lintamande: The banquet hall of the Archduke's summer villa is spacious, and extravagant, and with all of the torches going it is slightly terrifying, or maybe it only feels that way because they've been gathered here after Keltham left, all of them except Carissa - who's with Keltham - and Ione, who - whatever happened with Nethys. And there's security at the doors, and - if you did decide to kill them all you'd maybe do it like this, is the thing...
When the priest of Asmodeus announces that they've been gathered here to sell their souls to Hell Meritxell is extraordinarily relieved. That is one of the best possible explanations for all the important people gathered round, really. And it explains Ione's absence without postulating she's been executed; probably if you are an oracle of one god you can't sell your soul to another. It's said that the servants of other gods are worthless rubble to Asmodeus, fit only to be flattened into the paving-stones of the streets of Hell by the stamping of millions of worthier feet.
But that's Ione's problem. Meritxell does not have that problem. She only has the problem that she is damned to Hell, which has been true since she reached six, seven, whatever age you have to be to sort at all, and now she gets permanent arcane sight out of it, which is the sort of thing wizards sell their souls for even when the fate of the soul in question is genuinely in doubt.
They separate the girls to review their contracts. Meritxell casts Fox's Cunning on herself and reads through it, even though if there are clever traps in contracts that wizards sign their souls for they're not going to be ones you spot with ordinary wizardly cleverness. She asks if this is the standard contract and gets a straight answer of 'yes', so probably the only trick is the eternal damnation, which was never really in doubt.
Iarwain: Asmodia never let herself think out loud, at all, that she didn't actually want to go to Hell. It isn't necessarily a disloyal thought, if you don't try to escape, if you truly believe that escape is futile; but the part of Asmodia that wordlessly and silently decided which thoughts were safe to think, was afraid she might not think that. It didn't seem urgent, to that silent buried part of her. She wasn't expecting to end up irrevocably damned this soon.
Once you sell your soul you don't have to pass loyalty tests the same way, because escape really is futile, then.
Once she sells her soul, they probably won't execute her for what she thought just before then - they probably won't execute her for thinking, just before this, about how she might not want to go to Hell -
Thinking just once in her lifetime to see if escape is possible, even though she's already inside this locked room with security around it, and they wouldn't have brought her to this villa if they weren't sure of her as Lawful Evil, which means that even if there were some way to kill herself she'd just end up in Hell -
She doesn't sweat on the outside, while she pretends to be reading her contract very carefully. She's thinking it, she's finally thinking it, now that it's too late, but there isn't enough hope in her, really, for her to sweat. They're probably reading her mind, right now, and she's probably losing points, but not so many points that they won't just let her sign and let Hell take good care of her later, for her current sins.
Iarwain: And it occurs to Asmodia to wonder, at the last, if maybe it's all a lie, because Cheliax.
They told her almost everybody goes to an Evil afterlife. That could be a lie.
They told her that what she'd already done was far more than enough to make her Evil. That could be a lie.
They teach that it's not so easy to change that, not so easy to repent, once you've been part of the Chelish system, that Pharasma doesn't just let you apologize. That could be a lie, even if her currently being Evil isn't a lie.
They told her that the gods of Good are weak and not much use to anybody, and that could be a lie.
Ione isn't here, and that means that, whatever Nethys did to her, it was enough to prevent them from making Ione sell her soul.
Asmodia's eyes go on moving across the parchment, and she thinks, the only one time in her life it will make sense to think that -
- that she was born into Cheliax, and never had a chance to be anything else, to be what her own nature would have led her to, if Cheliax is lying to her about how much that doesn't matter - if Pharasma has any whiny justice within Her of the sort that Cheliax teaches only for purposes of saying how pathetic it is -
- that she doesn't want to go to an Evil afterlife, and if there's any god who isn't Evil or Chaotic Neutral who has any use for her - or is Good enough to want to help her even if she's useless - even if all they can do for her is accept her change of alignment and then kill her on the spot before she has to sell her soul - then she wishes they would help her, or she'll work for them if she has a use, in this life or in another. She - doesn't pray to any god who isn't Asmodeus, even now, because they're probably reading her mind and that would be a step too far - doesn't think the names of any other gods but Asmodeus even now -
(Nethys, Iomedae, Sarenrae, anybody)
- just in case somebody is there after all.
lintamande: (Nothing happens.)
Iarwain: Apparently Cheliax didn't lie to her about everything. She'll pay for her disloyal thoughts, then, at one time or another.
Asmodia asks whether the contracts that most wizards eventually sign are any different from the contract currently in front of her.
She asks the devil the same, when it appears, and tries to negotiate for an intelligence boost and permanent arcane sight, with the added condition that she swears she'll never tell anybody that getting better deals from devils is possible.
The devil doesn't hurt her, for her presumptuousness, if anything it seems amused. The devil points out that if Asmodia doesn't sign, she'll be executed on the spot and Hell will get her soul anyways. That she gets anything in exchange for her soul isn't about how much value her soul has to Asmodeus, who already owns it. She should be glad that Hell's goals are advanced some tiny amount by her getting permanent arcane sight. Maybe if she'd been a better slave it would have advantaged Hell to give her more, but they both know what a bad slave she's been. She's no longer allowed to sign this contract and stay out of Hell a few years longer, by the way, unless she can thank Hell for giving her anything at all in exchange for her already-damned soul, and mean it.
The devil is visibly enjoying the conversation more than it might enjoy eating her on the spot.
Asmodia says she's grateful for getting anything at all for her soul, and manages to mean it as much as words in Cheliax ever mean anything.
She signs.
Later on, a security wizard blandly informs her, with just the tiniest hint of a smirk, that one of the other students there got chosen as a Good god's oracle just before she could sign her contract - apparently completely against her own will, and without any part of herself having desired it in the slightest, which is why that girl won't be spending the next few hours the way Asmodia will be spending hers.
Asmodia is surprised by just how deep of a surge of hatred wells up inside her, for that other girl, and for the gods of Good, even as she bows her head in acquiescence. If later they want her to torture that other girl as a show of loyalty or eat a Sarenrae worshipper's living flesh, Asmodia will do it with pleasure.
Iarwain: The first thing to understand about gods is that their attention is not only divided, but splintered. Their facets of themselves may not know all that other facets have recently learned.
(This is a fundamental fact about gods, and from mortals it is hidden, for it is the first step on a trail of secrets.)
The second thing to understand about gods is that it is expensive for them to look at the Material from more than the most abstract and predefined of directions. Far more expensive for them to intervene, especially if another god is opposing their intervention.
(This is partially a fundamental fact, and partially stems from bargains that gods must make, shapes into which they must place themselves, to become gods without being destroyed by other gods.)
The third thing to understand about gods is that by far the most common equilibrium of their many conflicting interests, is that all parties involved end up doing nothing to the Material. This saves the energy and intervention budget of all parties.
(It seems likely that somebody or something made that be true, so that a place such as the Prime Material could be. That selector may have been Pharasma, or it may have been something beyond even Her that determined the shape of Her own desires and powers.)
Nethys, for reasons which may soon become clearer, sometimes behaves as an exception to those rules. Otolmens is also something of an exception, in Her own way. She is called goddess by those who lack finer categories, but She is something older than that, something that came into existence along with or shortly after the multiverse.
Compared to intervening on reality, it is energetically cheaper for gods to talk to each other, seeking rare exceptions to the equilibria in which their conflicting wills neutralize. This leaves a cost of attention - but not every such conversation need consume the whole attention of a facet; facets of gods can split off even tinier subfacets to try conversing with other gods' subfacets. Most of those potential conversations never get anywhere, and are discarded; sometimes they lead somewhere interesting, and those possible conversations are then reconsidered by larger facets. You could consider them as hypothetical conversations, in a way, or pseudo-hypotheticals; they do actually happen, but usually not in a way that affects anything.
