Aspexia Rugatonn: "If another 'trope' threatens?  Treat it the same as you would a meddling god with unshattered prophecy, which is to say, refer it all to me, because it is beyond you."

"As for your cultivation of Sevar?  Continue it the same as before.  We already wished Sevar to distance herself from Irori."

Aspexia Rugatonn: Rugatonn emerges from her conference with Subirachs, neither of them particularly readable as to what might have been said there.

"Sevar," she states.  "You have an appointment with a ley-line, a sacrifice, and a 5th-circle scroll.  Let us be swift about this, for Keltham may not expect this matter to take long."

Carissa Sevar: " - yes, Grand High Priestess." She didn't actually know you could get a caster level boost from a sacrifice. Permanent Detect Magic, here she comes. 

(Is it a human sacrifice? Probably it is unAsmodean to care if it's a human sacrifice.)

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn takes Sevar by the arm and Teleports, of which she has her means.

Carissa Sevar: It's not a person, it's a tame warg, clearly someone's prized attack animal. Carissa feels a rush of relief about that which she absolutely merits punishment for, and accepts the sacramental blade enchanted with a beautiful spell she has no time to look at, and gets to work on enhancing her caster level sufficiently to give herself Permanent Detect Magic from a scroll.

Keltham: Keltham is pacing inside the fortress, back of the entranceway/exit that Carissa used; it is not considered safe for him to go any further, let alone outside, he would not be sufficiently scry-warded.

...if Carissa comes back and everything is fine then he can probably give up on terror of random tropes, right.  The conflict didn't happen with the Queen, Asmodia does not seem to have superpowers.  If Carissa is no kind of hidden cleric and her afterlife arrangements go fine and their romantic options contract proves not to be a setup for some huge awfulness, he'll be able to say that all this trope business is more the sort of thing he ends up calling afterwards than the sort of thing he can call in advance, and he should be less afraid the next time he thinks up an advance prediction of something terrible.  Isidre won't be a hidden criminal mastermind either.

Carissa Sevar: It takes what feels like far too long but then his Carissa returns to him, looking radiantly pleased with herself. "It worked fine," she says. "I got Arcane Sight and a lot of spellsilver. And the Grand High Priestess came by and poked me personally and said that she believes as strongly as mortals can believe things that I'm not a hidden cleric of Zon-Kuthon, which, I wasn't very worried, but I know you were."

Keltham: "Or a hidden cleric of anything else?  Or a stealthed cleric that is not hidden in the sense of now being known to her?  Also what cantrip am I casting behind my back."

Carissa Sevar: "Message. Technically Arcane Sight only lets me see that it's a cantrip and a transmutation, to see the actual spell structure I need to see you cast it. But I know it's Message since that's the transmutation you hung today. She said that I was no hidden cleric, and I didn't press her on whether that technically covered all possible kinds of clerics who might be in various possible states of knowing and known, but also I don't think the devil could have bought my soul, had a god already claimed it."

Keltham: "And the devil actually did buy your soul, which you haven't actually said in those words, and there did not happen any incredible shenanigan behind the scenes while I was not there which explains for perfectly logical reasons why Governance would have to lie about whether you'd sold your soul successfully and fake the Arcane Sight thing."

(Keltham will now roll his Sense Motive against Carissa's Bluff, with a +5 bonus for surprising her with this startling insight.)

Carissa Sevar: "The devil actually did buy my soul, in what I think was a completely normal devil-buying-soul transaction, aside from the part where he thought it was weird the Grand High Priestess was hovering looking totally un-awestruck. The devil gave me Arcane Sight and a lot of spellsilver in exchange for my soul, which he bought."

(Bluff: 34).

Keltham: "Part of me is having trouble believing it, because, if I believe that, it means I'm basically safe from what my brain predicts are horrible things that will happen to me because of tropes, like the options contract being sweet and romantic and thereby implying that something horrible will happen to our relationship as a result, and my actually being safe like that seems too good to be true in a world where Cayden Cailean is suddenly doing my snacks catering."

(Keltham's Sense Motive: lol + 5)

Carissa Sevar: "I totally predict many horrible things will happen between here and Civilization. But - I'm kind of planning to feel safe where I can along the way."

Keltham: "That's extremely sensible."

"My brain, which apparently is very reluctant about believing in that safety business, because it thinks that's going to get me killed or worse, has instead entered a weird state where part of it has decided that this of all things is the proof that everything around me is an elaborate lie.  I'm probably not going to be in a very sexual mood until it recovers.  I would still like to go to our bedroom and cuddle with the person that part of my brain thinks is a cleric unknown to herself because, you know, the Grand High Priestess would totally have had some incredibly logical reason for lying to her about that or doing the technical truth thing, after they faked the soul sale."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's internal screaming is quite deafening.

"Well, we can put up a poster, is Carissa a secret cleric, and everyone can place their guesses, and we can see who gets points from who. And we can cuddle."

Keltham: "Okay, yeah, that actually helps to hear you say, I am a little worried about how much dath ilani being sane relies on them having anything else sane around them, and the thought of having to write down my insanity as a fraction on a poster like I was a tiny kid again is actually very very helpful here."

"Bedroom?"

Carissa Sevar: Snuggly Carissa. 

"You know you don't have to warn me whether you're going to want sex or not, I don't mind not being sure."

Keltham: Keltham is holding her pretty tightly.

"Not trying to update relationship model right now, too busy trying to convince a - slice through my mind's structure - that you're not going to die in the next hour."

"I can shut this all down if necessary or in any emergency, I am not out of control of myself, it's just, I have a sense it's wiser to wait it out."

Carissa Sevar: " -okay. I'm - sorry you're so scared, even if I don't really understand. I'm here. I'm not going away. Not ever, if you don't want that."

Keltham: "The thing with Cayden Cailean catering my snacks really really did not flaming help with anything.  It really didn't.  Finding out the way I did didn't help either.  This whole world seems so barely real, like I'm supposed to go to the layer past saying 'I notice that I am confused' and say 'This is not reality' and wake up out of it."

Oh, he's finally having his metaphysical panic attack.  That's also an meta-deconstructed-eroLARP trope.  He always wondered how you would get a realistic sane person to the point of actual metaphysical panic when, like, they knew the math, and now Keltham knows.

