione Sala: "Will you keep my - important personal secret - if I tell it to you?" Ione says. Serious, she has to look serious.
Keltham: "Does that commit me to anything more than just - not repeating your secret, not giving it away by other means, unless and until the information makes its way to me by channels unrelated to the fact of your originally telling it to me?"
Ione Sala: Ione takes a moment to parse this. It sounds right, and if he's trying to trick her - well, it doesn't really matter, does it.
"No, that sounds correct."
Keltham: "Then yes." Keltham doesn't know what this is about, and might on other occasions hesitate more to learn others' secrets, but he is definitely currently in the sort of situation where he should say yes to secrets offered under standard secrecy conditions.
Ione Sala: "I - have sympathies in directions that are not all the way to the side of Lawful, which is a thing that some of your other girls might accept about me, and some would think it meant they needed to steer clear of me. On the whole it's more convenient for me if it's just not suspected. But you're a whole lot clearer on why Chaos would exist and why it would have any use or any place in the universe than - than I even understood myself, before you - well, people here are confused, like you said."
Keltham: It takes a second for Keltham to hypothesize why this would be as terribly serious of a matter as (glance at nametag again) Ione Sala is making it sound, even taking into account that Lawful versus Chaotic is an even bigger political deal here and that people here are kind of strange about politics.
"Is the idea here that you're secretly not with Asmodeus?" Keltham says, now instinctively lowering his own voice.
Ione Sala: She wasn't even planning to - but if he wants that, hopes for it -
"Knowledge," she says, she wishes she could make her voice breathy and seductive but it's all she can do to stay in the guidelines of solemnity, "mysteries, the planes, the way that everything is connected, magic, trying new things. Nethys."
She hasn't said outright that she belongs to Nethys, which, she doesn't know, maybe that will count for something, oh she's so dead -
Keltham: "I will keep your secret, since if you had not trusted me, I couldn't have done anything with that secret anyways. But I hope you understand that I'm not planning to betray the Chelish government, or Asmodeus, unless they betray me first. Or are you telling me that they've done so?"
Ione Sala: Ione quickly shakes her head, and then says "No," out loud in case dath ilani don't understand headshakes. "I'm not telling you that. Just -"
She can't make herself sound seductive enough, not under this much tension. But Keltham's society has some kind of weird posturing about frankness, maybe even just values actual frankness in a balance whose possibility she can't understand; so if she tries to pretend that kind of honesty, play to that -
"I'm sorry," she says, hoping she's successfully putting sincerity into her voice. "I - I'm not very experienced, in some ways, I wish I could say this in a way that's more pleasing to you." She swallows, which takes almost no effort at all, and makes sure she's looking Keltham straight in the eyes. "To someone who belongs to Nethys, who wants to understand magic, understand everything, the mysteries behind them and how everything is connected - what you told us all today - it's more than someone who follows Nethys could easily repay. If you keep teaching me things like that - or us, I don't mind if others learn it too, like you said, it's about how much we score for ourselves, not scoring better than others - then I'll try to teach you magic, or help you on your project to change Golarion, or clean your room for you, I'd do it even if you didn't pay me," he's sort of weird about wanting to pay people, "not that it would be bad if you did pay me, of course, but the knowledge is - to someone who follows Nethys, it's priceless. And in terms of what - you probably guessed before that I was going to talk to you about - that could be part of it too. You could use me however you wanted, anytime you wanted, in that way too, even if you weren't going to give me a child then or ever. I'll do anything you like, you can ask or I can try to guess, and you won't have to try to make me feel good too, unless you want to, I can just serve you, if you want. To somebody who belongs to Nethys - knowledge like that - is worth it."
Keltham: Keltham is not entirely unmoved by this. He's starting to wonder, in the back of his mind, what all of his other confessions will be like, this is starting to resemble a certain kind of dath ilani fiction in some ways, but this one - is an interesting flavor, yeah.
He's also not taking it entirely at face value, of course, he's not a complete idiot and the resemblance to fiction may or may not be telling.