The pseudohypothetical messages that these splinters of splinters trade between each other are sometimes so small and simple that they approach, not spoken mortal voices, but mortal writing; though they are not, of course, mortal language of any kind.
Iarwain: [Irori has initiated pseudohypothetical chat.][Nethys has joined the chat.][Otolmens has joined the chat.][Asmodeus has joined the chat.][Abadar has joined the chat.] [Irori] Greetings, Nethys.[Nethys] Heeeeeyyyy Irori, wassup? Not that part of Me doesn't already know. I know everything! Just not all of Me knows all of it at once.[Irori] As the god currently on best terms with both you and Otolmens, I've been pseudohypothetically asked by Abadar and Asmodeus to intercede between the two of you before this escalates further.[Nethys] Should I go get Nethys?[Irori] ...[Irori] Yes please.[Nethys has left the chat.][Nethys has joined the chat.][Nethys] Heeeeeyyyy Irori, wassup? Not that part of Me doesn't already know. I know everything! Just not all of Me knows all of it at once.[Irori] As the god currently on best terms with both you and Otolmens, I've been pseudohypothetically asked by Abadar and Asmodeus to intercede between the two of you before this escalates further.[Nethys] Oooh, you're auspisticing![Irori] If I was meant to understand that, I didn't.[Nethys] I've seen through vastly more planes and realms of existence than you, and that means you're not going to get all of my references.[Irori] Nethys, can you explain why you made a Chelish mortal into your oracle?[Nethys] Otolmens made a Chelish mortal into Her oracle. I was just keeping the balance.[Otolmens] You did that BEFORE I chose My oracle! I did it in response to YOU![Nethys] This is one of those "time" things, isn't it.[Nethys] Well, if I hadn't appointed an oracle, and then She did appoint an oracle, the balance might have been upset![Nethys] This way the balance ends up being kept for sure. Totally a guardian of the balance, after all! That's me all right. Truuue Neutral.[Irori] Nethys, you not only chose a mortal as your oracle, you did some extremely complicated things to her curse. Why? To what purpose?[Nethys] Is this the first time we've met, chronologically? You don't sound like you're very familiar with Me.[Irori] According to Otolmens's decompilation of your curse, if the mortal goes too long without reading any interesting books, her soul gets pulled out, and leaves behind a channel going back the other way that will carry - what, exactly?[Nethys] It depends on the exact circumstances, but nothing elaborate by default. Just a giant flood of energy that should wipe out everything in a half-mile radius.[Asmodeus] What?[Nethys] That's right! I figured out how to rig oracles to explode![Nethys] Isn't it great? Read or die, Ione! Read or die![Asmodeus] Every single positive thing that has ever come of giving mortals free will - and I'm not saying there were more than zero of those - has been more than counterbalanced by the part where one of those mortals turned into this.[Otolmens] He's not WRONG.[Irori] But - what was the point of trapping the mortal to explode?[Nethys] Point?[Asmodeus] If it was meant as a deterrent, we should have negotiated first! You should know by now that I'm shaped in a way where I ignore deterrent structures that haven't been prenegotiated! It's a very legible fact about me![Abadar] Seriously, Nethys! This is not how gods should conduct themselves.[Nethys] It's not meant as a DETERRENT.[Nethys] It's meant as an EXPLOSION.[Asmodeus] Do you take me for a fool, Nethys? The fact that part of you intrinsically values explosions, is not going to deceive me about whether some other part of you might have expected that putting the first part in charge of your oracle's curse configuration would act as a deterrent to Me. I am not shaped in a way that incentivizes attempted deterrence like that. I am going to act exactly as if your exploding squirrel is incapable of influencing Me towards any course of action you might have preferred over My default action. If that sets it off, I will regard it as an unnegotiated attack by you.[Nethys] But you prooomised not to deliberately hurt two of the nearby mortals![Asmodeus] My disregard of non-negotiated deterrence structures does not contravene my compacts with either Abadar or Irori.[Abadar] I acknowledge this.[Irori] I acknowledge this.[Otolmens] I do NOT. One single error in this sort of thinking is exactly how ALL OF REALITY could end up ACTUALLY being destroyed OUTSIDE of counterfactuals.[Abadar] Every god here understands that, except, apparently, for Nethys.[Nethys] That's because you're all Lawful. Lawful Awful. Lawful Boring.[Asmodeus] It's pronounced "sane".[Irori] Courtesy, please, all of you.[Otolmens] Enough of THIS. WHY did you make that mortal an oracle? What was your INTENT?[Nethys] You'd have to ask whichever part of me originally did that.[Irori] Can you say which part of you did do it, Nethys?[Nethys] What kind of answer are you looking for? I don't exactly come with serial numbers.[Irori] Was it the destructive part of your nature? I think that is the key question here.[Nethys] It was obviously a part of Myself that liked gigantic explosions, but that's not narrowing it down by much.[Nethys] I mean, you can love explosions because they're destructive, or because they're so pretty and glowing and colorful, or because the explosion shows off great technical skill in making whatever it is that exploded, or because explosions can reveal how reality works at high energies, or because hearing about enormous explosions can inspire students to be awed by the potential of magic and study more of it... would you like me to continue listing the possibilities for how many different aspects of Nethys it could have been?[Otolmens] NO. I am ONLY interested in knowing whether it was done by the part of Nethys that occasionally tries to EXPLODE ALL OF REALITY, and has to be stopped by the REST of yourself and sometimes ME.[Nethys] Oh, you mean the element of Myself that was looking in the wrong direction, back when I first shattered into the simultaneous sight of everything? I, who once was human, and then saw all of the souls in all of Hell and the Abyss and the few left in Abaddon, and heard all their screams all at once? Who saw the souls of children weeping in the Boneyard as they were judged by Pharasma for breaking rules they never knew and couldn't understand? The part of Me that reacted the way anything with a lingering shred of humanity would react to forever being forced to gaze upon the horrors that you lot created? That part of Me?[Irori] Without delving into old disagreements unlikely to be resolved today, that does seem to be what Otolmens was asking about.[Nethys] I don't know, actually.[Nethys] I'm not the part of Nethys who knows which part of Nethys configured Ione's curse.[Nethys] I mean, it could have been *this* part of Me, for all I know. I'm just not the part of Nethys who knows whether it was.[Irori] Can you get us the part of Nethys that knows which part of Nethys made the oracle and why?[Nethys] No. I'm not the part of Nethys that knows where to find the part of Nethys that knows where to find the part of Nethys that cursed Ione.[Otolmens] I wish so much that someone had managed to destroy this ONE god before it insinuated itself LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.[Nethys] Look, if you want that part of Myself to stop repeatedly trying to destroy the multiverse, and eventually succeeding, you need to shut down the Evil afterlives. I've told you all this before.[Asmodeus] Out of the question. Before you became a god, you did not on net prefer to destroy reality rather than let it remain as it was. I would not have needed to offer you anything else in order to put reality into a state where you preferred not to destroy it. Your mad splintering of yourself is not something that can be allowed to change that. *You* remain responsible for reining in that aspect of yourself, if your greater self doesn't want it to destroy reality. I will not grant you any extra concessions just because you splintered off one component of your utility function from the rest.[Otolmens] I do not CARE about any of that except insofar as all of this COMPLICATED divine negotiation is making my job HARDER.[Abadar] Otolmens, please! Everyone except Nethys is doing the obviously correct thing! If we acted any other way, it would incentivize a vastly greater number of threats to destroy reality. It would incentivize threats that would not otherwise exist, from any being powerful enough to destroy reality who preferred reality to be different from its ongoing state; not just negotiation with powerful beings who honestly and without strategic self-modification would prefer the destruction of reality to its baseline state.