Derrina: "Because their decisions are inconsequential; to the extent their decisions are consequential, they will not listen; to the extent such a one is humble enough to listen on consequential matters, I would not expect the advice they purchase from an advice-seller to be better than their own judgment.  But perhaps I am too cynical, having wandered so much of Golarion beyond the paradise that Osirion must be with so much excellent advice for sale."

lintamande: "The ones who will not listen do not purchase; people listen, to counsel that was expensive for them, and they seek it out only when they judge it worth the cost. But it is a fair complaint, that the system, if it is better, should have proved itself, and hasn't yet; though the Church is new in its strength, and the country new to its independence, and I do not doubt that Abadar will change our path, if this one does not make us as wealthy as it is expected to."

They round a corner and approach a bigger, lovelier temple of Abadar, this one set right against the walls of the Black Dome. It's even more impressive in person, more than a hundred feet tall, not properly black but iridescent like the carapace of an enormous beetle which it is.

Derrina: "So you'll prove your Way given some little time?  To that I have no answer but my willingness and desire to witness it."

She'll gawk at the Black Dome without trying to conceal anything of how impressed she is; to pretend to be jaded is far beneath her dignity.

Someday, if she's good enough, and practices long enough, and walks her Way maybe further than Irori ever did, she may be able to kill something like that.

lintamande: "Ulunat, the first Spawn of Rovagug," says her guide, "slain by the first Pharaoh. It is said that magic behaves strangely, within its shell; more powerful, for those who know how to wield it, but useless to those who don't." They ascend the temple steps. "And if the laws of Osirion don't make us the richest of all lands, then they were the wrong laws; the purpose of the laws is to bring plenty to those who work for it."

This bank has several counters, and the staffperson at one of them beckons them. "This woman has come on strange business, for which I have referred her to a senior priest; she'll pay their fee, if having heard the business they think it correct to charge it to her."

"How much do you prefer an answer at once to an answer tomorrow?" the staffperson asks Derrina.

Derrina: "I prefer it at once."

lintamande: "....yes, but, how much."

     "She said her coin holds little meaning for her."

"....do you not...want things...you can purchase with money?"

Derrina: "I suppose now and then I must replace some item I have failed badly enough to use, but for the most part, no, it accumulates until I give it away."

She takes a small handful of platinum from about herself, not bothering to count the coins.  "I am reluctant to spend all I have in this very moment, in case I must play further rounds of this silly game, but I think at least this much I would like to see haste and seriousness."

lintamande: " - understood," he says, and runs off up the stairs. 

         "I don't see why," says her guide, "it is a failure to solve a problem with a tool you have at hand."

Derrina: "You have answered your own question; money is a tool for solving problems, one that blunts as it is used, and comes to be expended.  I prefer to solve problems with myself, for I grow sharper as I am used, nor have I yet found the limit of that as a resource."

lintamande: The man comes running back downstairs. "He'll see you now. You'll accompany," he adds to her guide. 

         "Of course."

Derrina: She can guess at a reason for that, but to the extent it's true, it also renders their opinions on the subject meaningless.

And she will follow in the next footsteps that are pointed out to her.

lintamande: This priest is an old man, with rich robes, who rises to greet her. "Stranger. I was not told your name."

Derrina: It's not entirely impossible that somebody would recognize it.  "Are our words now for your ears and mine alone?"

lintamande: "That can be done." He pours something into the torch on his wall, to do it. The other cleric sits across the room, outside the sudden radius of golden light the torch now casts. 

Derrina: "I am Derrina, sent hence upon an errand by one greater than myself.  I bear information for gamblers who aspire to be the greatest in their art, which I thought would be more of a helpful distinction than it has proven to be in Sothis.  Whether these aspiring gamblers may be found within the Black Dome, or beyond it, is not a thing known to me; the matter strikes me as one that is probably important, but I have often found myself disagreeing with royalty about what is probably important.  The gamblers are related to the god Abadar, they may be His clerics, or answer to His clerics."

"If that is not enough information to send me upon my way, I'd have your oath as Abadar's cleric, not to repeat what else I must then say."

lintamande: "Are there gamblers who don't aspire to be the greatest in their art?" he says. " - but give me a moment."