Carissa Sevar: "I'm really sorry about that. I feel like it's my fault, because the site manager was telling me things to pass on to you, and I bet he'd have told me that, only I didn't report yesterday."

Keltham: "Well, you've got to expect some costs and consequences like that when you rent your girlfriend to be surprise kidnapped by the Queen of Cheliax."

His arms tighten more around her.

Carissa Sevar: Small happy squeak. "I'm glad you did. It's okay if you never do anything like it again but - now I know what it's like."

Keltham: "...hey.  There's - something I want to do - that I don't know if you'd recognize, or understand, and I'm not in shape to explain it properly.  I want to let the part of me that - doesn't believe in any of this - talk to you.  It won't be all of Keltham that's talking and you shouldn't panic about what it says.  If you can't - make that mental separation, between that part of me, and my whole - if part of you will think on some deep level that it was the real Keltham talking - then I shouldn't do it."

Carissa Sevar: "I think I can handle that," she says quietly. 

Keltham: "Okay."

"It says, I'm sorry."

Carissa Sevar: This is the most terrifying interaction Carissa has ever had except for the one while she was being tortured to death. "...what for?"

Keltham: "I'm sorry that Keltham hasn't seen through all this.  He has enough information and he's refusing to see it because he doesn't want to believe.  I'm sorry that Keltham is refusing to realize what, what's being done to you, to make you do all this, the threats being held over you that people in Golarion yield to, what they had to do to you to force you to lie and be part of this and have sex you didn't want when he didn't turn you on at all, to pretend to gasp in pleasure while he was hurting you and hurting you -"

Keltham is crying.

Carissa Sevar: At some point Carissa's going to have to stop having her brain just flail in panic internally and force it to produce some outputs. Outputs. Those. What. Good girlfriend. What does a good girlfriend say to that. But actually what - if she were a paladin she's not sure she could figure out what to say to that -

She is not at all, she has built a firm wall internally against, parsing any of what Keltham is saying as real sympathy for the real Carissa, who he would hate, if he knew. Thinking about that is the road to feelings about that and the literal only advantage of feelings about that are that Abrogail would like them. The rest of the time, worse than useless. 

Good girlfriend. What do good girlfriends say, about these words that do not mean anything to them.

"Oh," she says quietly. "Oh, I didn't realize how that'd be tied up with - should I, should I try to argue with you or should I just listen -"

Keltham: "If you're not going to tell Keltham the truth, and you're not, because you'd get executed in a public execution and sent straight to the afterlife with people burning which is what all of the afterlives here are actually like, then no, arguing with me isn't going to help me or him."

Carissa Sevar: Ouch.

"...okay. " she says, and - and wishes, even though she shouldn't, that there weren't any lies - 

If the world were that bad, she is tempted to say, and ...places in it might be, you could've landed on Nidal, then, I expect, that Carissa would - be grateful, be awestruck, see in you proof that there's something else there, that humans can be more.

She shouldn't say that. What if it sounds too true. 

What if she told Keltham they should run no. no. she didn't even really think it and she's very fucking sure that there's someone listening in with a Dominate Person, probably the Grand High Priestess herself, and she's not that weak and she's not that pathetic and she's not going to destroy her one chance to fix Cheliax and fix Hell because Keltham cried on her while saying things he didn't even mean. That's not who she is. She isn't going to choose feelings over her country, over her god, over the entire eternal fate of everybody. She accepts whatever punishment for having thought it but she honestly and thoroughly did not mean it, and if offered the choice right now she would not take it. 

"I think that Carissa says sorry back," she says instead. "For hurting Keltham, even if she didn't have a choice and didn't mean to. For living in such a lousy world and not having fixed it up before she had guests over from another planet."

Keltham: He's going to cry about that very hard for a while.

Carissa Sevar: Hopefully that means she did it right? If the Grand High Priestess does happen to be listening, and also reading Keltham's mind, that would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL RIGHT NOW. 

No. 

Just her, her and Keltham's sense that something is wrong -

"I think that Carissa also says that, uh, that world needs a Keltham even more than this world, and she's glad it has one. Though real Carissa disagrees with her on that one and does not want that world to have a Keltham. Maybe it can have a Nemamel."

Keltham: "The real Keltham wanted to chuckle.  He thinks it's funny.  I - don't."

"I want to promise you that I'll save you, that Keltham will save you, that he'll figure out everything and wake up out of this and save you.  But he won't.  He's just a dath ilani kid in over his head against the people wearing intelligence headbands who actually run Cheliax and who have been gaming this all out against him from the beginning.  He's not going to figure it out, he doesn't want to figure it out, he wants to believe in his happy impossible world with masochists that's being constructed around him after the people here read his desires and probably read his actual mind, he wants to believe so he can go on hurting you and not thinking about how the real Carissa is screaming inside and he's only letting me talk like this in hopes that I go away and stop bothering him."

Carissa Sevar: That would be good news, objectively. It still hurts to hear. And she's - not sure it's an accurate prediction. 

She keeps wanting to reassure him but that's - probably not strategic - what's strategic -

- her brain is stuttering really hard on that question, probably because the strategic thing is something like get Keltham to identify with the incredibly cynical picture he just painted, and she both has no idea how to do that and is worried it might break the entire thing that everything else is built on. 

"That's a lot to put on him," she says. "That if all the smartest people in an entire civilization are running an elaborate lie on him it's still - his fault, for believing them -"

Keltham: "Keltham is thinking that you saying that helps.  Because he wants to feel comforted.  The truth is, they're not trying that hard, he's probably not even that important, they're doing all this just in case he knows something useful in there somewhere that the last thousand visitors they did this to didn't already know.  They're not trying that hard.  He doesn't see it anyways.  Because he doesn't want to.  Because he benefits from being blind.  It's all been his fault from the beginning."

"Your world needed a Nemamel.  Keltham can't save it."

Carissa Sevar: "...well, in that case I guess that Carissa is pretty annoyed with him. Or I guess maybe not, since if he saw through it all they'd both be killed? Maybe she's judgmental, but also grateful for his ignorance."

Keltham: "Keltham doesn't want to save it.  He wants to be the protagonist of the little harem and the little 'eroLARP' that they made for him and seem to live happily ever after, until they conclude he doesn't have any useful information and throw him away to burn."

