Carissa Sevar: Gets a much stronger reaction than normal, but not necessarily in a bad way. She clings, and looks up at him as if she feels totally powerless in his arms.

Keltham: ...oh.  He didn't know he needed that, so much, he hopes that there's still some way to get this reaction tomorrow.

He'll try letting himself go a little, now, to do those things he feels like doing, himself, and see what comes of that.

He will not be unwatchful for distress and increasing distress.

Carissa Sevar: Nope. She's okay. She wouldn't be okay, if he did any of a hundred normal things you do to a girl you're fucking and don't really care about, but he doesn't do any of those, because - 

- he doesn't feel like parsing out what love is precisely, but he feels something for her he's never felt for anyone before -

- and he doesn't even know to think she's pathetic, just to think she's his.

When they're done she does start crying, for completely mysterious reasons that don't correspond to her mood at all.

Keltham: Recognizable substantial-base-rate gendertrope.  Keltham is fine with it.  He will pet her hair, unconscious of any particular new associations this might have for her; his hands, at least, don't feel much like Abrogail's.

(So, uh, Worldwound problem?  It's not necessary to have solved right now, not at all, Keltham learned that lesson rather early on; but you have to hand back your dath ilani boyfriend card if you don't at least wonder about any current outstanding Problems.)

Carissa Sevar: He's very not like Abrogail. If she succeeds in making him into Abrogail, then - 

- well, then she'll have risen high in the esteem of Asmodeus, who can break and remake her on a scale Abrogail can only dream of, so. Nothing to do but keep winning.

(Worldwound problem has not mysteriously vanished. Maybe if Abrogail had been focusing on that.)

Keltham: Dath ilan does ever try to shape people, Carissa Sevar, they just do it differently.  Not so differently that they never recognize petting somebody's hair as part of it.

Merenre: "You're going to hate this."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Guards? Take this bearer of bad news away and feed him to the crocodiles." There aren't guards; they're in his private study. 

Merenre: "Cake girl showed up."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "     "

"      "

Merenre: "Yeah. So, team shows up, gets a room, wards the room, baby's born, all of that goes totally smoothly. Four minutes after the baby's born, there's a knock on the door, and a Chelish wizard woman carrying a cake waltzes in and says, "congratulations!" Dimension Anchored, Mind Blanked, the team had as a precaution barely been briefed and correctly decided the thing to do was to get the fuck out as fast as possible, only she counterspells the Teleport and says, 'no! stay! celebrate!'"

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Aren't they actively in the middle of a war with Nidal, with virtually all their high level casters at the front."

Merenre: "I mean, they've got some at the palace. One of whom saw fit to deliver cake. She insisted they eat it. It was not poisoned. It was reportedly delicious. ... I have a sample."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "It's not magical."

Merenre: "It is not magical."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "And not poisoned."

Merenre: "Not poisoned."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "If you put slices of it out on a dessert table with a bunch of other cakes, do people disproportionately take it, are the ones who take it any different from the ones who don't, are they any different an hour later -"

Merenre: "I'm not bringing it anywhere near the palace but we'll see if we can test it in Alexandria, where the cake sample presently is. And I can ask Nefreti, though it might be wiser not to."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Indeed. 

What could they have gotten off us - what did the team go in knowing -"

Merenre: "Very large bounty from a reputable broker for an immediate trip to Cheliax, estimated 95% likely to be uneventful. Book a room, lock and ward the room, wait for a Sending about a newborn baby, wait two hours more, leave. If, and only if, a girl inexplicably appears in the room offering congratulations and cake, Plane Shift out instead of Teleporting, with the girl, to a demiplane the broker handed out the key for.

By far the primary thing they learned is that we know about cake girl. We didn't lose physical custody of the Plane Shift key, and it's a temporary demiplane anyway."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "And they didn't, you know, take them all down, learn that, send them to Hell, becauuuuse -"

Merenre: "...because Cheliax is taking a new, cake-based angle on conquest. Or maybe because it was all done with scrolls and items and they were bluffing. Or maybe because Project Lawful powers can't be used against us. Or maybe because - look, do you realize how many things I now give substantial credence -"

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "What things do you now give substantial credence."