And he considers. "You have my oath not to repeat what further you have to say to me, or to deliberately share that which would permit another to derive it, and to defer to you on questions of discretion relevant to this oath, while you are available, and to my understanding of your wishes, if you are not."

Derrina: "These matters then does it concern:"

"A goddess whose purpose is hidden.  A place where the gods may not intervene.  A woman of Cheliax.  A priest of Abadar who should not be where he is.  A torment unmade.  A compact upon a compact upon a soul."

"Does that suffice for you to know for whom among Abadar's gamblers this information must be meant?"

lintamande: "Yes. It does. It is for those who are learning to use money to rebuild the shredded threads of fate, that Abadar can see again. It is for the Prince Merenre. I can take you there."

Derrina: "I, to be clear, do vouch for the accuracy of what I have said about the subject matter, but not that it is in fact of interest to this Prince."

"If that is understood, lead and I will follow after."

Derrina has fought her way out of three palaces in her life, and she thought to herself that she was failing to learn from experience after the second one.

lintamande: "That is understood." He departs his office through a back door and trots off - not very quickly, he's an old man, but evidently quickly for the amount of cooperation he has from his joints - down the back stairs. "I do not think the Prince Merenre will disappoint you, or you him."

The back door is guarded. The priest speaks in a low voice with the guards.

      " - her intentions -"

      " - weapons -"

      " - chaperone -"

Then they stand aside, and on opposite sides of the door press patterns into the wall, and the door opens into the Dome. 

It is cool, inside Ulunat's corpse. The air does not feel stale, but crisp and refreshing, the feel of a breeze despite the absence of any actual breeze. There's the faint scent of summer wildflowers. The sun is visible in the sky, through illusion or perhaps some partial transparency in the beetle's carapace; it is not quite as bright as it ought to be, and the sky around it is a spectacular black-purple. The buildings here are very rich, and very lovely, and there are as many women as men. 

At one end of the Dome is a spectacular white stone palace, rising all several hundred feet to the purple-black sky, surrounded by stunningly lush gardens. There they head; her new guide does not speak further.

Derrina: Silence is not troublesome to her.  She will look about at the buildings and the sky.  As for the white stone palace, from Derrina's own perspective, its beauty is somewhat tinged with melancholia.

lintamande: The guards at the door stop them, but only, apparently, to take their message to the prince, and give them directions. And then they are escorted through the first floor of the palace, all pillars and fountains and silk sheets in the place of proper walls, up some marble stairs to the second floor where there's a sumptuous meeting-room. 

And a woman-priest, there to chaperone. She is clothed as the male priest, which is notable only because the women visible in the distance as they were escorted here were wearing half-transparent gauze dresses and a great deal of gold jewelry. 

"Here I may leave," her guide says, "or stay, if you would rest more easily knowing I will tell Prince Merenre, when he arrives, that we are here on my authority, and my conviction he'd wish to see you urgently."

Derrina: "Do as you deem best to serve your god's purposes here."

lintamande: "If somehow there's any question, refer the Prince to the Priest Senusret for clarifications," says the priest, and departs. 

"Pleased to meet you," the woman says. "I have no qualifications for this business, but can call in refreshments, if you'd like something to eat or drink."

Derrina: "Thank you.  I believe I shall manage."

"To save some little time perhaps, I will ask now what arrangements have been made that you not hear what must be only for Prince Merenre's ears."

lintamande: She taps her earrings. "Without these I am deaf."

Derrina: "That would hardly stop me if I wished to comprehend a conversation, but I take it the rest is meant to rely on trust."

lintamande: "Prince Merenre will offer such assurances as you might require, but even without them, it would be a wrong against Abadar in His own house, to aim to eavesdrop on one who came for a private conference because they happened to ask for the wrong set of assurances. We're not Cheliax."  The name is said with contempt and annoyance and some sadness.

Derrina: "No, you are not, though that is a rather lax standard to which to hold oneself.  Still, I take your meaning well enough."

Derrina is content to wait in silence for Merenre if this woman is.

Merenre: It is not a long wait. When Prince Merenre walks in the woman kneels. He is a man of average height, slightly balding, with a distinctly ruddy complexion which one wouldn't expect on one with his Garundi-bronze skin. He's very lavishly dressed, of course, though an observant person will notice the hems of his sleeves are stained with ink.