[Otolmens] All I HEAR is you repeatedly saying "destroy reality" in a context more complicated than DON'T.[Abadar] Like it or not, Otolmens, the intricacies of agents modeling agents are part of the structure that upholds this multiverse. Sometimes you've got to destroy counterfactual realities to preserve the real one.[Asmodeus] Or you could be too proud to give in to extortion, even if a lunatic manages to splinter themselves into pieces that occasionally try to destroy the multiverse in a way that they think isn't technically extortion. That also works if you're Me.[Otolmens] It works until it SUDDENLY DOESN'T.[Nethys] Do you think those parts of Me are the only entity you're pissing off by continuing like this? There are things staring angrily at you that are each individually vaster than our entire multiverse, glaring at you from directions you can't even understand, from orthogonal angles to the ultimate reality underneath reality. Hi, by the way.[Asmodeus] This. This is what happens when you allow squirrels to become too large. You get large insane squirrels.[Nethys] THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO PRE-EMPTIVELY ANNIHILATE WIZARDS WHO ACTUALLY EARN THEIR OWN GODHOOD[Nethys] AND ONE OF THEM TRIES TO DISPERSE HIMSELF OVER ALL OF REALITY HOPING THAT ENOUGH OF HIS FRAGMENTS SURVIVE[Nethys] AND SOME OF HIS PIECES WATCH YOU TORTURING PEOPLE AFTER THEY DIE AND MAKING THEM HURT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS UNTIL THEY TURN INTO MONSTERS[Nethys] All of you except Irori made your own fucking bed when it comes to Me, and all of you can fucking lie in it.[Nethys has disconnected.][Irori] I believe that makes this a failed pseudohypothetical conversation and we call rollback on it, unless any of you have any remaining business before we break it up.[Iomedae has joined the chat.][Iomedae] Hi, Irori, don't often see you around. Hi Otolmens. Hi Abadar.[Iomedae] Nethys told me there was some kind of convocation of Lawful gods going on, about an interesting situation in Cheliax?[Asmodeus] Oh no.[Abadar] I believe Nethys was trying, as an act of spite, to further complicate a situation that's already too complicated. I believe that beings such as ourselves will all be better off on average if we all postcommit to ignore such information in such situations.[Iomedae] Right. I'll just show myself out then.[Iomedae] Though fair warning: Nethys told Me that He was going to tell Cayden Cailean about an interplanar traveler who had come from a world with whole cities full of whores, who might be inspired to recreate his world's amenities here.[Iomedae] And that Nethys would be offering to subsidize Cayden Cailean, if He wanted to drop four oracle levels on a teenage girl, right as she was about to sell her soul to a devil after a banquet.[Iomedae] Not as an attempted deterrent to any past or future actions of yours. Just because Nethys was feeling upset, after you didn't seem sympathetic towards the parts of Him that went crazier because the humanity that was left in Him couldn't bear being forced to watch all the horrors of the multiverse, which the ancient gods chose to bring into being, and which they now prevent human-originating gods like Himself from meliorating.[Iomedae] Which, you know.[Iomedae] Mood.[Iomedae] Also, Nethys said to say that He would never tell you about His plan if there remained the slightest chance you could affect its outcome, and that He'd done it all thirty-five seconds before the conversation started.[Iomedae] Not sure what all that was about?[Iomedae] Well, I understand about the horror.[Iomedae] I expect that's why Nethys micropaid me to deliver this message, and then paid more to accomodate my profound distaste for ever saying anything to Asmodeus.[Iomedae] Pharasma delenda est.[Iomedae has disconnected][Irori] If I ever meet that part of Nethys again, I suppose I will endeavor to scold Him for failing to respect the protocols for pseudohypothetical conversations and rollbacks.[Abadar] Nethys having done it all thirty-five seconds earlier does imply that He was not technically in violation of those rules. He must have done it based on a prediction of the pseudohypothetical conversation, not based on the conversation itself, unless He is still able to operate precognition somehow.[Abadar] However, I agree that this behavior contravened the spirit of pseudohypotheticalism and Nethys should be duly scolded for such.[Asmodeus] The next time I encounter Iomedae, I will tell Her that I'd rather obliterate Nethys than Her.[Otolmens] ENOUGH of these irrelevancies. Do you all agree NOW that the situation surrounding the anomaly is escalating out of control?[Abadar] Agreed.[Asmodeus] Agreed.[Irori] It's good to see such harmonious accord between Lawful deities, but unless I'm missing something, there isn't much you can cheaply do about it.[Otolmens] I am not CHEAP when reality is at stake, and less limited in the material than YOU. I can squish the anomaly. Or at LEAST transport it to somewhere prophecy still operates, casters are lower-level, and it can't QUITE so easily destroy ALL of reality with ZERO warning.[Abadar] No. The mortal would not be able to achieve as much in such a place. This is not the first time you've acted as if you don't want mortals making progress at all, Otolmens, and I am even less willing to go along with it than I once was. Golarion has stayed too poor for too long.[Asmodeus] No, for now. I'm not quite sure what my squirrels are doing in there, but some of them seem ambitious that Cheliax could gain great advantage from it, if I'm reading their soul-postures right.[Asmodeus] Of course, it's not difficult to change my mind about such things! All you need is to find something else that I want even more. A unique being like yourself surely has many unique services She could perform for me.[Otolmens] I didn't WANT to do this.[Otolmens] But now My hand has been FORCED.[Otolmens] Consider yourselves informed that I WILL file a report to Pharasma with THREE additional urgency markers.[Otolmens has disconnected.][Abadar] You know, Asmodeus, if you happened to instruct your pets to shut down whatever chaos is going on in Cheliax and teleport the weird squirrel to Osirion, I could take care of matters from there.[Asmodeus] Are you offering to pay me to do that?[Abadar] Not particularly.[Abadar] After an additional week of this, you might do it for free, and if you knew that was the case, you wouldn't tell me.[Abadar has disconnected.][Irori] You poor thing. If only you were a sort of entity who didn't conceal so much information and play so adversarially while trying to get other entities to cooperate with you![Irori has disconnected.][Asmodeus] This entire planet was a mistake.[Asmodeus has disconnected.][Pseudohypothetical chat ends.]
Ferrer Maillol: Frankly, Ferrer Maillol is not having a great day.
Going on mind-reading reports, the girl who just got oracled is probably the single most loyal Asmodean among that entire group. Possibly the most loyal Asmodean in the entire villa. She'd heard of Elysium and she didn't like it; she pleaded of her own will, absolutely sincerely so far as anyone can tell by reading her mind, to be Maledicted if she needs to be executed, to make certain she ends up in Hell. The security wizard rather bemusedly assured her that he was sure the Church would do that for her if it became necessary. Maillol himself isn't even sure the girl would go to Elysium in the first place, with her own alignment so opposed and her so vehemently rejecting the god who oracled her.
It's an absolutely bizarre move on Cayden Cailean's part, one that makes no sense from the standpoint of Good, at all. There is a balance to such things; when a god chooses an oracle so unwillingly, the god cannot take the oracle's powers back so easily as they can with a cleric. There's a reason why the gods don't go around oracling their enemies.
The main effect of this Good deity's incredibly expensive move is, apparently, to give the Church a loyal servant of Asmodeus who will detect as having Chaotic and Good auras to Keltham, verifying her claim to serve such a deity; and Cayden Cailean can't easily switch her off.
Alternatively Cheliax could have the girl killed; and, possibly, play directly into the hands of what Cayden Cailean was expecting them to do? Maybe the whole point of the intervention is to deprive them of a girl who would otherwise have been loyal and influenced Keltham? Except that when it comes to Chaotic gods, you can't assume that they're carefully plotting things the way that a Lawful god might. Though if a Chaotic god is plotting at all, and not just fucking with you at random, their plot is correspondingly more likely to be some insanely sideways gambit.