"You should hate him.  He deserves it and not just for raping you."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's brain is really not functioning well enough to navigate this conversation. 

It's not rape if she didn't say no even if you suspect her government has ordered her to keep you happy - no. 

Why would you hate someone just for wanting to be comfortable and have a harem - no.

Keltham will be valuable to Cheliax his entire life - DEFINITELY NO.

"That seems like a really improbable thing for him to want!" she says eventually. 

Keltham: "And even though you should hate him, I want to ask you for forgiveness anyways, even though you shouldn't, and even though, if there was any part of you that felt forgiveness, you couldn't say it for real, because they're watching you right now and if you made me believe it, if you looked too much like you were thinking about it, they'd use mind-control on you and the next day there'd be a different actress playing you.  I know all that and I still want to hear you say you forgive me but don't say that because I'll know you'd still be lying with threats of being burned and healed and burned and healed hanging over you and this whole conversation must be terrifying for the real Carissa and all I'm doing is hurting her even more because even this part of me is selfish."

Carissa Sevar: Blind instinct -

"Keltham -

- this hypothetical Carissa -

- she's not thinking about what she thinks of Keltham, whether he's cruel, whether he's nice, whether he deserves to be hated, whether she hates him - 

- she's thinking about whether he's going to help her fix stuff, or not. Because she's not actually so in love that it'd be the center of her life even if there were that much that badly wrong. And does she forgive him is a wrong question, because, gods, Keltham, she'd have so much on her plate!"

Keltham: "Hypothetical other Carissa isn't - she's not - the best spellcrafter for real, she's just -"

Keltham: "I lost it.  Real Keltham speaking."

"It couldn't say out loud that you were just a helpless victim.  Couldn't believe it even in the part of me that disbelieves everything else.  Slightly funny how that's the thing that broke it."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's brain is generating no things to say.  

Except that she's probably in a lot of trouble. She's not sure what for. Something.

Carissa Sevar: "Am. Actually. The best spellcrafter of my age my school has records of, at least. And whatever's wrong with my world, I was working on it before you got here and I'll be working on it long after you leave, if you leave."

Keltham: "I know."

"But right now I need to hold you for a while and not have anybody say anything."

He's tempted to use up that Early Judgment but knows, very well, that this is not the correct move.

Carissa Sevar: That sounds good because maybe it'll give Carissa's brain time to start working again.

She's crying, for some reason she's going to blame on the Queen.

Checking in? Do I have comms? Any urgent suggestions??

Iarwain: You have comms and no, nobody had any good suggestions for helping with any of that except for everyone to shut up and let you work.

Carissa Sevar: Great. Fantastic. 

And it means that she was correct, that she couldn't have escaped even if she was the kind of idiot who would have tried, and she - reaches for the part of her that knew that, and tries to reward it with less negative twos than the rest of her. You were right, part of Carissa that knows there's no escape. You know the world you live in. Hopefully as I grow the impulse to escape will die but if it doesn't, you look out for Carissa, and know that there's no way out, and be right. 

She clings to Keltham and cries.

Keltham: Realistically, not much more work is getting done today, at least not by him.

There will probably be some eventual conversations after this, and Keltham will say that Carissa did very well for all of that having been sprung on her so unexpectedly.  If it happens again she does not need to try to talk the speaking part of himself out of anything, does not need to argue with it, not unless there is some true thing that it seems like even that part could hear.  It's Keltham's job to know the reasons why what he's saying isn't true, and he already knows those reasons; what needs to happen is just for the false things to be said.

Perhaps sex will occur.  Keltham probably won't feel like hurting Carissa tonight if so.  This is not something to panic about.  He just strained a part of himself that now very predictably needs to recover.

They should sleep, Keltham says; have some dinner brought to them as a minor favor, eat it, and then sleep.  They will predictably feel better the next morning.  Human minds are like that.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is annoyed with the Queen for trying to encourage her to have feelings. She really thinks that her life would be easier to handle without them. She's aware that this is ridiculous, and ungrateful, and in a sense as objectively wrong as a thought can possibly be. But having feelings? Really inconvenient! Kind of the worst! It doesn't make her feel more whole and more able to handle the task ahead, it makes her feel overfull. Bloated. Lost. Stupid. Pathetic. 

It feels - maybe wrongly - like this whole deception is hanging on Carissa alone. Keltham's dark fantasy is that this is one of a thousand projects, half-neglected, just-in-case, but it's the real thing, the only thing they've got. She is not a participant in a system whose victory is inevitable. If they succeed it'll be because of her and if they fail it'll be because of her.

(Asmodeus's larger victory is inevitable, though, presumably.)

(But how much of a victory would that even be, if it occurred without fixing how Cheliax trains people and how Hell trains devils, if it held the state of the art still in its current place rather than leveraging it to make everything better..... heretical, almost definitely heretical.)

She is at the point where she'd generally start wishing she was on fire but she's not actually quite wishing that. She doesn't feel quite ready. 

A bunch of thoughts are floating around in her head half-formed, and she needs to get better at thinking them, at not ignoring them, but in Keltham's arms it's like it's hard to access the Carissa who demanded three Wishes of a devil. She halfheartedly tries to pin them all down for contemplation later, but even that feels like swimming uphill. Are tropes real? They seem to be making good predictions about Carissa not selling her soul and having some bizarre reason not to tell Keltham. Put a pin in that. Does she know anything that can justify her value to Dis? Not yet, but in a couple months, maybe. Put a pin in that. Is Hell good at what it does? Put a pin in that. What is Cayden Cailean doing. Put a pin in that. Is there a way to prove to Keltham that masochists exist and aren't all faking. Put a pin in that. Is Meritxell a good next partner for Keltham. Pin. Are they succeeding at making Keltham Asmodean or just technically-Evil, and does the latter serve them at all? Pin. The aim of all this is to make Keltham and Cheliax enough alike that when they truly meet, Keltham isn't repelled. Is the way to achieve that changing Keltham or changing Cheliax? Pin. 

It's too much; one of those questions might well be the key to the whole thing, but she doesn't know which one. 

After Keltham has fallen asleep she finds herself lying awake, terrified, arguing in her head with not-real-Keltham whose deepest underlying terror is apparently that she doesn't want to be there with him. It's not a problem she's ever had before. She's not the kind of person who lies awake imagining burning in Hell; probably burning in Hell won't be very fun, but what in the world would she gain by imagining it? 