He nods at the woman, and she removes her earrings.

Derrina: Derrina, after some previous unfortunate life experiences, will wait to be addressed before speaking.

She does not fail to notice the ink-stained sleeve hems.  It is a good sign.

Merenre: "For reasons of secrecy, I was told almost nothing of why I'm called here," he says, and sits; at another gesture from him the woman sits, as well, at an angle such that she can barely see them. "I take it there's some urgency."

Derrina: "Will our words be heard by the two of us alone, now?"

Merenre: "I strongly believe so, and have never to my knowledge been wrong on that within the walls of this palace. It is said that gods can scry the Dome if determined enough, but not any man. - any mortal."

Derrina: "I am Derrina, dispatched to this errand by a vision sent of Irori.  On request, I am given to understand, of Abadar."

"For purposes of my being very sure that I am in the right place and speaking to the right person, I must convey to you a warning whose understanding is a test.  Irori is a god.  My being here is therefore the result of a god's intervention.  All the information I have for you, if you act on it, will mean that act stems from a god's intervention.  Not only my god, but also yours."

"I would have you riddle to me the true meaning of this warning."

Merenre: "It can't inspire any action in the interdiction zone," he says immediately. "This office, and that above me, have a policy of ordering none, anyway, that Abadar may speak with us more freely."

Derrina: "Aye.  And to speak truly freely, can you tell me the name of the goddess whose purpose is hidden?"

Merenre: "Otolmens, whose interdiction we speak of." He folds his arms, looking suddenly tired. 

Derrina: The tiredness is also reassuring.

"Here then is the information that I am sent with, for you, as best a divine vision can be passed down to a mortal in the first place, and then put by her into words."

"There is a cleric of Abadar who should not be where he is, striving to overcome his own displacement.  Looking about that cleric, Irori found that one woman there had set her foot upon the Way from hearing him speak.  I do not know what it was that woman heard; for my own part I would give much to meet her or this cleric and ask.  Whatever it was she heard, it was enough for Irori to take great interest, and to act to ensure that the woman not be hindered along her own Way.  I am not sure, but I would guess, perhaps guided by vision, that this would probably involve a new bargain or old compact or favor called with Hell, which would allow her to leave Cheliax in time and without her being required to sell them her soul."

There's more, but she'll pause if Merenre is, for example, writing this down, or asking questions.

Merenre: He is writing it down; he is not, yet, asking questions.

Derrina: When he stops writing, she will continue in speaking.

"When next Irori looked upon this woman she was in pain and utmost terror, far from her teacher and with a being of power and evil about her, believing herself to stand in danger of her eternity being taken from her.  Not damned, but lost entirely.  With everything she was, she strove to avoid that fate, without hope and yet harder than most mortals ever strive for anything in all their lives.  Irori feared that he had been responsible for that, and so he - I am not sure here - he did something to her, to try to save her from her worst fate.  I think He was trying to convey to me that it should not have been an intervention that would affect the interdiction zone, because she was due to be - lost, somehow, thrown away - but now Irori would be able to undo that loss, eventually -"

"And then shortly later, the woman was apparently fine, not scarred in any way visible to Irori by that utmost pain and terror, like her trial and torment had been somehow undone.  And she was once more in the company of your stray cleric, her teacher."

"There was a fearful consequence of this that was unclear to me.  I think possibly Otolmens was upset."

Merenre: "Does he - I know gods often don't - know her name -"

Derrina: "If Irori knows, it cannot be said to me through the bond we share.  The woman's name is not - a meaningful thing within her Way, it is nothing to any trial she has undergone or path she has walked.  If her name was elsewise her Way would be the same.  To be clear, that last was my own answer and not Irori's."

Merenre: "I understand. I will explain my question further, and what other methods might answer it, when you've finished, then."

Derrina: "The woman is however known to you, because of a compact upon a compact upon her soul.  It was painful for Irori to convey that much to me, it is a concept of Abadar's and not Irori's, but it is how she is already known to you."

"That is all that I know to say, that I have already put into words."

Merenre: " - ah huh. Thank you. Carissa Sevar, her name is, and our cleric signed his - is it a he - to the compact as 'Keltham'."