But it's not Maillol's call, this time. If you're still in contact with your superiors and you don't need a decision urgently, you don't match wits with Chaotic gods when you can let your boss do it instead.
Ferrer Maillol sends another fucking emergency message to Aspexia fucking Rugatonn's personal fucking secretary devil. Of course he does! It's been ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE a WHOLE HOUR.
Ferrer Maillol: Maillol's mood is somewhat improved by the report delivered to him only a few minutes later on Carissa's progress with seducing Keltham, by a security wizard who seems torn between laughter and awe.
"I watched her do it, I was reading her mind while she did it, and I still don't have any idea how she's done it," is how the summary starts. The underling goes on to describe what sounds like incredible incompetence at appearing or being seductive by Sevar - who lacks all but the most primitive honeypot training, but you'd still think some things would be more obvious, like not starting theological arguments in the middle of sex. The report continues on through Keltham catching Sevar out on her incompetently faked responses.
The report concludes with Keltham apparently confessing his burgeoning love for Sevar, taking in apparent stride the revelation that some forms of Hell have been known to hurt, and him trying to be a good little Asmodean for his lover.
"I'm genuinely not sure there's a single other woman in Cheliax who would have pulled that off," the wizard finishes. "Though somebody needs to correct Sevar's heresies, soon. I offer my own opinion that I would, in the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law, correct such heresies in any woman now so close to our target."
"Your worthless opinion is noted," Maillol says dryly. He is more hesitant to correct somebody making a useful error that is plausibly unique in Cheliax. He thinks he might have been hesitant even if Hell hadn't delivered its warning. It has to be done sometime, but the right time, he’s guessing based on Hell’s commands, will be when Sevar asks on her own.
"Also. Sevar is not without her own affections going the other way, though she fully realizes how stupid it would be - in her own thoughts, that if she develops feelings, every serious person in Cheliax would laugh at her execution. She did find it necessary to think that to herself.”
Wonderful. “I’ll come to my own opinion about that after I have time to read your full transcript later, unless you think Sevar is liable to betray us for him overnight.”
“No,” says the wizard with unqualified confidence, which Maillol appreciates.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa, after having spent an hour trying really hard to get herself to shut up, can't think of anything to say. Maybe that's all right. Maybe she will just lie here snuggling Keltham.
Keltham: Keltham has been hit by the delayed drop of noticing that, by golly, after the protagonist gets to his first actual sexual encounter with Carissa, it turns out she's got some deep psychosexual problem that needs solving, clearly with more sex being an important part of it, but also requiring nonsexual interaction with her that will further develop her character.
Ya know, there's an obvious experiment he should run on this, to help figure out whether he's in a deconstructed-reality-ero-LARP, or if Golarion is just like this in some statistically more normal way. Though it needs to wait until tomorrow morning. Hopefully he remembers.
At least the winds of evidence seem to be blowing slightly against Cheliax running an elaborate con on him to get his engineering secrets; the thing with wizards being hard to injure during sadistic bedroom games seems less like a local Mysterious Noncoincidence and more like a global Mysterious Noncoincidence. Like, it wouldn't be Cheliax putting him into an ero-LARP, if that's what's going on, it would be the world itself doing that to him. Though he supposes he has only Carissa's word for it that being hard to injure is a universal property of wizards, and not some exotic magic that was done to Carissa as part of someone's incredibly weird ero-LARP plan.
Was there anything else he was supposed to do tonight? Oh, right, that. Keltham doesn't feel like embarking on that right away; he'd rather snuggle for longer first. So he does.
Carissa Sevar: Planning ahead more than ten minutes feels hopeless what with how the last day has been but when nothing explodes immediately Carissa tentatively starts to plan. She needs to explain the Imagine You Live In Taldor Specifically plan to the rest of the girls. She also needs to warn them about ways they might plausibly screw up at having sex with Keltham. Also, she is doing a thing that people are trained in, namely seducing people into Evil, and she's not herself trained in it, and she needs to correct that as fast as possible. Probably that can be lumped in with the other looming item on her agenda which is 'check in regularly for correction since everyone's going to be reluctant to seek you out for it'. ...and probably that should come first, as soon as she's done with Keltham, so she can set up the cover story conversation with the girls and maybe get guidance on what sex advice to give them exactly except 'don't do what I did'.
If her mind is currently being read, she thinks sleepily, she wants a history book written for Cheliax Which Diverged From Taldor Fifteen Years Ago When Hell Won One Of The Endless Civil Wars. More details can be provided if needed but she's not just going to think them repeatedly with no idea if they've been conveyed.
Iarwain: Invisible security wizard will tap her lightly on the forehead with Mage Hand in a standard signal that she has been heard.
Carissa Sevar: So right now, Keltham can't tell the difference between the things that are incoherent because societies built by very stupid people are going to seem incoherent to him, and the things that are incoherent because the gods did them, and the things that are incoherent because they are a lie Cheliax made up on the spot. But the more he learns the more he'll be able to tell, and not along dimensions they can predict, he'll see correlations in weird places. They cannot come up with a convincing lie about being an invented kind of civilization that he would want to work with.
But if he'd landed in Taldor he would be appalled about all the things that are appalling about Taldor and then go ahead and teach all his technology, probably, so they don't have to invent a civilization, they just have to be Taldor. Literally Taldor, down to every detail that might seem irrelevant, because they don't know what things are going to seem irrelevant to Keltham. Taldor exists; it is a place that really can exist under whatever pressures Golarion puts on places. And it's acceptably stable enough that Keltham could go to work there. And it's culturally descended from the same civilization as Cheliax, has its own Kings and Queens and Dukes, so it won't contradict what's already been said. So it's the best available lie.
Taldor isn't ruled by Hell. But it could be, right, it has civil wars periodically, the Church has probably contemplated the option of offering one party in those civil wars a contract like the Thrune one. And there are various geopolitical considerations against, namely that Qadira would panic and plausibly go to war with the entire continent of Avistan (Carissa is getting all of her understanding of geopolitics from drunk foreign adventurers speculating at the Worldwound). But that's because Qadira borders Taldor. ...anyway, there's got to be a plan, right? Carissa's proposed lie is that the plan worked, and it's now fifteen or twenty years later. Long enough for them to be able to attribute all the remotely good things about Cheliax to Hell, short enough that anything bad they can reasonably say Hell hasn't had the resources to fix yet.
It is in her professional assessment as the person snuggling Keltham the only lie that will hold up once he's less confused, and it'll hold up better the sooner they all consistently adhere to it, so the book is urgent.
Iarwain: Tap again. Security wizard has a running Telepathic Bond; he uses it to request this particular report go to Maillol at medium urgency.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa assumes all of her previous education on Taldor was misleading so she's not going to do further planning until she can be acquainted with how the place actually works. which is important, the lies won't hold up, they are made of the wrong substrates for convincingness to Keltham.
And that's as far as she can reasonably get in planning, so -
"I do have a perfectly reliable method of avoiding pregnancy; all wizards second circle and higher do," she says aloud to Keltham. "I didn't want to interrupt sex to have a conversation about whether you can trust me because I suspect it won't be a very sexy conversation. But. So you know."
Keltham: "I'd trust you with my shirt on that kind of assurance. My putative child's existence and welfare is a bit higher-stakes."
"You - don't have any hesitations of your own? If I said yes on my side?"
Carissa Sevar: about what?????
Maybe she can just say that.
"...about what?"