Carissa Sevar: My lord Asmodeus, who will possess me forever, let me do as You will, or, failing that, do things You expect, so that I may be easily guided, and easily placed where I am needed. Let me be intelligent, if that serves You, and stupid, if that serves You, and a foolish heretic if that serves You, and let me ultimately be corrected in it; I can endure anything if I know that it is temporary. I treasure Your guidance, and am trying to obey it, and if I am failing, and being an idiot, know that I see a fragment of the flaws of mortals and hate it and am glad that You hate it, and that I want to fix it, for You.

Carissa Sevar: She does sleep eventually.

Project Lawful: PL-timestamp:  Day 5 / End

Abadar: Abadar is interested in paying Irori for information about a squirrel who is an unfinished cleric of Irori's. (Yes, that's unambiguously identifying; Abadar and Irori are not doing stupid adversarial trade things, so there is no reason to avoid that.)

Irori: Irori would not mind more information about Carissa Sevar, Himself, if anything has come to Abadar's attention about her.

Irori proposes a two-way trade of everything they respectively know that seems relevant, with Abadar not to use any information from Irori to hinder Carissa Sevar along her Way.  If there is an asymmetry in the gains from the traded info, then they shall be reconciled by standard payment scaled-down for their mutual exhaustion (from the Zon-Kuthon war; their divine resources are now both more costly and more valuable to either of them).

Abadar: Agreed. Abadar knows of this contract with a cleric of His own, and knows from the work of His mortals some only half-translatable mortal things about a Chelish project in the interdicted zone, which Sevar might be running, or maybe a subject of, or which is maybe cover for something Sevar is doing with Abadar's cleric. It might be worthwhile for Abadar's and Irori's respective mortals to compare mortal notes.

Irori: Carissa Sevar first came to Irori's attention when she was learning from the anomaly of Otolmens's concern, who is Abadar's cleric also much to Otolmens's concern, and it seemed that Abadar's cleric was speaking of matters that had again concerned Otolmens.  Irori looked within Abadar's cleric at Otolmens's request and found that Abadar's cleric intended no destruction in that moment, but only to speak upon his own Way to others.

It became visible to Irori then, upon a second look about, that Carissa Sevar had set a first foot along her Way, an unusually determined and promising Way for all that it is barely begun; Carissa Sevar has learned from the anomaly something of what it means to be a god, which is not simply about touching a Starstone or gaining power over the world or encyclopedic knowledge or some vague concept of 'perfection'.

Irori then bargained with Asmodeus that Carissa Sevar's soul not be bought by Him, and that she not be prevented in leaving Cheliax if her footsteps took her beyond it in time.  Asmodeus may have taken this as a challenge and decided to interpret it as a contest for Carissa Sevar's soul, which, if so, Irori had thought would probably be good for her pathway to epicness and godhood and hopefully beyond.

By some strange course of events this led to Carissa Sevar's eternity standing in peril, at the hands of some powerful creature of Cheliax apparently meaning to transform her into a statue, ward her petrified form, bury her never to be found.  And so Irori marked her, softly enough that neither she nor her tormentor would notice it, so that someday some caster willing to be quested by Him could retrieve her.

A few hours later Irori got an incredibly irate call from Otolmens asking why one of the mortals in Her interdicted zone standing quite close to the anomaly seemed to now be an unfinished cleric of Irori's.  Irori went very completely legible about how much He had absolutely not been planning to causally impact the interdicted zone in any way.  Otolmens is still upset about this and, frankly, Irori can't blame Her.  Otolmens has gone to nearly the greatest possible lengths available to Her to reduce the amount of divine interference around the anomaly, and the clerics and oracles around him are still accumulating.

Irori still has no idea what the heck happened with Carissa Sevar apparently being set to be petrified and buried by some being of great power and Evil, and then her apparently being fine a few hours later.  Even if it had somehow been a false threat, Carissa Sevar's soul does not appear scarred in the way that mortals would usually be scarred by such extreme threat and fear; it was as if the whole event had happened to someone else who was also Carissa Sevar, and so also marked by Him as His cleric.  Memory erasure of the episode?  Maybe she has two personalities and only one of them is scarred now, and she's currently using the other one, and that one doesn't remember?  Irori does not have compelling theories here; nothing He has seen previously happen to observed mortals matches this.  It is like the end of one time's thread was sliced out and spliced with the start of another; one where her soul's health is if anything improved.

He does not know why Abadar's cleric would pay thus for an option on Carissa Sevar's soul, except for the obvious fear that it stands somehow in danger of being bought, despite Irori having bargained with Asmodeus for that not to happen.  There are standard clauses in the compact for which Irori paid Asmodeus whereby Irori Himself could revoke it, but this He cannot be threatened into doing, nor would He do it even at Carissa Sevar's own request if she were being forced into making it.  Irori would of course revoke it if Carissa Sevar prayed to Him and seemed in full sincerity to believe that her Way made that her next step forward, but then in a case like that there is also no reason why Abadar's cleric would need to protect her.  Irori's best guess is that Carissa Sevar falsely believes that there is a prospect of her soul's sale being forced, and Abadar's cleric is seeking to protect her from that.  Even the Asmodeans may not yet know her soul is unbuyable.

With all that said, Irori does not exactly have a merchant group of which Carissa Sevar is an employee, that is monitoring Carissa Sevar and has notes to compare on her.  Nor, in fact, is it particularly evident that Carissa Sevar would need or want any more of Irori's aid, considering how past attempts at that have been working out for Him and her.

That also said, Irori is aware of Abadar's communications difficulties.  Irori can perhaps send forth some mortal willing to receive a vision from Him, to speak to those mortals that Abadar trades with, and say what Irori knows and can make clear.  But this Irori would not do of His own accord, nor does He much expect that His interests will benefit from the quested mortal hearing whatever they may hear in return.  It would come out of Abadar's own intervention budget.

(Which is, for those gods present in the beginning, who are not now too much in disaccord with the way that things are, more generous than any intervention budget ever granted by them to any god that was once human.)

Abadar: The mortals that Abadar trades with predict a really wide range of outcomes from this whole mess and some of them are quite concerning: see, look at their persistence in predicting more than a ten percent chance of the destruction of the multiverse. If mortals weren't incredibly bad at predictions that would be terrifying and as it stands it is still Abadar's highest concern. 

