Carissa Sevar: Carissa surveys the room as if deciding whether anyone else in it is any fun and then walks away down the hallway with an arm around Pilar. "Aspexia's welcome to join us," she calls at the Grand High Priestess's secretary as she rounds the corner.
Pilar : She would LITERALLY DIE RIGHT NOW if she hadn't JUST DONE THAT YESTERDAY.
Pilar performs a cantrip, she's had time to hang them again between deliveries.
Message to Carissa Sevar: "What is going on and what am I supposed to be doing?"
Carissa Sevar: "High Priestess has asked me to make a production of being the person calling the shots around here. Because there are going to be spies trying to understand Project Lawful and apparently it serves us for them to learn this. I am also confused. Does your curse require us to actually have fun, I can't fuck you because I promised Keltham I wouldn't."
Pilar : "It is possible to do fun things to me besides fucking me but I could also give you a cookie, I guess? I'm still figuring out how this curse works and, just mentioning this to anyone with authority, I have an increasing suspicion that if I don't throw somebody an impressive surprise party on purpose very soon it is going to happen anyways."
Carissa Sevar: "Who won't say anything about it. ...Abarco. Let's throw Abarco a surprise Carissa's now your boss party."
Pilar : "I... this is so awful, I want to do that too, but my curse won't let me. The party has to be - for them, not for us making fun of them. Stupid Good is still Good."
"Wait, you're Abarco's boss now?"
Carissa Sevar: "I am now project director. Though you're still the Grand High Priestess's favorite. You could throw Asmodia a surprise welcome-back-from-Hell party?" Carissa steers them towards Maillol's office.
Pilar : Pilar frowns. "You'd think that would go through but it doesn't."
Carissa Sevar: "Can you use this to figure out peoples' deep motivations -" surprise party for the Queen, Carissa Sevar has gotten herself into trouble and you can statue her now - that's definitely eight kinds of illegal - "surprise party for Maillol about me taking over the project."
Pilar : "...no answer. You can use it to figure out the motivations of people with respect to things you actually want to throw them a for-them party about, is I'm suspecting my curse's answer here. Would you maybe - have not totally sincerely wanted to congratulate Asmodia on coming back from Hell?"
Carissa Sevar: "....no I think I would've wanted to! She's strikingly good at math and I am worried she doesn't have the discipline to keep contributing to the project if she's getting tortured a lot, I was torn between hoping Hell'd helped with the discipline and hoping it hadn't kicked her back into her shell so she's harder to use. ....I have no idea what Chaotic Good thinks of either of those motivations."
Pilar : Pilar has now been repeatedly and directly exposed to Project Lawful's hidden power source, a thing called a 'dath ilani' in its own language, for multiple hours over sequential days. This has consequences.
"Do we know anybody else back from Hell?" Pilar says. "Maybe it doesn't work on Hell-related things."
All the rumored weirdness and all the real weirdness is only a distraction from the true effects of dath ilani exposure, though a very effective distraction if your mental language lacks even the conceptual vocabulary to describe what Project Lawful is actually about.
Carissa Sevar: "Maillol? I don't know if he went to Hell or just to judgment. Balaguerre and Torres, on Security."
Pilar : "...we don't want to throw them a party. We want to know if my curse works on Hell things. I hate Chaotic Good so fucking much."
Carissa Sevar: "Hey, imagine how much harder Asmodeus' life would be if Good were not incredibly stupid. You're a very powerful argument for Asmodeanism, just bopping around where Keltham can see you."
Pilar : "It's possible they know that, Elysium said that I was truly loyal to Asmodeus and so Good would prefer not to use me against Him and my being oracled would end up with Lord Asmodeus being better off than if I hadn't been. The Grand High Priestess thought that was credible but ominous, and that maybe there was a bigger plan against His interests, like the plan is to destroy Cheliax and then I end up preventing a new Worldwound from opening in the crater."
Carissa Sevar: "....well. All right, then. ...wait, why does Good prefer not to use people loyal to Asmodeus against Him? I did not know that! Did you know that? Does that mean they'll actually give up and fuck off, once everyone's loyal to Asmodeus?"
Pilar : "I mean, it was, what they prefer, not what they always do, according to them. But I'm not actually an expert on Chaotic Good and would rather not learn."
(This about Pilar Pineda: She walks through Cheliax a lot less nervously than others. It's fine and proper if she's punished fairly, and even an unfair punishment isn't so terrible. Her loyalty to Lord Asmodeus is, if not absolute, strong enough for her to feel pretty confident in it. If Pilar says anything that sounds questionable, anyone who checks her loyalty will discover that she is thinking all the proper things under Detect Thoughts. It's fine for Pilar to say that she'd rather not learn about Chaotic Good, because any superior who rounds on her for that will find Pilar humbly saying that of course she'd do it if ordered, she'd never dream of not following orders. Scan Pilar as you like with Detect Thoughts, you will find that she is absolutely sincere about that, and not in the way of somebody having to suppress a lot of thoughts either. Cheliax is safe for her, and if she is executed there, she gets to go home.)
Carissa Sevar: "Keltham might, at some point, ask," Carissa says, a little sharply because Pilar should have thought of that.
And then they're at Maillol's office.
Pilar : "SURPRISE! YOU'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PROJECT LAWFUL ANYMORE!"
It's going to take a long time to get all the confetti out of this office.
Iarwain: CONGRATULATIONS! You've reached the end of the first "thread" of this story!
SURPRISE! There's even more to read though!
Primary continuation:
Less intense, more sfw, tldr spoilers version of next thread (reunites with main threads afterwards)
You can also click where it says "Next Post" to automatically go on to the next thread in the continuity ("some human relationships" in this case). This is an important glowfic-reading skill to remember when you reach the end of the next thread, and need to go on to the one after that!
Iarwain: A timeline of MICWOA / Planecrash Book 1 can be found here.
#planecrash-lagging is a Discord channel for starting threads to blog your reactions while catching up.
Iarwain: (This space intentionally left blank.)