Merenre: "Queen Abrogail Thrune is one of the Project Lawful girls. Queen Abrogail Thrune is negotiating with Project Lawful for use of their girls. Everyone in the Chelish hierarchy waits on Carissa Sevar. Carissa Sevar won favor in the court by inventing a magic weapon that stole all Nidal's diamonds. Asmodeus is working with Irori. Asmodeus is working with Iomedae. Asmodeus is working with Cayden Cailean. Project Lawful turns you into a girl. Project Lawful makes you sexually attractive to Asmodeus's specific sensibilities and he prefers women."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "That is not how gods work."

Merenre: "You're taking the under on that one? I have it at five percent."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: He bites his lip. "...yes."

Merenre: "But you thought about it. Because if I say twenty things that ridiculous -"

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "I'm not betting against any of the others. What else -"

Merenre: "A girl on Project Lawful is the Neutral Evil herald of Nethys, Takaral. A girl on Project Lawful killed the Neutral Evil herald of Nethys, Takaral. Project Lawful caused the godwar. The librarian on Project Lawful is cursed to never leave her library."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "And that is not how curses work."

Merenre: "Well, there's the Oracle of Oppara -"

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Yes, I'm sure Asmodeus oracled one of his Project Lawful girls with a curse that leaves them tied to their library. That seems like the sort of thing Asmodeus, notorious respecter of the sanctity of books and libraries, would do."

Merenre: "I also have, uh, the ultimate aim of Project Lawful is to write a romance novel that will cause all women worldwide to fall in love with Asmodeus and convert for him."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "I'll take the under on that too. - why only the women."

Merenre: "Men don't read romance novels."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Huh, do they not?"

Merenre: "I think in countries where a lot of women are literate it's a pronounced skew. Is this really important."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "I don't know. I have no idea what's important. Maybe the romance novels are the key to the whole thing. ...what are Chelish romance novels like?"

Merenre: "They're state-issued, so not very good, centralization of entertainment media produces stories that people like to think lesser people read. I think, I haven't actually read any."

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Right.

Okay.

Thank you, Merenre. Let me know if anything else pops out when you shift all the numbers around."

Merenre: "Your highness." And he stands, and takes his beads away, very tiredly.

Abrogail Thrune II: ...do they seriously mean to tell her that nobody thought of inviting her to that?

Project Lawful: PL-log:  Subevent 3 of PL-incident Bargaining With Chaos

Time:  Day 4 / evening

Location:  Egorian, Imperial palace, food preparation area

Notes:  PL-subject #3 is outside Otolmens Containment Zone while event occurs

lintamande: Paladins can't experience fear. 

Otherwise it'd be much harder to operate in Cheliax. 

It is, to be clear, generally not worth it. Paladins can't experience fear, but they can experience eternal torture, and Cheliax delights in sending them on to it; there are places where more good can be done at a lower cost. But in the end, Cheliax is going to need to be overthrown, and you have to be in Cheliax to see the fractures when they start and can be encouraged in spreading. Plus, sometimes something really unexpected happens and you need to have people who can act quickly. Andreu Bassols (not his birth name) has been living in Egorian for two years, having moved from a small farming village when his parents died and it didn't seem worth keeping up the farm alone. He loads and unloads river barges; he's a strong man, built for hard labor. He has, beneath the skin on his neck and separately beneath the skin on his thigh, two minor magic items, which conceal an aura that would otherwise radiate from him and betray him. Either would be sufficient, but it's a new experimental type of magic item, and either could fail, so it's better to have both.  

He reads as having seven intelligence; his thoughts, when read, are slow, and uninteresting. This is the greatest sacrifice, aside from the possible eternity of damnation; the effect could not be manufactured. It had to be induced for real. He can lift it, when he puts his healing to that purpose, but it's risky, so he does it rarely. He did it this morning; knelt in the cellar he sleeps in, the walls and ceiling too thick for Detect Thoughts, and healed himself, and read an encoded report delivered on a river barge, and broke down the plan into steps he would still, later, understand. 