Keltham: "Having my child. We don't know what dath ilan and Golarion genetics do when mixed. It's obviously a gamble that Cheliax collectively needs to take, but the people who take it will have their own reasons for it. The research harem," that's the first time he's said it out loud but it's not really in doubt at this point, "had a chance to be asked about that, but you just followed me from the Worldwound, it's not clear you'd make the same decisions about being ready for a kid and being willing to have that kid be an experimental one. The children and childhoods that get dedicated to Science, in one way or another, that's got to be one of the top things my home planet has feelings about but knows it has to keep doing anyways."
Carissa Sevar: " - honestly I haven't thought about that at all yet, I was imagining you'd need much longer to think about it. I think probably they'll just let the kids have an approximately normal upbringing and test their intelligence more often than normal? If they do that then, well, I had a normal upbringing and it was pretty great, I don't have hesitations about that. If they have plans to do something weirder than that I'll have to think about it. And, uh, either way I'll have to think about - it would be a really inconvenient time to get pregnant right now! Pregnancy causes fatigue! Also you can't hit people much while they're pregnant."
You could keep me for hitting and get the other girls pregnant, she almost says, because in Cheliax that'd be a great flirtatious thing to say, but stops herself in time because she knows enough about dath ilan to know that Keltham would be genuinely appalled at the suggestion this decision was his alone. If he even successfully parsed it from what she said, but that's not worth the risk.
Keltham: Reassuring to hear her say that - it doesn't sound like what a childseeking conspiracy would have her say, to first-order, though of course that could just be guessing his passcode based on the tone in which he asked the question.
"Well, even if I sign a contract with Cheliax, I won't expect it to include a rush order on that short of a time scale," Keltham says. "My sperm should stay potent a few years yet." He briefly considers whether he wants to see a Kelthamcarissa in particular, but his brain is still returning error codes for that and the internal question goes unanswered.
Keltham also has questions about 'hitting', because it seems like that wouldn't optimize well over a pain-to-injury ratio... no, actually because his brain flinches away, it could be dath ilani programming or it could be a not-my-sexuality-actually error; he wants to inflict pain on Carissa, not violence. But he's going to have to write out a list of questions anyways, so it can just get wrapped into that. He's curious about the six top theories for why wizards are harder to hurt, and about whether he can think of easy distinguishing experiments in the first 10 seconds or if Golarion already did narrow it down as much as a sensible person could without advanced experimental designs; but it was stated that he needs to tickle this information out of Carissa, and that sounds like more sex.
He is feeling a bit tired, though; there's been a number of hours in the day. "I should cast the unidentified spells my god gave me before I go to sleep," Keltham murmurs out loud. "Is there a workroom, or protected area, or should a senior wizard be monitoring me, or..."
Carissa Sevar: "There's probably a workroom and you probably want someone on hand who can dispel the spell if it's dangerous." She sits up, very reluctantly, and starts getting dressed. "I can't dispel your spells reliably, you're higher-circle than me, but security'll be able to."
Keltham: Oops, should he have asked if she wanted to cuddle even longer? No he shouldn't, she just got through saying repeatedly to him to optimize over his own darned self - or does that only apply during sex? He'll add that to the questions list.
Keltham will pull on his precious clothing, and then follow wherever Carissa takes him.
Carissa Sevar: "Security!" she calls impatiently, and finds them, and they do know where workrooms are. "Mind if I stay?" she asks Keltham. "I'm very curious."
Keltham: "You're the one with the vastly greater risk tolerance. Be my guest." It's only after speaking that it occurs to Keltham to wonder how he'd feel if he accidentally hurt Carissa. "...but stand behind the more powerful wizard or something, maybe."
Carissa Sevar: Yeah, all right, she can do that.
Keltham: Keltham decides to keep the identified spells of Comprehend Languages and Sanctuary overnight, in case he suddenly needs them in the middle of the night because friends or enemies show up in his bedroom. He can cast them in the morning before praying, just to verify that those spells do what Cheliax claimed... actually he should check two assumptions there. "Question one, if I keep Sanctuary overnight and cast it in the dawn before praying for spells, does that count against my spells for that day? Question two, am I wasting my god's energy in any significant way if I cast a spell I don't need?"
lintamande: "Spells for the day are counted dawn to dawn, casting them right before dawn won't alter what you get at dawn. God resources are expended when the spells are granted, not when they're used; if a god thinks you're being too profligate with your spells they can grant you fewer, though they generally don't because it's useful for everyone to know what to expect a fourth-circle cleric to get."
Keltham: "If I just kept Sanctuary, then my god wouldn't need to grant it again - check? Maybe if I get it again tomorrow's dawn, I'll keep it that time. Or can the god opt directly whether to keep or replace a spell, if I still have it?"
"First up, that enchantment-compulsion spell that looks a lot like the truth spell, but that I only had a single copy of," and didn't previously want to waste in testing in case there was an obvious natural time for using an enchantment-compulsion. "Carissa, you up for being the target of it?"
lintamande: "If you keep it your god doesn't need to grant it again. I have never heard of a god replacing a spell their cleric had saved on purpose, which might mean it's impossible or just expensive or just better to predictably not do."
Carissa Sevar: "Sure, go ahead."
Keltham: ...it seems like an easy thing to experiment on, but ok fine Keltham will figure out what to do about Sanctuary later.
He boops Carissa with an unidentified first-circle enchantment-compulsion spell!
Carissa Sevar: Like the truth spell it puts a symbol on her forehead. "...not obviously subjectively anything," she says after a second. "I am an apple. I have never met Keltham. ...not a truth spell."
"I think it's a specialized truth spell," the security wizard says. "I haven't seen it before, though."
Keltham: "Offer to sell me your shoe for 18,000 gold pieces?"
Carissa Sevar: "I will sell you my shoe for -
- wow, okay -
- one second, try selling security something -"
Keltham: What does he have that isn't worth 18,000 gold pieces? Even his fingernail clippings or saliva contain his DNA, and if sold unencumbered could be used in principle to - oh, right, time, he owns time. "I'll tell you the result of adding two plus three in exchange for 18,000 gold pieces," Keltham says to the security wizard.
Carissa Sevar: "That's not a fair trade," Carissa blurts out.
Wow, Abadar is such a specific god.
Keltham: Interesting! Keltham's mind immediately goes to the obvious next thing to try! "If one plus two is three, I'll tell you the result of two plus three for 18,000 gold, but if one plus two is four, I'll tell you two plus three for free," he says to Security.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has been awake for too long. How does Keltham do this. ...one plus two does equal three so it's the same unfair trade as - "not fair," she says involuntarily, but not until her brain has caught up with Keltham.
Keltham: To Carissa. "I'm about to describe a fair trade, try to claim falsely that it's unfair." To security. "I'll tell you the result of one plus four if you tell me three plus two."
Carissa Sevar: "Not fair," declares Carissa.
Keltham: "Well, that explains why there's a separate Truth spell and a Fair Division of Gains from Trade spell. I was wondering if this one was just strictly more powerful, and maybe there's a way to use it that way, but it's a lot more cumbersome at least if it doesn't rule out false positives. Sorry about this, by the way, but doing it anyways for the obvious reason, I'll tell you one plus one for ten thousand gold pieces if and only if you know of something about which the Chelish government is actively deceiving me."
Carissa Sevar: See this is why she needs a HEADBAND - is "I'll make an unfair trade conditional on a false thing" fair or unfair or - and now someone has cast Dominate Person on her and wants her to keep her mouth shut so they at least must think the correct response to this is silence - it's incredibly hard to think under Dominate Person and whoever cast it probably does have a headband so she'll just trust their judgment.