Abadar is willing to pay for Irori to arrange for those mortals to have more information that would allow their predictions to be better, and should the results turn out to benefit Irori's interests, Irori can reimburse him partially, as usual.

Irori: Done, then.

Trading with Abadar is gentle enough, if you are not yourself trying to mess with Him, that it is hardly like trading at all; just having portions of your utility functions mix together like dyes of two different colors, blending to paint some portion of the world in a single shade.

Derrina: Most gods have worshippers.  Asmodeus has slaves.  Abadar has trade partners.

From the perspective of a monk named Derrina, she follows her own Way... but permitting herself to be steered by Irori often places her in situations where she learns something.  Or, occasionally, somebody else learns something.

She would not presume to call Irori her teacher.  At best He has been to Derrina something like a scrawled old treasure map that she occasionally follows another step.

Derrina is, for the most part, a barehanded martial artist, because that is what resonates the most with her, and most feels to her like she is becoming something better by progressing in it.  Derrina did however once trouble herself to attend a wizard academy, after it had become clear to her that solving intellectual challenges on the level of spellcraft had become the next thing she believed she could not do.  Over the years since, Derrina has made use of that to challenge monsters that might be too much for her fists alone, resorting to spells only when her fists failed her, and items only when her spells failed her.  Now she is fifth-circle and can Teleport, and following her Map's hints has many times taken her to far places where she, or somebody, will learn something of value.

Derrina is, if you bother to ask, a first-circle cleric of Irori.  It is enough for Him to watch her and enough for Him to steer her into learning opportunities, and neither of them desires for her to receive any more aid from Him than that.  Eventually, if her Way proves true, Derrina will pray to Him one final time that He may sever their connection.  Irori had no god when He ascended.

This is the first time that she has received from Irori a request, or any such clear vision at all, but it hardly requires much contemplation for Derrina to agree.  Her relationship with Irori thus far has not been one where she feels that she has accumulated debt to Him; Irori has steered her well, many times, but it is not as if she never advanced His interests on those occasions.  Yet the prospect of having truly served Irori, in some deed He could not do for Himself, is an exciting one; Derrina has many things she might ask of Him, if she had properly earned some reward by her own strength and His true need.

And besides that -

She is not at the point where she could say that she considers Irori to be something of a friend.

But she does want to get there, someday.

It is said that Osirion has no place for women like her and no concept of them.  What of it?  It will be a learning experience.  Perhaps for her, and perhaps for them, but at any rate for somebody.

All that Derrina owns is about herself already, and she already has a Teleport prepared.  It will not take her to Osirion, for there she has not yet been; but it will take her to a city large enough that she can purchase a Teleport from there to Osirion's capital of Sothis.  As soon as she finishes recovering from receiving Irori's vision, Derrina will be ready to be on her Way.

Well.  His Way, this time.

Derrina contemplates this a moment, and decides that if she was too strict about even that, it would be one more needless chain upon herself.  There; she has already learned something.

Her hands draw shapes in air, and she is gone.

Project Lawful: PL-timestamp:  Day 6 / Start

Carissa Sevar: The first thing Carissa does in the morning is prepare spells; the second is track down Asmodia, who she'd meant to meet with the previous night to coordinate stories on Hell, before things happened. She should probably expect that things will always happen. Asmodia has her authorized lies, but it felt yesterday like that wasn't quite enough, and the obvious explanation is that it's related to the thing where Asmodia had a message for Carissa from a dead devil.

Which in hindsight maybe she should have asked to hear, or at least flagged as awfully important. 

They meet in the antechamber of the allowed-to-Keltham temple; there's Security at the door.

"What happened in Hell? - not to you, I don't care if you want to relive that or not, but, uh, around you."

Asmodia: Let's see if she can get through this without needing to invoke an authorization she doesn't yet have in hand.

"It seems possible that you would prefer to have this conversation someplace where only the two of us will hear it," Asmodia says.

Carissa Sevar: "Understood." She waves the security out of the room.

Asmodia: "I woke up next to my contract devil.  He finished reading his books and eventually got around to questioning me.  Said that it would be a flaw in the structure of Hell, I forget his exact words, if he wasn't allowed to know anything that I knew, and if that resulted in him being suddenly promoted, so be it, and if somebody destroyed him for being promoted too high, so be it.  I started by giving him the broad outline, Keltham, what Keltham knows, what the knowledge might mean, Nethys giving Ione book powers, Pilar being made Cayden Cailean's oracle, Carissa Sevar is sleeping with the Queen."

"He didn't seem to notice any of that as important until I got to the part about Carissa Sevar, at which point he stopped in the middle of what he was doing and said:  Carissa Sevar?  Tell me more."

Asmodia will pause here, in case anybody happens to want to say something about that.

Carissa Sevar: "I'm popular in Dis," Carissa says blandly. 

Asmodia: "He set me to writing down everything I remembered about our project, and then set me to copying spell diagrams, and then walked me through Dis to a place I'd rather not talk about and left me there.  Before he saw me off, he said, I memorized it:  Tell Carissa Sevar that you are, of course, for sale at the right price, and to look up Ahuvir Dulzomaud, who holds your soul."

Carissa Sevar: Wait, what?

Is this about - 

- the stupid thing she said to Abarco in the first moments of her new life, half on reflex, just trying not to undershoot - can I have the other girls' souls -

Carissa Sevar: "I'm not that rich yet, obviously, but if I think everyone else in Hell is doing it wrong then I'll have to get everyone myself and do it right, I guess.

And then - he got killed? How?"

Asmodia: "Two hours or so after he left me, I felt a sensation that I was told was the feeling of my contract devil dying and my soul going to whoever had the next rights for it."

"I was not informed of anything else.  The only guesses I had, were that knowledge of our project promoted him above his place and led to his destruction, or that he'd been destroyed for trying to pester you with offers."

Iarwain: Security advisory to Sevar:  Asmodia's thoughts are too sparse.  She is trying not to think of something where I can hear it, and she is succeeding.

Carissa Sevar: Noted. How about you stop mindreading her, then. 

And when that's acknowledged: 

"After he left you where."