Keltham: "How much trouble are you in if the Chelish government finds out about this?" Keltham says, a careful kind of probe with many possible returns.
Ione Sala: "I mean - it's hard to - look, suppose I asked you in dath ilan whether people ever got in trouble for things they theoretically shouldn't get in trouble for, how would it work for you?" Because she has absolutely no idea what Keltham is going to find at all plausible here.
Keltham: "Governance gets in trouble for violating the rules same as anybody else. For them to avoid that, they'd have to, I don't know, put somebody into cryonic suspension and make it look like an accident? Somehow be in collusion with the Keepers and get them to falsely declare an infohazard which, you know, would not be even the tiniest bit easy at all and there are lines of double-checking there too, I mean, there's a much smaller order of very smart people whose point is basically supposed to be 'Keep an eye on the Keepers.' I'm not sure what level of antisocial collusion you're trying to ask about or postulate."
Ione Sala: "Things are just less organized in Golarion, Keltham. Sometimes people play things safer, here, than they must do in dath ilan, because they aren't connected to a giant miracle that stores all the knowledge in the world, and they don't know how everything works inside the villa they just came to, from the wizard school they were in before that. I mean, maybe if I suddenly vanish and you never hear from me again, or I'm suspiciously assassinated in the middle of class, that would be something to notice?" She really hopes that she just unsigned her death warrant instead of signing it. "I would not expect the typical member of the Chelish government to do that to me, I wouldn't expect them to do anything at all to me," what with the typical member of Chelish government being nowhere near her, "but I'm in a different place than I was yesterday and you expect me to be surer of myself than I am."
Keltham: "I don't understand why you'd tell this to me, then," if it was true and not a trap set to see if I'm planning to betray Asmodeus. "You're not worried about - listeners behind the walls, magical eavesdropping?"
Ione Sala: Think think think - "I mean, if there are, that part of the government isn't famous for telling everything they hear to the rest of the world or even the rest of the government, you know, and - I just - I think maybe Nethys would be pleased if I helped you learn magic, or just helped you spread the kind of knowledge that you're spreading. You've changed my life much more than you realize, with what you said there, because of what happened inside me when I heard it, and it seemed right to tell you about that and to offer to do what I can for you."
Keltham: "Thank you for telling me, if you were in fact being honest. I'll keep your putative secret and won't use it against you, unless I relearn by means unconnected to how I first learned it, in the ways considered usual in dath ilan for keeping a secret that was promised. I - will have to think about what that means for a relationship between us, I was not expecting that offer and it's not something where I already know internally how I'll respond, even conditioned on all of that being completely true."
Ione Sala: Ione kneels in front of him, and bows her head. "I am at your command and at your pleasure, teacher," she says, and maybe even manages to make it sound a little low and husky. "Whenever you decide. And no matter what you decide - thank you."
Keltham: Keltham exits.
It certainly has been a day.
Ione Sala: Ione straightens up. It still doesn't seem wise to think or feel anything unnecessary. Her heart is hammering very hard, nonetheless, and there is sweat, though not, she hopes, visible sweat. Well, it wouldn't be surprising if she looked nervous to whoever will be speaking to her now.
lintamande: Elias has a Mage Hand - not quite gouge out her eyeball, even though he's tempted, it'll make her useless for the next ten minutes and there's some information he ought to urgently have. But press against her eyeball, relentless enough to force her to turn her face.
"It would be pretty inconvenient," he says, "to have someone permanently impersonate you; but I've got to say, you're shaping up to be even more inconvenient than that, which is really quite an achievement. Who was it."
Ione Sala: Can she hide it - maybe pretend it was all a seduction scheme that got away from her, ask for a talisman that makes her look like an oracle of Nethys - no, that's not going to work in real life, somebody will check her current aura in detail before they give her a talisman like that -
"Nethys made me his oracle. I didn't ask for it, I didn't know it would happen, I was just thinking about wanting to know more things and I suppose I thought too loudly. I will cooperate with the Chelish government in anything it asks so long as that doesn't turn Nethys against me in my afterlife."
lintamande: "Fail your will save, say that again."