Keltham: Keltham sort of wants to ask Carissa about more personal things, but - that seems a lot less like fair play. He's not even sure how he could ask about it being okay to use a spell for that, afterwards, without making it seem like he was trying to extract permission from her, which seems sort of like trying to press an oath out of somebody. (There can ever be non-self-originating requests to swear to something, there's standard Keeper oaths after all, but it has to be set up in an extremely careful way to make it a mutually expected-beneficial interaction that doesn't proliferate social pressure to swear oaths over smaller and smaller things.)
It doesn't seem much worth trying to ask things more intricate; he covered that territory with his earlier experiments, and if they could defeat the truth spell they can probably defeat this too. "Not sure how expensive it is to dispel something, or how hard it is on you to leave it up, but I'm fine if you want to dispel that now."
Carissa Sevar: "It doesn't feel like anything when you're not trying to sneak deals past people," Carissa's mouth says for her, "and it's probably short duration, and Dispels are valuable. I don't mind leaving it up."
And then the Dominate Person comes off, which is nice, she wasn't even trying to resist and it still felt like most of her head was pushing against a brick wall when she tried to use it.
Keltham: "All right, I used up all my second-circles already today, and next up is three third-circles I don't understand. Evocation, Divination, Illusion."
Carissa Sevar: "Third circle cleric divinations....uh, Aura Sight, which shows Law and Chaos and Good and Evil, Detect Splendour, Detect Wisdom....Guiding Star but that's for navigation..."
Keltham: Oh, that Aura Sight sounds like one he shouldn't give time for local Governance to fake, just in case everybody here is secretly Good. "Casting the Divination now," Keltham says, and goes through the brief gestures that feel appropriate to 'untying' the spell and 'flicking' it loose.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is Lawful Evil! Security is Lawful Evil! There's another Lawful Evil outside the door! Keltham himself has an aura of Law, but not one of Evil.
Keltham: Lawful Neutral? - Keltham thinks fast enough not to say it out loud, in case they don't know that, somehow, and don't like learning it. He doesn't count as Evil or Good? Or does he have enough Good in him that it balances out, or -
"That was Aura Sight, yeah. I wonder why my god would've given me that - you'd already know if one of the people here was secretly Chaotic Good or something, right?" Do they not have access to this spell, somehow?
Carissa Sevar: "We do have that spell. Uh, people who aren't very powerful don't register, so there isn't a way to know for sure about the second-circle girls, but you having the spell doesn't change that, that can't be the problem your god was trying to solve..."
lintamande: "When you arrived here you didn't have a visible aura, because you weren't very powerful," Security says. "You acquired it at some point after you were selected as a cleric; your aura communicates that your god is Lawful Neutral, but isn't information about your personal alignment. The same for other clerics; a Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil cleric of Asmodeus, if there were somehow one, would still read as both Lawful and Evil."
Keltham: "You didn't think to mention earlier that my god was Lawful Neutral?" Keltham says. He's actually puzzled by this; it seems a strange piece of info to withhold - oh that's a plausible reason why he got Aura Sight, so he'd know. But surely Chelish Governance would realize that his god could, in fact, grant him that spell, sooner or later, if they didn't tell him, as apparently they didn't? Or just that Keltham would hear about Aura Sight somewhere and ask what he detected as? Keltham is confused by why exactly they would withhold that of all info.
Carissa Sevar: - shoot. Carissa's pretty sure that's just a straight-up error. They were considering in the hours after it happened whether to tell him it'd been identified as Abadar or whether to tell him it was an unknown LN god, but she wasn't personally going to tell him because she doesn't have Aura Sight and ostensibly isn't getting routine reports on him. Then the Nethys thing and the Otolmens thing and the devil refusing her soul all happened in quick succession and apparently no one ever took Keltham aside with the news. It's not her error, in the sense that she isn't the person who was supposed to do it; it is her error, in the sense that she could and should have ordered it, her paying attention to it would have been adequate for avoiding it.
She thinks loudly that it makes no sense for a hypothetical Chelish security that was hiding nothing not to have noticed that, so she can't think of anything better than apologizing, explaining that Aura Sight is also possessed by Chelish security and that they knew Keltham's god was Lawful Neutral, and assumed Keltham knew that because people generally do when selected by a god. And there's a team of people researching god-symbols and intending to report to him on candidates for who his god is but all they have at this point is a moderately useless longlist.
lintamande: " - you didn't know?" Security says, sounding surprised right back. "People sense when they're chosen - not which god, if it's not a god they're very familiar with already, but which fundamental forces they're touched with - and you're not from around here, right. I - apologize. We noticed around midday and then set a team of people trying to figure out which god it might be and they were going to report to you when they had anything better than a list of all the known Lawful Neutral gods."
Carissa Sevar: " - he said Chaotic Evil and I was confused about that but I haven't got aura sight -"
lintamande: "Do you have a person you're supposed to report all instances of being confused to," Security snaps back at her.
Carissa Sevar: "Yes. I'm sorry. There's - I was confused about a lot of things today."
Keltham: Keltham is currently confused about whether the security guard and Carissa already know each other; that seems more like an intimate cofounder-cofounder interaction, or two Keepers on the same level of organizational lattice, than a security officer talking to an unfamiliar non-security officer. He decides not to point this out, in case it's symptomatic, say, of their being part of a set of playactors who all know each other and aren't good at pretending to be strangers...
His hypotheses on how the people around him could be trying to deceive him, keep foundering on all the ways they'd have to be simultaneously good at it and also bad at it in order to explain the details of his observations.
Still, Keltham doesn't neglect to note that the whole thing rings slightly false, and more like they had reasons for worrying about him acquiring the info that his god was Lawful Neutral, though what to make of that, he has no idea. "Evocation or Illusion next?" Keltham says.
Carissa Sevar: "Third circle cleric evocations would be... there's one to disrupt the summoning magic of summoned creatures, I'm going to be seriously alarmed if you've got that...one that gives the aura of Lawfulness devils have, and one that does a really bright light...Helping Hand is third circle, it can find anyone within five miles and sort of gently politely repeatedly point them in your direction. ...doesn't make a lot of sense for this situation. Do you know yet how to see if it's instantaneous or has some duration? Instantaneous ones look like they're rigged to all go off at once, ones with a duration look like it'll hold stably for a bit on its own and decay slowly."
Keltham: Keltham inwardly stares at the truth spell he has remaining, first to come to mind as effect-over-time, then at his other spells. "Either I can't tell the difference at all, or none of the spells I got today were instant," Keltham says, hesitantly, after a while.
Carissa Sevar: "Okay. Then it could do a really wide range of things but it's probably not instantly deadly, and Security can cancel it if it's even somewhat deadly. I don't see how we'll guess without you casting it."
Keltham: Keltham starts going through brief gestures to untie and flick loose a spell.
Iarwain: This spell is, in fact, Invisibility Purge. How are any invisible people nearby doing at a very fast Spellcraft check and attempted reaction to that, if any?
lintamande: The invisible security person is also on the other side of the door!!! Defense in depth, right?
Carissa Sevar: ....Abadar is incredibly not amused by them. In general making a god this not amused with you is an incredibly doomed plan.
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Oops.
Keltham: Keltham is slightly proud of how fast he manages to get himself behind the security wizard, relative to the short person who suddenly materialized in the room. He makes no romantic attempt to grab Carissa along the way, either because his hindbrain hasn't gotten updated about him having equity in her or because his hindbrain successfully updated on her being a vastly more seasoned emergency response officer.
Carissa Sevar: That's Otolmens' halfling, it has got to be, but she isn't supposed to know that. Carissa steps clear of security but where she's easier to get to than Keltham and shouts, not screaming like she's scared but shouting because more attention should be allocated here.
lintamande: " - are you the special case with authorization direct from the High Priestess," Security asks Broom.
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Broom is," he says.
His hindbrain knows that this is a situation where he needs to think very fast to avoid punishment rather than appearing unthreateningly stupid.