Derrina: "Hm.  Yes.  I believe that much was made clear to me, now that you point that out.  That Keltham is male is then important to either his Way or that of Carissa Sevar's, and likewise that she is female."

Merenre: The prince of Osirion looks utterly unsurprised by that being important to someone's Way. "Cheliax - handed him a bunch of girls, we think. There are some obvious possible explanations. Go on."

Derrina: "I have reached the end of what I know how to say.  Possibly not the questions I could answer, if you can find some question that is about their Ways and how they walk them, which proves to be in the knowledge I was given."

Merenre: "Would you like a summary of what we know, and what we are seeking to know, in case it inspires some further clarification, or is useful to you in its own right?"

Derrina: "I have little personal stake in all these matters, beyond my desire to complete Irori's errand.  And my curiosity as to whatever teaching so inspired Carissa Sevar, if there is any way for me to learn more of that."

"I might hear out that summary in order to complete Irori's errand as thoroughly as may be done, but not if it confines me to Osirion thereafter."

Merenre: He nods. "It is my judgment that Abadar must have paid for this errand, but that Irori has interests that lie here as well, and I think none of those are served by your sharing with Cheliax, or with those who might report to them, what we have learned; but if I have assurance of your discretion, I will share what we know; and with or without that assurance I would not expect I have the means to bribe you to remain here if your path, in your mind, leads somewhere else."

Derrina: "I was already treating this errand as quite confidential.  You have that assurance; it is wholly covered by determinations I have already made."

"If you do know what Carissa Sevar learned, or there is a prospect of speaking to her or Keltham shortly, it would not be hard for you to alter where I saw my path as leading me.  Nor shall I be especially upset or disbelieving if it is expressed to me that you think Irori's errand can be a little more thoroughly completed by tarrying a week to fail to answer more questions."

She hasn't tried any magic in the Black Dome, as yet, but if it's hard to learn, she wants to learn it.

Merenre: "I only have guesses, as to what Keltham is, and what he could have taught her," Merenre says. "And I need to re-estimate those guesses, with this new information, which will take me some time; I could give you an approximation, now, or a better answer tomorrow. I should speak to the pharaoh, also, and you may if you wish to. 

It is our very dear desire to welcome Keltham here, but we know of no particular reason he'd arrive tomorrow, or next week. If you'd like we can notify you when he does."

Derrina: "Mortal memories do fade in time, and this vision is fresh in me now as it may not be later.  I came to Sothis by teleportation and did not tarry much along my way to you; we are still less than three hours from when I received Irori's thought.  Were I you, I think I would speak of those guesses now."

"And yes, I should be much grateful for a Sending if Keltham or Carissa Sevar should appear here, or indeed any other students either may have taught; is pay needful for that?"

Merenre: "I think it would make only a small part of what we owe you, rather.

Our primary theories of Keltham are either that he discovered some trove of knowledge on his own initiative, or that he came here from another world or another time where or when such knowledge is commonplace, and that the knowledge includes much of the secrets the gods are forbidden from speaking of, to mortals or even to their own followers, or maybe some power that allows stealing that knowledge - getting copies of books that are destroyed, for example, or books from the First Vault, or books from another world or another time. He didn't exist, to the eyes of Golarion's gods, a week ago. Abadar, immediately on noticing him, paid Asmodeus not to engage in any of the misconduct to which Asmodeus and his followers tend, and the Asmodeans took Keltham to a secret facility for a secret project they are calling Project Lawful. For some reason the primary participants in it are Carissa Sevar, a former third-circle weapons enchanter at the Worldwound who may be the first person to have run across Keltham, and nine girls from the graduating class at Ostenso's academy of magic, who by now are rumored in Cheliax to have spectacular powers, and indeed seem to."

Pause for questions.

Derrina: "Keltham is out of his accustomed place, and striving to overcome the disadvantage at which that places him, and also striving to use - what that makes him.  Another world, another time, either would fit.  I suppose that to gain a strange power might also remove a man from his accustomed place in the order of things, but that does not feel right, it is not enough to describe Keltham."

"What sort of spectacular powers?"

Merenre: "The most bizarre rumor out of Cheliax was that in the palace in Egorian, any time a surprising thing happened to you, a Project Lawful girl would show up with cake. Delicious cake. It seemed ridiculously improbable, to us, but  - possible to check, which many of the rumors weren't - so we sent a team to quietly and legally book an inn room near the palace, and planned to contact them truthfully later that day with the news that one of them, whose wife was in labor when they departed, had just become a new father. 