It's afternoon, now, and he is pushing a wheelbarrow of potatoes into the kitchens of the palace in Egorian. 

Pilar : Someone hands him a cookie.  "You did really well," the woman says gently.  "You worked really hard.  You deserve a cookie.  But now you need to get out of Cheliax.  It's okay, someone else will handle things from here."

why is her curse insisting that she act like this, fucking Abyss aaaaaahhhhhh

lintamande: That wasn't in the plan! 

"I have a delivery," the man says, smiling at her in a friendly sort of way but proceeding in the same direction he was headed in.

Pilar : Okay no, Pilar is not standing around cooing at this suicidal idiot, that's a step too far.

Message:  "You have a death sentence involving a Malediction, paladin.  Seriously, get out of here."

lintamande: He turns around and squints at her. Blinks. "I'm sorry, lovely, did you say something? My hearing's going off."

Pilar : There's too many people around.

You know, Pilar's just going to grab this guy by the hand and pull him someplace slightly more deserted.

lintamande: He doesn't object to this. 

He touches his hand to his chest, when they're alone, and the look in his eyes - changes. 

"Who are you, and what do you want?"

Pilar : "Aura Sight on me."

lintamande: "You are Evil, child, but the impulsive guess of the gods is not their final judgment, and they see the future not at all." And then he keeps squinting, and frowns. "....you are also Good. .... and Lawful. And Chaotic. - what do you want."

Pilar : "Lawful Evil's a disguise, Chaotic Good's the real one, it's stronger if you look closely, now that I'm not hiding it."

"I want you out of Cheliax."

lintamande: "It is stronger," he agrees. "This is a dangerous place for a conversation; were you able to choose no other?"

Pilar : "It's safer than it looks."

"Look.  Just go.  Get out of Cheliax.  I'm obviously on your side given that you're not dead and damned already."

lintamande: "It is not obvious to me that you're on my side; it's not obvious what you think my side even is. I don't take revised orders from anyone who glows right. Has my cover been compromised?"

Pilar : "One of the deadliest Project Lawful girls, Paxti, is making a sweep of the palace.  The girls you've heard of are the ones where not everyone who saw them is dead.  You would not have been able to evade Paxti like that and you still can't evade her now.  You don't have that long, go."

lintamande: "How would she find me. Is it only the palace they're sweeping. Do you need a ride out of the country."

Pilar : "Project Lawful bullshit that I doubt they actually understand any better than you do.  I don't know.  No because Milani bullshit."

lintamande: "What do you know about Project Lawful."

Pilar : "Something like a hundred and fifty things of which at most thirty can be true.  Strong guesses:  The archduke's villa that Nidal attacked was actually a decoy, one of the girls did in fact take a round trip to Elysium and back, the project is faking a move elsewhere but remains inside the Imperial palace where it's been from the beginning, whatever it is only works to empower women."

"If you're still here in one minute I'm walking away.  Milani bullshit or not, I cannot just hang around here next to you waiting for Project Lawful to catch up with you."

lintamande: "If they're sweeping the palace and maybe surrounding areas, why tell me to leave the country?"

Pilar : "Because Project Lawful is bullshit and the last person I told to just leave Egorian got executed and Maledicted.  But not right away.  They can see where you've been, maybe, but not follow fast -"

"Look, is this mission one that I can just complete, they can't find me but they can find you."

lintamande: "Come with me to my wheelbarrow."

Pilar : Sure thing!

Pilar Pineda has now met exactly one paladin in person and she already hates their entire species with a burning passion.  She is having to crush down a tiny thread of appreciation for how her curse is actually less Stupid Good than this.

lintamande: "Who was the last one?" he asks while they walk.

Pilar : "According to him, Iciar de Ossorio.  I doubt it was his real name, I thought I had no need to know since he was getting out, I didn't press him on it, and part of me is glad that now I don't have the ability and hence responsibility to tell his family how he died."

lintamande: "Our families know how we'll die." He reaches the wheelbarrow, pulls out a canteen, hands it to her. "Spread it on the walls in a well-trafficked area, thin enough it'll dry fast, it's detectable while it's drying. I intended to do the kitchens, but if you have the run of the place, it should avoid detection anywhere that doesn't have anti-scrying wards. You won't know if it worked, but we will. I am grateful. Realize your aims."