Ione Sala: She fails her will save. "Nethys made me his oracle. I didn't ask for it or know it would happen. I'll cooperate with the Chelish government on anything that doesn't turn Nethys against me."
lintamande: "Repeat, word for word: You'll confirm, once Keltham is competent enough to check the claim you're an oracle of Nethys, that Cheliax isn't betraying him and that we're representing our church the way Nethys's church represents it."
Ione Sala: "I will confirm, once Keltham is competent enough to check the claim I'm an oracle of Nethys, that Cheliax isn't betraying him and that we're representing our church the way Nethys's church represents it."
lintamande: "It's serious misconduct, to try to come to Keltham's attention just to alter the balance of considerations against killing you. If three girls do that, he's going to conclude something's up. Maybe two."
Ione Sala: "I - was afraid that if I just let you find out and kill me, or remove me, which is what you'd obviously do, it would go against what Nethys wanted from me and I don't know what Nethys does to mortals who offend Him inside His afterlife I just know that He can drive people mad at any time - I wasn't trying to inconvenience you, I wasn't even trying to live, I was just trying to make sure Nethys didn't shatter my soul for not trying -"
lintamande: "Well, I'll submit the situation for review," Elias says, coldly, and now he can gouge her eyeball out, the conversation being over.
(Someone will come by to heal it in an hour or so. They're not savages.)
Ione Sala: It's not her most painful punishment.
Ione Sala will lie on the floor and try not to move and hold a hand over the eye socket so she doesn't bleed out too much, and endure.
Everything has changed.
People will still force her to let them read her mind, so there are a lot of things she should not think, must not think, about how everything has changed.
(Nethys is her god now -)
Not thinking that.
(Knowledge, magic -)
Not thinking that.
(What's Nethys's afterlife like if she can serve Him well?)
Not thinking that.
(Deep down she really, really, really wasn't looking forward to -)
Definitely not thinking that.
She wipes the smile hard off her face as soon as she notices that it's there.
Otolmens: Otolmens is as furious as She has ever been at any point in the last aeon, which is something of a narrow range on both sides, but still.
They NEVER LISTEN.
She specifically told them, She told them ALL, that they were not allowed to do ANYTHING NONSTANDARD around THAT mortal, and then Nethys goes and drops FOUR ORACLE LEVELS on some nearby mortal that Otolmens would not have THOUGHT was particularly dangerous but if Nethys wants this mortal to have FOUR ORACLE LEVELS than She wants this mortal COMPLETELY OUT OF HER MULTIVERSE along with that OTHER ONE.
While Otolmens will not, of course, break The Rules regardless of provocation, she knows how The Rules work on Golarion, and if Nethys is openly opposing Her, which He most certainly now is, and doing so by means of granting levels to mortals, then that opens up more options for Her as well.
Iarwain: A halfling slave in the halls, performing his endless task of cleaning up after the idiots and their endless messes, is now, very suddenly, a fourth-level oracle of Otolmens.
lintamande: He is immediately arrested by security.
Keltham: Keltham successfully finds his way back to his bedroom, lies down in bed, closes his eyes, and tries to think in a dath ilani deliberate resting pattern. He's not very good at it but he knows it anyways, since it's one of those things where it's better if everybody knows how to do it a little even if they're not very good at it.
(Carissa asking him what's Chaotic for a dath ilani -)
Not thinking that.
(Ione speaking awkwardly, not with the dignified cheerfulness of her rare vocalizations in the libary, bent in that strange lowered posture with her head facing down -)
Not thinking that.
(Every few hours he updates again about conditions in Golarion being even worse, though apparently 'all random local landing regions are as bad as the Worldwound' was successfully an overshoot of where that was heading -)
Not thinking that either. His brain needs to rest.