The cake girl showed up. We'd intended to Plane Shift out with her, and ask her if she'd defect for any price. She was Dimension Anchored, counterspelled the team's attempted Teleport out without her, insisted they all eat some cake, and then left."

Derrina: "Egorian is not within the interdiction zone, then?  Perhaps I should go to Egorian and try to learn some new trick worthy of celebration?  I would not mind having some cake as the price of that conversation."

"...is what I might otherwise say, but it rings wrongly to me.  At least as something that would be true of Carissa Sevar.  For her to learn something that interested Irori, it would be - a hard, long path for her to walk, by which she gained power that was truly part of herself and not grafted onto her like a cleric's powers."

"Keltham should not be - to Carissa Sevar - somebody that she can touch like a Starstone, and gain the ability to counterspell Teleports and hear a call for celebration."

"I am suspicious of whether the cake girl would appear for me; or if she did appear, would have anything truly to do with Keltham; or if she did have to do with Keltham, would know anything of his that interested Irori.  That being so it is not quite worth the risk of Malediction."

Merenre: "I appreciate that assessment. It did not seem right to us, either, though it did push us towards - being far more unsure what is going on. The thing that inspired Abadar to such initial concern for Keltham was a sense that Keltham saw the world in a manner more akin to Abadar's than any human alive ever has. Perhaps that confers...cake-related superpowers...in some cases, but it isn't, fundamentally, about cake-related superpowers. 

Anyway we are confident Keltham is back in the interdiction zone, though Project Lawful is reportedly still active in Egorian. For a brief time after the godwar ended, Abadar favored and provided resources and impressions towards plans to somehow communicate with Keltham; then he ceased participation in developing them. And Sevar is, from what Irori observed, with Keltham. 

I have no idea what to make of the report that Sevar went through some horror at the hands of some powerful Chelish entity that meant to destroy her, only to emerge unharmed and rejoin Keltham only hours later. Well, the first part's not surprising. Is it possible that Irori's intervention inspired the entity to not destroy her, for some reason?"

Derrina: "Unknown to Irori, or unsaid to me.  I think Irori is not puzzled only by Sevar's unexpected survival, but that she also does not bear the expected soul-scars that she should have needed to overcome in order to continue on her Way."

Merenre: He frowns at his notes, scribbles some things. "They made her forget it, or it was a test and she approved of being so tested, or they possess very fine control of the scars they leave on a mind, and weren't aiming for those, or it's a Project Lawful superpower, or something I'm not thinking of."

Derrina: "If I were going to make up my own answers, I'd guess that Keltham is out of his time, and a future worshipper of Abadar as He will then become known.  Perhaps with some knowledge of Irori's teachings likewise from that time?  Or no, I have said a foolish and over-worshipful thing; not Irori's teachings, the teachings from however many have by then ascended.  There should be some fair number such, if their teachings are less fragmented and over-narrowed than those we have of only Irori."

"If there is still something - time-twisted, about Keltham - it might explain Sevar's survival with too little harm.  It might explain how the cake girl knew where to find your emissaries."

"To be clear, this does not feel at all like something that was told or hidden within my vision.  Whether it would have been within my vision, if it were true - I can't guess."

Merenre: "If he's out of his time - then he ought to know what Cheliax is. And we think he's deceived. Unless Hell is defeated utterly by then, which - would surprise me, I suppose."

Derrina: "Oh, it would not surprise me in the least to hear that today's Cheliax is little remembered in five thousand years.  They have been around for only seventy.  And even Nidal, which has more centuries than every of their years, is now falling at last."

"...that he is signing compacts upon compacts for her soul, on the other hand, you would think would be more of a tipoff.  Why do you believe him deceived?  Cheliax could offer much to a man out of his time, if he had almost anything left in the way of worldly desire at all."

Merenre: "We could offer most of the same without him going to Hell about it! And one with valuable knowledge would not go to the Church of Asmodeus to negotiate compacts for its sale, not if Asmodeus is remembered at all in their time; and Abadar thinks that Keltham does not yet know the names his god is called, or anyone he could contact with Sending for further questions.