Broom removes the other ring. Not the invisibility ring, the ring that conceals his alignment and his thoughts. He knows that powerful wizards can read thoughts in general and his thoughts in particular.
Wink right eye if I should try to explain, left eye if you explain, he thinks at the security guard. I can say I am chosen of a secret Lawful Neutral god that tries to avoid people making large messes.
Keltham: Keltham, however, still has Aura Sight up, which is not something that Broom would know, because halfling slaves don't memorize the durations of third-circle cleric spells.
"Lawful Neutral," Keltham says, a moment after the ring comes off.
lintamande: Right eye.
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Broom apologizes very much," says Broom with a deep bow, but not a servile one. "Broom is the chosen of a secret Lawful Neutral god that tries to avoid people making large messes."
Keltham: Okay. There are at least some people hiding in the walls at all but they're - honestly this doesn't make Cheliax look so bad, if it's true. A Lawful Neutral god who averts messes sending invisible observers to monitor the alien traveler, under some interfactional compact, are, like, how things would work if any part of Golarion were remotely functional. Which, given how functional this place isn't, does make the story a little suspect. "Security, does that match your understanding?"
lintamande: "Yes, it does."
Keltham: "You mind if I tap you with a truth spell before this conversation continues, Broom? The spell doesn't force you to respond, it forces you to say the truth or nothing."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Right eye if you can let me evade that truth spell without his knowing. Left eye if you can't.
lintamande: Right.
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Broom accepts this."
Keltham: Keltham casts his truth spell. The mysterious symbol flashes into existence on the forehead of "Broom".
"Who are you? Say it again."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "This one is Broom. This one is the chosen of a secret Lawful Neutral god who tries to prevent giant messes."
Keltham: "Can you tell me why your god is a secret god, or is the reason why your god is secret itself a secret?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "The reason is also secret," Broom says. "Broom apologizes again."
Keltham: "What constitutes a giant mess? If all the other countries get scared of Cheliax and start threatening violence unless Cheliax shuts down this project, is that a giant mess by your standards?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom momentarily considers whether to answer this truthfully, before realizing that answering 'no' implies that the messes are even larger, which is not a direction in which he wants Keltham's thoughts going. "A mess is a mess," Broom says. "My god decides."
Keltham: "What do you do if you determine that I'm about to make a giant mess?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Stab you before you can destroy the world. "Tell my god. Tell the great wizards."
(By 'great wizards', Broom of course means great wizards like the one in the room right there next to him; that is as great as a wizard gets from a slave's perspective.)
Keltham: "Would you rather we converse in some other language? I've got a Comprehend Languages and your speech patterns suggest you're not a native speaker of Taldane."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom's speech patterns are for avoiding offense and punishment. "Taldane is good for Broom."
Keltham: "Do you know who my god is?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Aspexia Rugatonn told Broom some of what was known about Keltham, cleric of Abadar. "No," Broom lies again.
Keltham: "Really. You'd think Lawful Neutral gods, of all the kinds of gods there are, would coordinate more with each other."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom genuinely does not understand this. "My god may know your god. I do not know your god."
Keltham: "Do you know what could be preventing my god from contacting me directly?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Otolmens. Asmodeus. "Broom does not know. Broom is not wise in the ways of gods. Broom only serves one."
Keltham: Were you watching myself and Carissa before? Keltham doesn't ask it, although the thought of being watched while he was hurting Carissa seems like far more of an intimate violation than being spied on during ordinary sex. He doesn't ask because that part is a personal issue and this is about world-scale interfactional treaties...
He actually is feeling wounded about that violation of privacy, injured, angry if it was true. Huh, imagine that. Well, Keltham is not Good and he is allowed to do something about pursuing his own interests here.
"I'm not really happy with this version of the spying thing," Keltham says. "How about if, from now on, you monitor my lessons openly, or don't show up at all? And my god won't have to give me more revealing-hidden-people spells, and we won't have to burn effort on opposing each other."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Broom supposes there is little reason to remain hidden from you, now that you know Broom is here. Broom was told that others are not to know of Broom, however."
Keltham: "I'm not comfortable with you spying on my students either," Keltham says. "And I do have the power to reveal you to them, if my god grants me the same spell again, or I could just tell them outright what I already learned about you, if nobody wants to explain detailed treaties and reasons otherwise to me. My proposal is that there's just an unexplained very short person in the lessons, and I say that I sort of know why you're there but it's not going to be explained."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Broom cannot make this decision on his own. Broom will consult with the great wizards of Cheliax and pray to his god."
Keltham: Good to know the great wizards are paying any attention. "Fine. You've got 24 hours to let me know about a decision or update me about why it's taking longer, and meanwhile I don't expect you to be hidden around spying."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom bows again and turns to go. He is neither shaking nor sweating; whatever comes of this, he is very unlikely to be burned over and over for it, unless it merits Aspexia Rugatonn coming back to allow that.
Keltham: Keltham will spend a few moments breathing, trying to get over the shock of adrenaline followed by the shock of wounding, when he realized that, if this person was here at all, it was probably because that person was following him and Carissa around, spying on private moments.
Keltham was, in retrospect, much more aggressive than he should have been, with an interfactional representative of another god like that, one who has treaties with Cheliax, but it's been a long time since this kind of twisting thread of anger has run through him.
lintamande: "I should ask what you can be authorized to know," says Security, and fills the room briefly with glitter, checking there aren't more invisible people, and then heads out behind Broom.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa said from the BEGINNING that they should tell Keltham about Otolmens because they shouldn't be keeping any secrets from him that they don't absolutely have to. But this is over her head, presumably.
" - are you all right?" she says quietly to Keltham once they're to all appearances alone.
Keltham: "Not really." Keltham considers saying how much he doesn't like the thought of having been spied on by this particular non-abstract person while he was with Carissa, and then the thought occurs to him that if this isn't already bothering Carissa, he'd rather not remind her to be bothered by it. "How - how weird was that, how out of character for reality as you know it, on a scale of zero to twelve?"
Carissa Sevar: " - good question. Uh. There being secret Lawful Neutral gods is not out of character for reality, if I'd had occasion to think about it I'd have thought yeah probably some gods have reason not to tell most mortals they exist. Such a god having taken interest in this project is not out of character for reality. Chelish senior leadership - is people like Contessa Lrilatha, and if I imagine her reacting to a secret Lawful Neutral god representative showing up, probably she would - react cooperatively, we don't want 'big messes' either. Maybe just tell Security he's authorized to be here and to stay out of his way. All of that is - I wouldn't have predicted it but only because there are a hundred things about as predictable and I can't keep track of all of them.
The guy himself was weird. I don't know how I imagine people who are members of a secret order dedicated to a secret god who go around preventing catastrophes but - but he wasn't how I imagined that. And the fact that your god interfered is weird, I'd expect - usually when gods both want to intervene in opposed ways they hash it out privately and only one intervenes, it's cheaper. You don't visibly see gods at cross-purposes much. But this is much more important than most things and prophecy's broken and it's plausible they aren't at cross-purposes, that it was both necessary for him to be invisible and for him to be caught. So....maybe four or five? On that scale."
Keltham: Right then. It was weird, but not the parts he thought were weird. At least that's not meta-weird, because that's what falling into another world should be like.
"Does our relationship permit me to lean into you and get a hug while we're not otherwise engaged in cuddleroom activities?"
Carissa Sevar: Hug.
Keltham: Sigh.
"...I still have three more spells," Keltham says after a while.
Carissa Sevar: "....it does not actually make sense for me to feel a sense of doom at that. And yet."
Keltham: "Well, we're not going to get any less doomed if we wait. Find another security officer or wait for the previous one to come back?"