Asmodia: Shit.  All right, she was trying to get through without giving away this much to a Security, but at this point, if anybody's reading her mind, they're going to notice how much it's going not-readable.

Asmodia places outside the barrier:  You are not allowed to ask why my mind is unreadable.  Tell literally no one.  If you must talk with me do so without notice.

"It was inside Dis's palace and - there were older devils there, making me do - many things - the memories are blurry.  It hurt.  At the very end they put me somewhere I would recover faster so I wouldn't be in too bad of a state when I went back."

Carissa Sevar: " - I see." She doesn't. She's confused. But she isn't sure being confused at Asmodia is a good idea. Better to wait until she has a guess, and then -

Do you have superpowers? But then she'd have successfully hidden them up to this point, and doesn't have reason to confess now.

Is there some secret Hell's keeping from us? But obviously there are many. 

Did you think I ordered it? Because it had seemed like she thought that, when they first talked, but Carissa couldn't bluff her way through, not that blind -

"Are you lying to me on Hell's instructions?"

Asmodia: "No."

(Asmodia has standard Bluff for a second-circle wizard student in Cheliax.)

Carissa Sevar: The High Priestess would know for sure. Carissa - isn't sure. 

Keltham thought Asmodia would come back with superpowers, and he's been right about far too many other things he had no way to guess. 

"Is there anything I'd be allowed to know, if I swore not to tell anyone, not even the Queen or the Grand High Priestess."

Asmodia: Why is she asking that.  Why is she putting it that way.  It doesn't make sense.

"I - I don't understand.  If Hell had instructed me to lie about something, why would you think that I'd be allowed to -"

"Why do you think something unusual happened to me in Hell?  Why does Keltham think that?  Maybe it's not in my own interests that I say this but since it seems that it might be a big Security issue, I should notify you that I've figured out that you, Keltham, and the Crown all suspect that something happened to me in Hell, you suspect I was told by Hell not to talk about it, and you're asking me anyways, while promising not to tell the Queen and Grand High Priestess, and this is the sort of thing where, where I don't know who I'm supposed to report to!  I know you could have good reasons, I'm not stupid!  But it seems like I ought to report this to somebody!"

That should provide some cover if anybody does find out somehow that she sent a secret message to Gorthoklek.

Carissa Sevar: "Keltham predicted you'd come back from Hell with superpowers. The way he predicted that was - weird, and makes other predictions, that we care about a lot. If Hell told you not to tell me something, then you shouldn't tell me, but if Hell might under some possible set of conditions want me to know that, then I would love to know under what conditions I get to know that, even if I don't get to know anything else. No one is reading your mind; no one is listening. I answer to the High Priestess here, if you think I'm not serving Hell, in this."

Asmodia: What does she care about, in this?  Not whether Project Lawful makes correct decisions.  Also not whether Hell keeps its secrets from Project Lawful.  There's one thing she cares about, which is finding out who she now needs to serve, or return a favor to.

And she's just found out that Carissa Sevar isn't the one who knows.  Only Keltham knows, if anyone does.

"I don't have any - I'm not even sure what would count as a superpower* - that I know about already and am allowed to tell you about under the circumstances you describe.  One thing you learn in Hell very quickly, even before they do any of what they call training, is to obey.  If I was thinking what you seem to be thinking, I wouldn't ask the mortal who came back from Dis, I'd send to the palace in Dis and ask directly.  You can tell them it's important to the project and that you won't tell the Queen or Grand High Priestess."

(*)  This Taldane term literally refers to an anomalous special ability that usual members of a race/class/species should not have.

Carissa Sevar: " - I see. You can go."

Asmodia: So now the question is, did she screw that up, or rather, how badly did she screw that up.

Asmodia turns and gets about halfway out of the room before she pauses and tentatively says, "Am I going to - should I be prepared to answer further questions from Security or the Crown?"

Carissa Sevar: "I guess we'll see what Dis has to say about that. But you don't, actually, strike me as an idiot, Asmodia, so I think -  I hope - you wouldn't have given me that suggestion to conceal some secret that Hell has no desire for you to hide."

Asmodia: "I have no desire to get myself in that kind of trouble."

Asmodia departs.

Now she needs to figure out how to have a conversation with Keltham that doesn't get shut down, and... does not involve using her hoped-for Gorthoklek authorization in ways Gorthoklek would not approve of, because it is possible to get tortured by devils outside of Hell...

...possibly she should just make like she's trying to investigate him for eventual dating purposes, and see if that topic comes up once they're alone.  Nobody would suspect that, right?

Derrina: Derrina has just been Teleported into Sothis, the capital of Osirion.  She's new here, and curious, and not especially the sort to carefully research everything in advance when she can test her own ability to just wing it.

What does she see?

lintamande: The city of Sothis is built in a place where you'd expect an obvious city, just from seeing the planet from orbit; at the delta of an enormous river, which meets the Inner Sea less than 100miles from Absalom and Oppara. North, the river delta fans out into an enormous maze of swamp and canal, most of it growing crops; south, the river banks remain green and the rest is desert. 

The city of Sothis is also built around another notable feature, which is the enormous, black, glinting carcass of the colossal beetle Ulanat, one of the spawn of Rovagug which terrorized the world nearly ten thousand years ago. The city has tall buildings, as these things go, but the beetle carcass towers over them. 

The streets are wide and paved and dusty and crowded with vendor stalls, selling fish and grain and textiles and trinkets and remedies. It's blistering hot. 

She's getting some stares. It's not obvious if they're for the Teleport or the ethnicity or the gender. 

Derrina: The heat is nothing to her, nor does she need magic for that.

The women about her - how are they dressed, how do they act, are there other women-adventurers among them?

lintamande: They are mostly wearing clothes that leave no skin showing, though that might be more about the sun than about modesty; the men are dressed similarly. They travel in groups, or with men, not alone, and constitute much less than half of the foot traffic on the street, though far from none of it. There are some adventurers, noticeable from their elaborate robes or their indifference to the heat or their colorful travelling companions; all of those seem to be men. Street vendors are men. 

Derrina: Mm.  Well, if anyone politely asks her to change her appearance, there is no reason for Derrina not to politely comply with the ways of the land in which she finds herself.  Impolite requests will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Perhaps she could start by making inquiries of some place where foreign adventurers gather.  Can she locate one such by eyesight, by wandering, by moving in a direction where many adventurers seem to go?