And off he goes.

Pilar : Her curse had better not expect her to actually do this.

Project Lawful: Her curse is not that stupid.

Pilar : Well good for it.  Is Pilar kindly allowed to hand this stuff in for analysis?

Project Lawful: Eh, sure.

Pilar : Pilar admits to being surprised.

Project Lawful: Pilar has been nice to her curse and now her curse is being nice to her.

lintamande: Guy with his wheelbarrow leaves the grounds. The wheelbarrow is still full of potatoes, which he's confused by - did he miss a step? No, he changed plans. He should get somewhere quiet and figure out what the plan is now.

Pilar : Pilar hands the canteen in for analysis.  Whoever's in charge of putting out this kind of fake story, the canteen was taken off the body of an agent of Milani who looked like Pilar currently looks.  The Milani agent was surprised trying to use the canteen, and got interrogated, executed and Maled -

- was hunted by Paxti, but managed to suicide before being Maledicted.

Is her curse ever going to stop whining about every little thing.

Project Lawful: Trying to make somebody believe that they got a friend Maledicted is mean.  If Pilar stops trying to use her curse to be mean, her curse will stop whining about it.

Pilar : Being mean to paladins doesn't count.

Project Lawful: It always counts, for everyone everywhere.  Paladins are, first and foremost, people, even if a lot of paladins forget that themselves.

Pilar knows this already and doesn't want her curse reminding her of it and that is why Pilar is angry and trying to go out of her way to be mean.

Pilar : ...actually, Pilar just had a really fucking disturbing thought, and she's ashamed of herself as an Asmodean for not thinking of it a lot earlier.

Her curse wouldn't, possibly, maybe, have just humorously tricked her into saving a paladin who was actually going to get caught and Maledicted.

Would it?

Project Lawful: Pilar will not be used against her Lord, Asmodeus, to whom she is truly and incredibly-undeservedly loyal.

Pilar : It has not escaped Pilar's notice that her curse has not answered her question.

Project Lawful: From this it would then follow, for example, that if this paladin had hypothetically been due to get caught and maledicted, he would have first succeeded in his mission, and would have gone to Hell never saying what he'd done, leaving Chelish Security unaware of it.

If Iomedae wants that exchange to be made, Asmodeus presumably wants it not to be made.  And therefore in a case like that, hypothetically speaking, Pilar would have well served her Lord.

Pilar : But Chaotic Good is also fine with that exchange not being made, huh?

Project Lawful: Apparently so!  If there's one thing that Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil can team up to fight, it's Lawful Good!

Pilar : Bullshit.

Project Lawful: Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil may find paladins annoying for very different reasons, but they can sure agree that paladins are annoying.

The Worldwound project shows that Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good have no trouble teaming up to fight Chaotic Evil.  Why wouldn't it be the same for teaming up to fight Lawful Good?

Pilar : If Pilar's curse isn't just messing with her about this, how would her curse feel about rounding up every single Lastwall spy targeting the Imperial palace?

 ...And sending them home unharmed to their families where cute sons and daughters no doubt await them, wondering whether their missing parent will ever come home to them or if they'll hear about their Maledictions instead.  They will be so relieved and happy to know that their parents' nightmarishly dangerous missions are over.

Her curse should be very cheerful to go along with this, right?

Project Lawful: Oh, well, that might cause the Chelish government to go around committing more nefarious evil deeds than they would have otherwise, both because Lastwall wouldn't stop them and because Cheliax would know Lastwall couldn't stop them so they'd try even more nefarious plots.  No true Chaotic Good curse could approve such a thing!

...Pilar's curse could, of course, be swayed about this, if it happened to be true that rounding up all the Lastwall spies would make something else happen so that the whole thing wouldn't then be a net loss for Chaotic Good.

Would anyone like to make Pilar's curse an offer?

Pilar : Another hour, another call to the Grand High Priestess.