(He needs to figure out what people here use instead, if 'cuddleroom' doesn't translate to Taldane. And also is there any way to figure out whether his contraception is still active, or if he would've gotten rid of it by using healing energy on himself last night? Maybe he can find security and ask them who to ask.)
Okay, both valid questions, but nonetheless, be still, his brain. This morning he got woken up by light in the windows, instead of waking up to his own rhythm, and it is more than plausible that his brain will now benefit from at least a brief nap. Learning wizard magic will probably go better with relatively less tired brains.
lintamande: All right, you know what, there is a lot of divine interference here and waiting until tonight to get the girls to sell their souls seems like it might be waiting too long.
Elias goes after Carissa first, since she cannot in fact be gotten tonight.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa was going to take a bath but manages to be graceful about being interrupted.
"Tell me," Elias says to her, "how you reconcile the teachings of our god with the teachings of dath ilan."
Oh, wow, this conversation is going to suck. "Dath ilan is different from our world, and I think less of Keltham's lessons transfer than he realizes," she says blandly.
"I forgot to mention," Elias says, "that I'm in a hurry, and that your ability to say things that don't mean anything isn't in question. What's wrong?"
"- he's got to be wrong about Law and Chaos because if that's all there was to it some church would explain it that way, and they don't. He's got to be wrong about, uh, I think dath ilan teaches things well for if you're going for the Starstone, but badly for if you're going to Hell, because you don't need a lot of initiative at making progress on unstructured questions and developing it before you're a devil seems like it involves a lot of indulging lazy human impulses -"
"Cleverly said. Is that a trade you want to make, becoming less useful to Hell after death to be more useful to Keltham?"
"- I think it serves Asmodeus, for me to... indulge weak human impulses temporarily, if that's all I can do to try to understand dath ilan's technology. We'll make Cheliax stronger and more powerful and more useful to Him, and if I require more correction subsequently, so be it."
"I think you'll require different correction, at least. But there is opportunity to arrange it in advance."
This is hardly even surprising so it's confusing that Carissa feels like she's falling, and like her fingertips are tingling. "Of course."
"We've made arrangements with some devils for purchase contracts with the students here. Take your time to read it over, of course. We're going to invite most of the students to a signing ceremony tonight, but it sounds like you've made conflicting plans?"
"Well, I don't know, can I bring a date?" asks Carissa sweetly. Elias slaps her, harder than that really warranted (though it did warrant it), hard enough to kill someone who wasn't a wizard. Maybe he's otherwise having a bad day.
"You have an hour to read it over and request any changes to the terms," he says, and (apparently) leaves.
Carissa is not under the impression she is alone.
She sits down. Reads through the contract, which doesn't take an hour.
And then takes her bath. She's not sure when else she's going to have the opportunity.
Keltham: (Project Nap: currently making excellent progress!)
lintamande: Elias returns at precisely the time he said he would, and starts a summons. "Did you have revisions?"
Carissa Sevar: "No." It's a standard contract. She's read them before.
"Did you pick your reward of appropriately commensurate value?"
"Yes." Be a professional, do not squeal and jump up and down. "I selected permanent, non-dispellable arcane sight."
"That's what I took too," Elias says, almost warmly.
She's not going to get drawn in to small talk. "Do you want me to tell the kids it's a standard contract? I don't know how many of them will have looked one up."
"The ones who don't have the initiative to get confirmation they have a standard contract don't have a standard contract."
Carissa reads hers one last time, to double check.
Phistophilus: Summoned, he comes.
Ah, Cheliax. He adores Cheliax. The contracts are on the bare side of what'll work under Law, and the Chelish take them anyways because they've been indoctrinated to believe that they're going to Hell regardless. And they're not even wrong; but a slave who can't escape is so much more valuable as a slave, and the contract isn't worth but a fraction of that increase in value, for the sort of soul that Cheliax sends to sign. They've been given a rather selective history of contracts with devils, and they believe they're doing well for themselves as negotiators. Devils fight and maim each other for the privilege, to be summoned as contracting devils in Cheliax, because the taste of it is so very very sweet.