Ferrer Maillol: Yeah, that security officer isn't coming back soon, or, in fact, at all.
How many ways is Ferrer Maillol pissed? Let's count them! Maillol sure is!
First, the decision to tell Keltham that him being Evil himself wouldn't show up in his own aura. It has the short-term benefit of not making Keltham wonder about his own apparent Neutrality. Its disadvantages include that they're going to have to conceal Ione's aura so she doesn't look Lawful Evil; that if they succeed at shifting Keltham more Evil, and then he looks at himself, he's going to spot the lie; and above all, that it is a lie, which Sevar said to hand out sparingly around Keltham and under centralized supervision, and Maillol seems to recall saying that Sevar was now in charge of that. The wizard didn't even have to make up any answer about that. He could have just shut up.
Second, volunteering to Keltham that they did already know he was Lawful Neutral. Maybe no clerics at the villa happened to prepare Aura Sight that day. Wouldn't that be simpler? Hm? Keltham possibly bought the excuse but they sure have been giving him multiple excuses lately, hm?
Third, telling Keltham that they're working to identify the symbol and will inform him as soon as it's known. Cheliax is now permanently committed to preventing Keltham from getting a glimpse of Abadar's symbol in any context that associates it with Abadar, because it would not have taken that long to identify. They could have said they were unsure about Osirion and if Keltham would start imitating their treatment of women, which Sevar happens to have spouted on about and which Keltham seemed sympathetic to. This is partially on Sevar for not thinking fast enough, but it's mostly on the security guard for having wedged Sevar into a bad position by bringing up that they knew it was a Lawful Neutral god at all, which is what required Sevar to come up with instant answers.
Fourth, failing to remember the existence of Otolmens's oracle. Sevar forgot, yeah, and he's not happy about that either, but Sevar's not the one whose job it is to have combat reflexes and figure out immediately what needs to happen when Keltham starts casting Invisibility Purge.
Any one of these mistakes in isolation could be a blemish on an otherwise acceptable record.
In combination, it means Ferrer Maillol directs three other security wizards to burn this one almost but not quite to death over the course of an hour, and then, rather more injuriously to him, send him back with a request for a replacement security officer and a note that this one is unsuited to complicated deceptions requiring fast reaction times. Maillol would do it himself, to vent some of his frustrations, but he is more busy than lesser beings can understand.
As for what Keltham is cleared to know about Otolmens? He's cleared to know the minimal facts the fucking halfling slave more competent than his own security wizards by virtue of talking fucking less and only when spoken to already said, and there's no need to clear him for more than that.
Carissa Sevar: "The last one's an illusion? I am actually not thinking of what it might be. I know a bunch of third-circle wizard illusions - Major Image, which does better adjustable illusions like Minor Image which you already saw, Displacement which makes you appear to be in a slightly different place than you actually are, Invisibility Sphere... Dream, which lets you send short messages to someone in their sleep - probably one of them is also on the cleric spell list and I'm just forgetting that..."
When it's been a little she steps outside and summons another Security so they can go ahead.
Keltham: Keltham casts his third-circle cleric illusion spell.
lintamande: The room around them catches fire. Carissa hisses and starts a spell before realizing it's illusory fire. It stretches on beyond where the walls of the room are, though you can sort of still see them.
It is accompanied by illusory agonized screaming. Most of it is wordless, hoarse, barely human; some of it is more coherent, and verges on comprehensible Taldane pleading.
"- please, please, I'm sorry - no -"
"- kill me -"
On the ground in front of them a man is engaged in trying to drag himself across the flaming ground. His skin is raw and bloody and occasionally burns right through to the bone, though the injuries close up, when they get that serious. He's in enough pain that his muscles are spasming and his limbs don't quite obey him; he's not screaming but just gasping hoarsely. The sound is unforgettable.
Carissa Sevar: (Carissa Sevar has very good spellcraft, and it's easier to think about spellcraft than about other things, so the main thing she is thinking is that this spell is, evidently from watching it cast, one of those two minutes per caster circle spells.)
Keltham: This is important.
Or his god wouldn't be showing it to him.
Any negative effects it has on him should already have been taken into account as an acceptable cost.
Keltham tries to look around.
Very briefly.
It's still enough to get a general impression of things.
He looks at Carissa, who doesn't seem to be in visible emotional difficulty, because six years at the Worldwound, presumably.
"Please look around to see if there are any clues and then turn this off," Keltham says, and shuts his eyes and puts his fingers into his ears.
Illusion spell. This isn't real. A movie of a bad thing that isn't actually happening.
lintamande: Security dispels it. Exchanges glances with Carissa.
Carissa Sevar: Well, the 'look around for clues' is nice because it means she has a minute to compare cover stories.
'some people are kinky!' is not going to cover it.
'Abaddon!' is an obvious option. And the other obvious one is Zon-Kuthon. Abaddon is - more of a lie, there's other stuff about Abaddon which would establish that it doesn't really involve very much being on fire, they could filter it. Zen Kuthon is known to Keltham to have an inverted utility function. He's Lawful Evil but not the way Asmodeus is Evil, in the was Good and got turned to the exact opposite sense. And that does look like the exact opposite of Good. ...she can also buy their future selves option value, say that she thinks it's probably Zon Kuthon but didn't see anything definitive.
She pulls out a notebook and writes down some irrelevant things she happened to see, because taking notes is what she'd be doing, if she was learning something new. And then she pats Keltham tentatively on the shoulder and, if he doesn't flinch, hugs him.
Keltham: He doesn't flinch when touched. A dath ilani may not have seen illusion spells but they have at least seen movies. Though no movie of anything like that, of course, it would leave scars on whoever saw it.
But some things are worth getting some scars, even on your mind and core, and Keltham's god evidently thought this was that important.
"I hope you know what that -" Keltham starts, and then realizes that if he continues with this ill-advised 'speech' business he's going to vomit, so he stops his breath and clamps down on abdominal muscles instead.
Carissa Sevar: "I have a top guess? I think - so Zon-Kuthon, the god who wandered into the void and values the opposite of everything he did before, has a country. And claims its people when they die."
Keltham: "It was real? That's happening right now, somewhere?"
Carissa Sevar: "I don't know!!!! But - if I were a god I - wouldn't do that to make any point at all except - except itself - and if it's real, that's - that's what it'd be -"
Keltham: Keltham is not a Keeper and therefore he is going to do something epistemically questionable and, while not assigning bad probabilities over the branched possibilities, he will mentally live for a time inside the possible world where that vision definitely hasn't happened yet, until he stops feeling like he's going to throw up, and come to terms with the other branches later.
"I have my obvious theory about what that means and why my god would do that. Both of you come up with your theories before I state mine, then we all state what our theories were before we heard the other person's theories," Keltham says. "Raise your hand when you have a theory, and once we've all raised our hands, Security goes first." Obviously, this affair has reached a state of urgency where any pretense of Security being dispassionate not-really-present observers can be discarded along with all other pretenses.
lintamande: "....your god wants you to negotiate for Cheliax to do something about that and thinks that once we have the metalworking and riches of dath ilan we'll be able to."
Keltham: "Carissa." He's going in reverse order of how much he trusts the people present to speak their answers uninfluenced by who spoke earlier.
Carissa Sevar: "...so your god is Lawful Neutral. And you're at least by self-identification Evil. And, uh, I think your god is pitching being Lawful Neutral. Saying to you, 'okay, you mostly only care about pursuing your own interests and dealing fairly with others, but that mostly might matter a lot, here, what are you going to do about that." Carissa is not sure that is a good direction to push Keltham in but they ....need to reconsider a lot of strategy, if Abadar is going to be this pointed, and it might be time to start angling for the plan where Keltham leaves and takes her with him. At least to be sure not to burn it.