Carissa Sevar: "I think I'm ready to do lie authorizations," Carissa tells Maillol, "unless you judge otherwise."

She looks slightly better.  Like a stiff breeze could still blow her over but she'd get back up.

Ferrer Maillol: "Eyeballing you, you might be ready for on-call authorizations on lies but you're not ready to accept project handoff.  I guess that's good enough if we want to bring the others back tonight.  Pilar may arrive a little later, she's on loan to Crown Security for urgent undisclosed reasons, and we may need some lie ready to cover that."  Actually Maillol knows exactly what those reasons are, but Sevar does not get to hear about Project Lawful bullshit of that order until she's more recovered.

Maillol hopes very strongly that Sevar is ready to accept that handoff before dawn tomorrow.  It hasn't escaped Maillol's notice that, although today there were no massive project disasters per se, yet, the person who started out as Project Director of Project Lawful was kidnapped and extensively tortured by Abrogail Thrune.  Maillol is not sure whether Pharasma's curse is following the title or the acting authority, and in the latter case he wants to give it back to Sevar ASAP.

"More importantly, Sevar, are you sufficiently able to monitor and respond to emergency Keltham events that the Grand High Priestess can leave the site area?"

Carissa Sevar: "I believe so. It might not be maximally convenient for my recovery if something major comes up but I think I'm in condition to handle it."

Aspexia Rugatonn: This will unfortunately free up Aspexia Rugatonn to attend a meeting she is frankly not looking forward to at all, to brainstorm what Cheliax can do that will make Cayden Cailean most happy at minimal expense to Asmodeus.

Aspexia Rugatonn will trouble herself to first stop in at the project office - now in a fake Asmodean temple with no torture chamber, just in case Keltham asks why he is not allowed to visit the admin areas - and take a quick look at Sevar.

Does it look like Aspexia needs to have an angry and probably violent conversation with Abrogail?

Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar is talking over lies for Asmodia and Ione with Maillol. She looks - younger, in a weird way, than she did yesterday - not that a Chelish sixteen year old would ever show this much vulnerability on their face, but it'd look less out of place on a sixteen-year-old. She does not look strikingly conflicted or strikingly flinchy.  She's very attached to her dagger.

She nods to the Grand High Priestess with a private smile. Probably it will not amuse the Queen to tell the Grand High Priestess how upset Carissa was that she was dead. It's fairly pathetic.

Aspexia Rugatonn: A gesture, and Maillol no longer hears them.

"The Queen has in fact submitted a report on your adventure."

"It is not a priority for you to do anything about this, Sevar, especially not today, but be it known to you.  Loyalty to myself and my purpose and my office is acceptable.  Attachment to the point that you then blunder into Keltham's room being visibly distressed about a woman you should hardly know, is weakness, not terribly Asmodean, and not something I think we should be inculcating in the new Lawful Evil."

"The Queen suggested that this problem should be fixed by having you torture me to death once per day for a few weeks, and while I believe she had ulterior motives in this suggestion it was not entirely inappropriate as a solution ignoring its costs."

Carissa Sevar: " - that wasn't why, Most High. Keltham wouldn't have assumed any special attachment to you for me to to be distressed at your true death, especially as he knows it's what I fear most for myself. It is part of what he's allowed to know, that we spoke when you came to lay the first Forbiddance - though at the time I only told him I'd talked to a very important person - but I think if I stumbled in on him broken up about the true death of someone I'd only once been in the room with, he'd consider that reasonable, and decide that he would have to fix it for me. It seemed like the best possible grounds on which to ignore his stated wish that no one interrupt him while he was thinking, and I was very worried about what would happen if he went on thinking. Keltham is constantly reminding himself that death in Golarion isn't real and isn't costly; he hasn't lost any of his dath ilani convictions about the horror of true death." And I happen to share them.

"Or - I mean, he does have some kind of weird theory based on his own true death not being such, but then he'd have started trying to convince me of that. I promise, I'd have done the same thing if I'd learned any other mildly notable figure I'd previously mentioned meeting had been terrifyingly destroyed at the front; it was just the most convenient way to get in the room."