(She could just ask for directions, of course, and if she fails she will, for she is about Another's business.  But Derrina would at least see where her own seeking takes her first.)

lintamande: Towards the towering black beetle carcass, apparently. The streets are narrower, but the buildings nicer, as one walks in that direction; the goods in the storefronts are more expensive; the people are better-dressed. There weren't many beggars in the streets, in the place where she landed, but here there are none. 

(The share of people who are women is falling.)

She passes a spectacular and architecturally impossible temple, zig-zagging twenty stories into the sky, done in stone with the veins placed just so as to make a spectacular pattern. Around the temple there are fourteen bars, six fee-libraries, twelve workshops advertising different kinds of woodworking and metallurgy tools, and nine different places advertising themselves as the academy of something or other; this seems to be where all of the adventurers gather.

Nearly all, though not precisely all, of them are men.

Derrina: Well then.  How about if she heads into whichever bar looks the highest-leveled and hence most likely to have rumors and advice suitable for a high-level adventurer?  She does not partake in alcohol, but Osirion seems like the sort of place where you can find a non-alcoholic beverage if you ask for one.

(Derrina doesn't look like a fifth-circle wizard, particularly, if she doesn't use her magic; but she's got a hell of a Lawful aura for a monk.)

lintamande: "You'll have the wine?" the bartender actually says to her as if he almost never gets any other requests, when she walks in. In Taldane; she looks like she'd speak it. There's a board up labelled 'bounties' and another labelled 'bets'; both are large, and people are gathered around them chattering. Some of them look at Derrina once, and then twice; no one approaches her while she's ordering. 

Derrina: "I fear I do not partake in alcohol, but will be happy to try whatever non-alcoholic specialty of Osirion you think worth the experience."

lintamande: "Sure." He puts away the wine he was about to pour, which is glowing with a powerful Transmutation, and crushes some lemons instead for a sugar and lemon drink, Prestidigitated cold as he hands it across the bar.  "We take gold, or silver, or Absalom dollars; if you've anything rarer you'll have to trade it at the temple."

"How long left on the wine?" someone asks him while he's preparing her drink. 

"An hour."

Derrina: She spreads seven gold and silver pieces upon the counter, drawn from as many different widely separated countries.  "Your preference."

lintamande: " - here from a long way away, hmmm? In that case I should pitch you on the wine. There's a spell of the second circle, quite simple, that transmutes ordinary liquid to wit-sharpening wine, not as good as a headband, but good for - applying the smarts you've already got in ways you might not have thought of, for doing research or solving a puzzle or finishing something when you know you will think of the answer eventually, you just haven't yet. It's a weak spell, normally, and doesn't last long, but cast by the most powerful mage in all the Inner Sea, Nefreti Clepati, at our very own Temple of the All-Seeing Eye, it lasts more than three hours - an hour left, on this batch, which you get a discount for - and the effect is much much more powerful. I know people who say they'd take it over a headband, if you could bottle it in a headband, which you can't. The lemonade will be a third of the weight of this coin here, and the wine about a full coin; advice is free, if you're new in town."

Derrina: "Mm.  Perhaps I shall prove to have need of the wine, but I would as soon challenge my current problem with just my natural wits first."

She slides the full coin across the counter to him.  "Take the full coin for the lemonade; I am indeed seeking advice, and if you say that it is free for one new in town, well, give an extra helping of advice someday to someone who isn't, on me."

Derrina sips the drink and finds it nothing surprising; it tastes like how you'd expect it to taste given how it was made.  Refreshing, perhaps, but not enlightening.  Most experiences are not.

"I am sent to this land on something of an unusual mission, bearing information that is needful to a group of - gamblers, or some such, but pursuing that as a calling and not for profit alone, aspiring to slice the finest odds upon their bets that mortals may set.  These gamblers will be associated with the god Abadar, perhaps clerics of His church or answerable to such.  Where would I go seeking to find someone who could tell me about which such groups might exist in Osirion?  If there is only one such, my answer is already found."

lintamande: " - sure sounds like something in the church, sir, and I expect they'd know, or you could talk to the man who sets the numbers on the bounties, when he comes by, 'cause he must employ at least one of them if he isn't one himself. He comes by most mornings, though not all of them; sometimes none of the numbers have much changed."

Derrina: "I'd as soon not dawdle about my - about his way, if the bounty-setter is not here and not known to be here soon.  I will inquire of Abadar's Church if you believe they would know... what bounties are these of which you speak?"

lintamande: "The Church does all kinds of things, but most of interest to adventurers they do death insurance, and if you go and die insured they'll run a bounty for someone to bring your body in, to save them the fancier kind of diamond on the resurrection. So they post dead people and the bounties and their estimates of how likely someone is to succeed at bringing them in, though of course if you're very good your odds will be higher, and if you're very lousy they'll be lower, but it's useful to know which ones are chasing fish in the sea and which ones are solid money."

Derrina: Money is long since meaningless to her, who bears no magic arms nor magic armor and uses magic items only as an admission of temporary failure.  Derrina regularly donates excess wealth to some good cause or another, and does some needful act Pharasma calls Evil to restore the balance if she finds her alignment shifting.

"Not my calling, at this moment... but I admit, I do not see the connection between that and the gamblers I am to seek."

lintamande: "Not much of the Church where you're from, hmm?"

Derrina: "I know well enough that Abadar's Church acts as a bank in many places, but I have little use for banks.  If I have so much money I can no longer carry it about myself, it is time to give some away."

lintamande: " - as suits you, I suppose. Anyway, I'm not a religious, but - it's all the same currency, information and money. The insurance company, when they notice someone's gone and died, has to guess how much trouble it'll be to return their body, to set the bounty. If they're bad at guessing then they're going to set the bounty too high, or too low, and lose money, next to an insurance company run by people who know how to count. And they've been at it a while, so they're not bad at guessing, and no one would take a bounty from a place that didn't guess, or didn't tell you their guess. It's gambling, but not to win some copper off your friends, and if you win, then in the long run, everyone wins, 'cause death insurance is cheaper and this pack of fools can go out and do more dangerous stuff."

Derrina: "An interesting Way.  I do not think I have fully grasped it from your description alone.  The people I am seeking, no doubt, have understood it much better."