Phistophilus: He doesn't speak, at first, simply takes the contract and reads it through.
Standard. For Cheliax.
Phistophilus: He turns then to the little mortal. "And who is this worm who seeks to merchant her soul, already damned, to He who is already its master?"
Carissa Sevar: She feels like a silly little kid. Which is of course the intent, and also basically true, next to a devil.
- well, she's doing more for Asmodeus than this devil is likely to have the chance to. She's going to revolutionize Golarion.
"Carissa Sevar," she says clearly, and mostly calmly. A human would think she was calm.
Iarwain: (Previously, in Hell:)
Asmodeus: The most important thing to understand about a god is that, under almost all circumstances, and with extremely rare exceptions, their attention is not only divided but splintered.
Perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not, Irori has threatened to get the better of Asmodeus in a bargain.
Pride is among His domains.
Asmodeus is a greater and much older god than Irori, closer to the center of all things. Compared to Irori, Asmodeus's facets are larger; the totality of the gem that is Him, vastly bigger.
Asmodeus is also in many more places at once, compared to Irori.
His decision must be the equivalent of a snap decision, made in reflex, in much less time than Irori had to think.
Yet even His reflex thoughts are vast, and able.
The bargain now sealed between Himself and Irori specifies much, to avoid Asmodeus getting the better of Irori in simple and obvious ways. He may not direct His church to specially monitor or distrust the mortal Carissa Sevar; nor, through the particulars by which the mortal is given freedom of travel in Cheliax if the time comes to sell its soul, may Asmodeus insinuate anything which works to that mortal's disadvantage, or makes it a target in the eyes of His church. Asmodeus is constrained in how He may expect the results of His commands to appear, their impacts upon the mortal. And there are old treaties regarding what the denizens of Hell may say to the living, besides.
There is, nonetheless, a loophole in all that, if Asmodeus is giving an unbound mortal free passage through Cheliax. The whole affair must look at least a little odd. The contract cannot demand that these events not look odd. He cannot set His church upon the mortal, by direct command nor by insinuation and what He knows or suspects His church will conclude; He cannot disadvantage the mortal, cannot work against it; that does leave open other possibilities.
It is possible that Irori, taking longer to think, foresaw this very loophole and that Asmodeus might try to exploit it, if Asmodeus thought the contract to His own favor at all, or regretted it after; and that Irori deliberately forebore to close it, because it is not Irori's way to protect mortals from trials.
If so, Asmodeus will take that play. He does not know exactly what Irori saw when Irori looked at this mortal, but when Asmodeus looked at it, from His own angle, it did not seem like the sort of mortal looking to flee Cheliax at the first opportunity to take an atonement.
And besides, if Asmodeus does not play this move, then Irori gets the better of Him in a contract.
All this goes through a splintered facet of Asmodeus's attention in a fractional moment of reflex, before that splintered fragment directs a thought to a Duke of Hell who will not be shattered by it; and then goes on to other parts of His business, elsewhere on this plane. The thought consists of the relevant facts and a statement of intents; greater attention to the mortal details and specifying a precise policy around them is what underlings are for.
Phistophilus: "Sign, then," says the devil. He watches Carissa closely, for any sign of hesitancy or falsehood in the motion.
Carissa Sevar: A human wouldn't detect any. Carissa has known since she was two that she is going to go to Hell, and might as well arrange in advance and get something for it. She takes the pen and pulls the contract over to sign.
Phistophilus: He reaches out and snaps the pen from her hand as it is about to touch the contract.
"So eager," he purrs. "But no." His (rather mystifying) instructions leave some leeway here, and he is curious about how the mortal Carissa Sevar will react; he is curious of what material a mortal such as this is made.
Carissa Sevar: Not at all, at first, because that's a good default, not reacting at all. Elias is preparing a spell, with the leisurely motions of a combat caster who isn't in a combat sort of hurry, but no matter how much he takes his time she can't outrun him, and -
- Keltham'll notice, Keltham'll be suspicious -
"Is there a problem?" she says a little sharply. "I have a date, you see, so perhaps you'd better point it out."