My current best guess about the girls is that they were part of Cheliax's offer to him, but an offer that I think must have been accompanied by some deception."

Derrina: "I cannot see Hell defeated utterly, no, not in five thousand years.  I can imagine Asmodeus forced to renegotiate the way He treats with mortals not aligned to Him, if a hundred or a thousand ascended joined with Irori to enforce that on Asmodeus.  Perhaps Keltham grew up too ignorant of his time's history to realize what it meant to treat with Asmodeus in the days before his days." 

This does leave the question of why Keltham would not know Abadar's name.  She hopes on behalf of her hosts that nothing unfortunate happened to Him, but Derrina herself will not mourn overmuch if it was so.

Merenre: "I can imagine it," says Merenre, but he sounds slightly dissatisfied. "I am not sure it much reduces my confusion. 

The things rumored of Sevar are that she is not a third circle wizard at all, that she is the discoverer of Keltham, that she is running the whole of Project Lawful, that she is a Princess of Hell and devils die for speaking her name..."

Derrina: "Carissa Sevar is growing at her own pace; and what she has already attained out of wizardry, if that was previously her path, she will not abandon so lightly.  Whether she discovered Keltham - I cannot say.  Running all of Project Lawful - I cannot say.  Princess of Hell seems quite unlikely; I think Irori would notice and be able to say something about that."

Merenre: He nods, scribbles. "The compact on a compact on her soul permits Keltham to buy it for 500,000 gold pieces, which is a sum almost no one alive commands. We aren't sure what to make of it."

Derrina: "All right, now I like them.  Possibly as a couple, depending on who had which parts of that idea."

Merenre: "You think it's about - ambition? Setting herself a price that he alone in the world could possibly obtain, if he makes a great deal of progress in his aim of selling all the knowledge of his own time?"

Derrina: "I cannot speak for what it means to a cleric of Abadar, but it's an obvious guess for what it might mean to a woman of Irori."

"Or perhaps the huge price reflects some equally huge desperation.  I speak not from within vision here."

Merenre: "Does Sevar know she cannot be forced to sell her soul?"

Derrina: "Ah."

"No, she might not.  Probably would not.  It is not the sort of thing Irori would tell her even if Irori had a way to make Himself clear about it.  Irori would not urge her out of Cheliax, only try to ensure that her own steps could carry her out in time if that was where her Way led."

Merenre: "So perhaps she has started hoping to escape Hell - not a safe thing to hope, in Cheliax - and made arrangements with Keltham that are not threatening to Cheliax as they look so unlikely. Or - perhaps it is meant as communication with Abadar, who can see compacts when they are properly done in the spirit of transparent trade."

Derrina: "Of such things I cannot say.  I would wish them the best of luck in their plotting, but my wishes would be corrupted by the desire that they be anywhere outside the interdiction zone so I can happen to wander by in search of enlightenment."

Merenre: "We, too, desire that," Merenre says, tiredly. "Though mostly because it is a great harm, to one with an innate instinct like Abadar's, to find themselves trading with those who will deceive them comprehensively. ...and, we believe, a great harm to one who would ask a country for a dozen pretty young women, if they give them to him rather than lay out by what commitments he can win them."

Derrina: "If Keltham is the sort of man to care about that at all, one may hope he is more aware than Osirion that it may lie within a country's power to give him the bodies of women, but that their affection he must win for himself regardless.  And if he is not so aware, well, he is yet elsewise a man whom a woman of Irori would respect enough to look to as her teacher.  Let me think on the meaning of the word and the vision... yes.  Sevar is not simply or only exploiting Keltham for his knowledge; she regards herself as a student of his ways."

Merenre: - that moves quite a lot of estimates. He notes them. Finishes doing so before he asks "you think Osirion is in error, in some regard to do with this?"

Derrina: Wait, is she about to have to fight her way out of a palace again.

"I have not been in your country very long, and could not really say.  I suspect that the mores of Keltham and Carissa Sevar may be rather unlike those in Osirion.  You should, perhaps, have somebody who grew up in Cheliax, and somebody who grew up in - Absalom, maybe, might be most like I imagine a city of the future being?  Have them check over your gamblers' odds in all matters regarding Keltham as a man and the wizards as women."