She finishes her lemonade, sets down the empty glass.  "Where may I find such a Church of Abadar as would be able to guide my next steps?"

lintamande: "Here in Sothis? Practically every street-corner. The nice symmetrical buildings with the golden doors, and the symbol of Abadar on them."

Derrina: "You don't think it worth trying a larger one, or some particular one?"

lintamande: "From your description I don't know if your information is something they'll buy at the first temple you come to, or something for some very secret group of people who bet on spies or something like that. But if it's the latter, you'd want the temple in the Black Dome, and you can't get into the Black Dome without a recommendation, so either way you might as well start at the first temple you come to."

Someone else comes up, wanting wine; he pours it for them.

Derrina: She is already curious as to what silly thing she shall have to do to earn a 'recommendation' to the Black Dome's temple, but she is perhaps getting ahead of herself.

"I'll be on about the way, then," she says, and departs.

She will enter the first temple of Abadar that she comes to, as instructed.

lintamande: It's clean and busy; there's a line of people waiting for service at a polished stone counter, and a teenage boy scrubbing the polished stone floors, and a teenage girl carrying boxes of records back and forth from the counter and up the stairs to the next floor. There's a sizable altar beyond the front room, where people are laying candles and burning incense, but it's not at all the focal point of the space. Down some narrow stairs, there's a glimpse of a classroom, full of boys who are age five to ten or so. 

Derrina: She shall inquire then of the teenage boy scrubbing the floors.  Where can she find a cleric of Abadar to guide a foreign traveler bearing information, for ones pursuing gambling as a great calling?  Or just a cleric of Abadar if that seems overly specific.

lintamande: There's a cleric on staff here; the price of her time is six silver for a quarter-hour, after which she'll quote a more specific price for further questions in the same vein. Her specialty isn't gambling, but she'd probably know whose specialty is.

Derrina: Silliness, but silver is meaningless to her.  If this is how Abadar's clerics choose to conduct themselves about His business, that is between their own selves and Abadar, and none of her proper concern.

Well then, Derrin shall go and pay six silver to consult one of Abadar's for a quarter-hour.

lintamande: The cleric is younger than her, and veils her face, and wears a fairly absurd amount of jewelry. She's cheerful enough, though. 

"What can I help you with?"

Derrina: Most people are younger than her, in fact.

"I am sent to this land bearing information for certain people who are of interest to Abadar, perhaps His clerics, or answerable to such.  They are gamblers excelling in their art and aspiring to excel more yet, slicing their odds as finely as a blade's edge or a hair's width.  They are considering a question of some importance; the one who sent me wishes for them to have information pertinent to it.  How may my steps be guided onward to find those I seek?"

lintamande: " - ah. Sent by who, may I ask?"

Derrina: "Someone of some importance.  Forgive me, but I would avoid speaking too much of such details until I have gone as far as I possibly can without speaking those details, that they not be spread wider than the people I am seeking would themselves desire."

lintamande: "I understand. Almost every decision of importance in Osirion is made by gambling, as you would call it; it focuses the mind, to make predictions in numbers it is accustomed to, and coin is a number in which we are all accustomed to reasoning, with the additional useful property of rewarding those who reason well. Different ones ask different questions. Our great merchant houses gamble in ships, and our great adventuring companies in the lives of those who purchase their protection, and our census-takers in the numbers of our people and the yields of their fields; it would be difficult to direct you with no idea of what your question touches on."

Derrina: "I am reluctant to call the matter important, since, in my experience, what great palaces and temples think to be important is often different from what is actually important, and I have no desire to find myself before royalty accused of wasting their time."  Again.  "Still, the matter strikes me as one more important than merchant ships and granaries.  Are you the one who should dispatch me about that, or should I visit another, who knows all these gamblers better, before I can go no further along the way without speaking?"

lintamande: "I can refer you to one senior in the Church, and with a recommendation they charge their fee directly to Abadar, if that is how you see the value running; on so little information I would hesitate to refer you to the Dome, which is where the contracts run most finely, and on the matters of the greatest importance. - the Dome cannot be scried through, and in fact no spell can go through it at all, and so matters that ought not to be known are spoken of there; and it is the seat of the Pharaoh who is Abadar in Golarion. Has your time been compensated? What would you charge us for it?"

Derrina: "To have honestly earned any reward from the one who sent me, by my own strength and in a matter of his true need, is all that I ask.  The fees Abadar's clerics ask strike me as strange, but if they are within my ability to pay, I will pay them myself and not concern myself with who else should.  I am given this task; I accepted it; I will complete it myself."

"I will visit your senior.  Let them decide whether to send me on to this Dome; perhaps my quest lies within, perhaps not."

lintamande: "I can accompany you, if you have no travelling companion; they will not agree to meet you alone, and your matter is secret. It it not necessary that I hear you speak of it." She pulls a bag off her wall and puts it over her shoulder. "How would you have the priests decide which petitions to answer?"

Derrina: Derrina will follow where she is led, if she is being led.

"I have never given the matter much thought before.  Religions of Good seem to have their priests judging urgent needs and answering them.  Priests of Evil, of course, answer petitions according to how it serves their own purposes or the spread of their particular sickness.  Chaotic Neutral would decide at random, perhaps, I admit I have never brought a petition before such. Nethys's priests would like you to be clever enough, knowledgeable enough, before they deign to speak to you.  On the Lawful Neutral side of things, a priest of Irori is something of a contradiction in terms, but they sometimes seem to think that asking petitioners to prove their strength or judgment to them is somehow meaningful.  I think they are silly, but then they are engaged about a silly profession."

lintamande: She has told the apprentice her whereabouts and set off down the street, towards the Dome again. 

"It seems to me that the ideal, even were one Good, would be to answer the petitions that are the most important, that touch on the greatest costs or the greatest benefits, and where the advice is more sorely needed and likeliest to be listened to. And when people pay for advice, they demonstrate that they expect the advice to inform a decision of great weight, and that they intend to listen to it. I am not Good, but if I were, my price would be the same, I think, if my gains distributed differently."

Derrina: "I should sooner expect that it results in advice and aid being given entirely to those who need it least, if their need is to be the argument."

lintamande: "Oh? You imagine that the rich have little need of counsel? Because their judgment is so good, or their decisions so inconsequential, or because they will not listen to it?"