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia does not, in fact, believe Sevar about this.  Oh, she's surely being honest; truthful is another matter.

But she cannot push any further on this point without risking disturbing Abrogail's careful pattern of shatterings and fractures while it heals into a new form.

"Do not wantonly strain yourself even tomorrow," Aspexia warns.  "A tryst with Abrogail Thrune is not an ordinary torture session and cannot be treated as such."

And she departs.

Carissa Sevar: Were those the kind of sentences you'd report 'wrongthought' about, if you were a good dath ilani?

Maybe, if it seems wise to explain this to Keltham ever, she'll ask how he would have reacted, if interrupted by a Carissa distressed at the news that the grandmotherly woman who'd smiled at them had been destroyed.

If it was an error it was definitely an error even at the time, though, rather than a justification invented now; this must be the proper version of the complaint that that hated-Security had been ranting about in her ear at the time, which failed to land because she couldn't even understand what he understood her to be doing - and because she'd felt that he had no idea how Keltham worked and should shut up, except they'd controlled Keltham, so he'd reacted as they'd understood him. 

But it's some evidence about whether what she just said to the Grand High Priestess was a wrong thought. When accused of having unstrategically let her emotions guide her into stupidly revealing something to Keltham, she'd been purely and entirely confused, because the interaction she understood herself to be having was perfectly accurate to new Cheliax; if there was an error it was in her understanding.

Would Keltham, primed to greater suspicion by a warning from Abadar, see suspicion even in something genuinely unsurprising, like Carissa being sad about the death of an important figure in her religion who she'd only spoken to at length once? It's objectively not suspicious, in new Cheliax, but would he have found it so? Maybe; it's hard to be suspicious only of the exactly correct things. And if Keltham is going to be suspicious of everything then maybe it's not enough to do things you'd do in new Cheliax, maybe you'd have to only do things that'd parse to him as having absolutely no suspicious traits - except then that's obviously manipulated -

To Maillol, Carissa appears to be staring off into the middle distance frowning for a long time after the Grand High Priestess departs.

Ferrer Maillol: "You look like somebody thinking too hard.  If you're not ready to go to sleep, get a book.  Director."

It is in his own best interests that Sevar get back together quickly.

Carissa Sevar: "Is that the degree of professionalism with which I served you? .... but you're probably right.

All right. Ione may lie about how big a problem it would generally be for someone to be chosen of Nethys, and about how rare oracles are, because if she's claiming she was one before she joined the project they can't be that weird without Keltham concluding tropes are afoot. We get into a mess if we try to lie about how the entire death and sorting system works, so Asmodia should tell the truth that she sold her soul - but voluntarily, on her graduation and before joining the project, because she's really good at math and wanted to secure an academic role in Hell if she got herself gobbled up right away at the Worldwound. Asmodia is authorized to lie about literally everything about Hell that's not also true of Axis; she might not know what that is, but you can tell her.

Lie about Pilar is that a bunch of researchers are fascinated by whatever is going on with her and have begged her to stay a little bit. Since we're not going to be able to pretend she's not incredibly weird."

Ferrer Maillol: "Acknowledged, Director."

Carissa Sevar: Off Carissa trots to bed.

lintamande: Ayat Himinshi, a merchant with a seasonal spice shop in Egorian and a side business of passing the results of various divinations on to a prince in Taldor where his family lives, is sleeping soundly in his bed that night.

Iarwain: Not especially knownst to Ayat Himinshi, who has probably never thought about it in that way, and sort of not very explicitly knownst to Taldor...

Essentially everything Himinshi sends on ends up in Lastwall eventually.  Lastwall has very good spying operations on other countries' spying operations on Cheliax.  It's so much less expensive, as they count costs, than sending people directly into Cheliax.

Iarwain: Anyways, there's a knock on his door in the night, really a lot politer than you'd expect if Security had caught him.

lintamande: He puts on an amulet that fuzzes his thoughts like he's awfully drunk, takes a drink to back it up, and gets the door.