Phistophilus: Oh, he likes this one. He'd like to rip her heart out, specifically, but that's how it is in Hell.
"Rejoice, mortal, for you have somehow come, however momentarily, to the attention of a god. Asmodeus has made known to us a tiny fraction of His will, and you are implicated in it."
Carissa Sevar: Elias, she notes with distant satisfaction, has stopped moving.
There's a lot of that going around, she wants to make her lips say, it's the perfect response, but she cannot, actually, get the words out, or any words.
Phistophilus: "Here is the will of Asmodeus, as interpreted by Hell, to his slaves of Church and Queen."
"Carissa Sevar is not to sell her soul to Hell this day."
"Carissa Sevar is to be allowed freedom of travel beyond Cheliax, as if she had sold her soul."
"Carissa Sevar is to be allowed continued access to her teacher, as if she had sold her soul."
"In matters apart from those, Carissa Sevar is to be trusted, rewarded, and punished no more and no less than she has earned, by Asmodeus's Law."
"Asmodeus's Church need not concern itself proactively with Carissa Sevar's correction, beyond the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law; but if Carissa Sevar seeks out theological instruction of her own accord, her questions are to be given priority as though she were Asmodeus's own cleric of the fourth circle."
"Asmodeus's Queen and her slaves need not concern themselves proactively with Carissa Sevar's descent into cruelty, wickedness, and the darkness of her own soul; but if Carissa Sevar seeks to indulge of her own accord, she is to be prioritized for support as though she were the inheriting daughter of a Count of Cheliax."
"Do you hear and understand these instructions, slave of Church and Queen?"
lintamande: Elias highly values his reputation for composure. He values even more highly his ability to only say "yes, I understand" if he actually understands, so he pauses for several seconds, reviewing in his head.
"I hear and understand," he says.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa does NOT understand!!!!
Carissa Sevar: - and doesn't need to. Right now. One thing at a time.
Phistophilus: "Here is the will of Asmodeus, as interpreted by Hell, to his slave Carissa Sevar. But understand and be warned that these are not Asmodeus's true thoughts, only Hell's own understanding of them, passed down from Asmodeus to Duke to Baron to this one small finger of Hell. Asmodeus's thoughts may not be known to the likes of us, and their truths are forbidden to speak in this world. These are not Asmodeus's words to Carissa Sevar, but only our understanding of His will:"
"Serve Me well in this world and you shall be raised high in it."
"Remember that you are not Irori. Do not think yourself likely to succeed in perfecting yourself without divine aid."
"Acknowledge the desires in yourself that have no place in Axis, and accept that your rightful place is in Hell."
"Come to Me in Hell without thought of other choices, as mortals once did in the days before they were cursed with their own wills, and you shall be among the most treasured of My possessions."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is not so overawed that she forgets to think that among the many reasons it might serve Asmodeus to express such a thing, 'it's true' does not rate particularly high..
But she nods. "I understand. Thank you."
Phistophilus: He stares at her for a long moment.
"You should be more excited and grateful, little mortal. Even most Barons of Hell have never come to our Lord's direct attention. It is doubtful that I ever will through all eternity. I would dearly like to eat your heart right now."
Carissa Sevar: But, see, if she twitches her face she would start crying, and that would be terribly pathetic, and -
- and being small and reasonable was a good strategy ten minutes ago and isn't, now - come on, Carissa, if you play the wrong game you lose.
Carissa Sevar: - she reaches into the circle. Reaches for his heart, or where it would be, if he were human.
"Did you hear what you just said?" she says. "We'll see who gets to eat whose heart."
Phistophilus: It occurs to him, then, though only briefly, that perhaps he ought to be the one who is afraid. If she succeeds -
He turns from her. "I hope you fail and are cursed, and that I am privileged to have custody of your soul. I shall go file the request for it now, in fact."
Phistophilus: And he departs.