Cheliax: A well-dressed and painfully polite Imperial palace functionary apologizes for the suddenness of this interruption, but they wish to invite Ayat Himinshi to attend on a gathering in the Imperial palace.  The reasons cannot be explained here; this location is not secure.  He has the Imperial palace's reassurance that he will not be harmed, and that, regardless of how things may seem, there is not any reason for him to worry.

lintamande: What.

"I'll plan on it. When?" he asks, his words not slurred but kind of close.

Cheliax: "I'm afraid it must be now, sir.  I apologize again."

A fancy carriage waits outside his door.

lintamande: "'m drunk," he says. "I was out late. 'm in no state to go to any palace. 'pologies."

Cheliax: "It's fine.  We plan on serving alcohol in any case and there's no expectation for anyone to stay sober."

lintamande: He gets into the carriage, nervous but mostly baffled. This is not how Cheliax works.

Project Lawful: This is no longer the Cheliax you find familiar.  You are now entering the control of Project Lawful.

lintamande: At yet another location in Egorian, a stunningly beautiful woman lies in bed with a minor noble of House Thrune. It's a classic but the classics are classics for a reason. 

Iarwain: This woman has high enough Bluff to pass a DC 40 Bluff check to defeat Detect Thoughts by having the correct thoughts.

Her Sense Motive is nothing to sneeze at either.  Defeating it would take a lot of Bluff and Splendour.

Abrogail Thrune II: She wanted to participate in this operation somehow.  Sue her.

Very sorry, Mr. Thrune, your sex worker is urgently needed to attend upon a special occasion at the Imperial palace.

lintamande: Well, Amela apparently thinks, that sounds interesting. Can't turn down an opportunity like that. 

To Abrogail, who is extremely hard to bluff, it's obvious that her secret thoughts are more worried than that. But not panicked; she can pass a Truth Spell, she can pass Detect Thoughts, she has a resurrection on tap if she gets executed, she mostly doesn't have nervous sensation in her body because she's not actually into all the favored Chelish kinds of sex....

Abrogail Thrune II: ...Abrogail should have thought ahead sixty seconds into the future and realized how much she would be Tempted to Break the Rules during this operation.

But she is not entirely oblivious to how these things work among gods, and apparently they need to pretend to be gods in a way that the actual divine curse on the other end can something something predictable something something Aspexia could probably go on about this literally forever if that was what she chose to do.

Come along then, Amela, if you're lucky you might even get to see the Queen at some point tonight.  Did you know she sometimes attends those kinds of parties?

lintamande: Does she really. That sounds fascinating. 

Amela's surface thoughts are that she would be love to hit on the Queen of Cheliax but isn't sure even she has the nerve.

Amela's less-surface thoughts are that she can sell that conversation in Lastwall for a fiefdom in Heaven, except that she's actually heard fiefdoms in Heaven are really boring because everyone just politely ignores your cruelest orders.

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail doesn't mind sharing some gossip along those lines, though none of the more treasonous stuff, of course.

Cheliax: Carriages alight in the properly grand main entranceway to the Imperial Palace, though not all at the same time.  A sex worker disembarks, as does a seemingly drunk spice merchant.

Nothing scary happens to anybody at any time.  Is this even Cheliax?

Cheliax: They proceed through grand hallways, to... the entrance antechamber of a grand ballroom?  Well, okay.

Four people are already waiting there, from various walks of life, having apparently been warned to momentary silence, it's not time to talk among themselves yet.  A moment later, another two people arrive.

Everyone's here, and it's time to go in and...

Project Lawful: "CONGRATULATIONS!" shouts (disguised) Pilar Pineda, as confetti rains down from nowhere.  "YOU GET TO GO HOME NOW!"

People wearing brightly colored hats clap and cheer, the band starts up playing, the waiters immediately approach the honored guests with drinks and snacks, and the surprise party enters full swing!  There's giant banners on the wall reading "THANK YOU FOR SPYING ON US", and "DON'T WORRY" and "IT'S NOT A PROBLEM".

Pilar : Is her curse finally fucking happy.

Project Lawful: Her curse is ecstatic!  This is what a surprise party should be like!