It should preferably be a woman who grew up in Cheliax, but this she is not sure she is safe to tell a Prince.

Merenre: " - that's good advice," he says, in the tone of one who means something very specific by that, and leaves a trail of marks down his paper. "But I do not seek instruction only on Keltham and Carissa Sevar, if you have it on other matters."

Derrina: "I have learned more caution on some forms of instruction than others."  Namely, of nobles, inside palaces.  "Still, I think I should say to you, if there is anything in your Way to which matters the ways of men and women, you must in time leave this Black Dome and journey beyond Osirion to lay your gambler's odds upon marriages in Taldor and courtesans in Absalom."

Merenre: "I will ask my wife how she'd feel about that," he says, but without any particular defensiveness. "All right, things that look more likely: Keltham is from another world. Because we have now postulated that if he's from the future then it is true both that Abadar is little known there or perhaps gone, while His teachings are widespread, and that Asmodeus has no ill reputation, and those are weighty in themselves and do not predict each other. Sevar does not know that Irori's protection has been extended to her and is maneuvering without it; there exists a romance between her and Keltham; Keltham's world perhaps possesses the means to give people cake-related powers, but it is not the key of his significance either to Cheliax or to us. There might be other girls who like Sevar haven't sold their souls, though probably only if other gods purchased their protection - that should've been on there sooner..."

Derrina: "Lest I have been unclear, I do not think I am told that there is romance between Keltham and Sevar.  That is only what I thought upon hearing of the compact's details and imagining what it would mean to a woman of Irori, before you observed to me that she would not know of her protection.  Their Ways are entangled, surely; but the only part of what I have been shown, that I have yet decoded, is that Keltham is to Sevar her own true teacher."

"...this whole matter sounds like there might be quite the convocation of gods and mortals if they all ever get the chance to sit down and settle matters over cake.  I should like to be in the room where it happens, if it happens."

Merenre: "I apologize. I understood you; but the branch of possibilities where there exists a romance grew greatly from what you said and observed. What you said of what the compact might mean, and that you said that she looks to him as a teacher, and shifts downstream of my growing confidence Cheliax gave him the girls as part of an effort to entice him to stay in Cheliax, which itself is accumulating because we lost a great deal of credence in theories where he was like a mini-Starstone, or has a transmissible superpower, or discovered some clever magic trick. - most people do not learn much from seeing all the odds move together, but I can show you, if you think you might."

Derrina: "I too apologize then."

"If your Way is one that Irori can speak of so clearly to me, then it is worth a day of my pursuit at least.  Show me your revised book when the new odds are ready, and I shall bet most of the money that I carry with me, and then afterwards you may instruct me on my follies - such would be my own guess at how I may best learn.  Though also to be clear, I expect that Abadar has paid Irori for this service in full, and you owe me no such instruction."

Merenre: "I expect He has. But the right Way for this is not for me to practice it alone in my office, it is for a hundred human minds to think on it from a hundred angles, and the truth to be its own teacher, and I would be delighted to have you try it." 

He stands, gathers his books, remembers halfway to the door. "I'll have someone prepare a room for you, and you should ask of them whatever else you may require."

Derrina: "I am interested also in the way of magic inside the Black Dome, for I can manage a cantrip or two of my own at least.  I should like to be able to leave the Black Dome and return to it, that I may have a look about the academies I saw in Sothis.  And forgive me, but if it is possible, I should prefer a simpler room beyond this palace, even if within the Dome."

She doesn't actually have a positive dislike of fancy bedrooms, but it makes a good cover for her acquired palatiophobia.

Derrina is feeling better about this journey now, than she was when she walked into this fancy meeting room; there were no fights along His Way here, no obvious tests of her skill, other than the Teleport to come here swiftly and having a few coins about herself.  Now, however, she is feeling more like her real self has been well-suited to Irori's errand, and justly deserving of more than trivial reward for trivial effort.  There may have been no fell monster to slay along the way -

- but Derrina does suspect, that not many who communed with Irori could have thus focused and looked within themselves and inquired and drawn out subtleties of that vision.

It is a relief, in a sense, but also an instruction in her folly, for she should have known all along that it would be so.  If this task would have been a challenge suitable to some Irorian only with wealth enough to buy Teleports, and not much else needful about them, Irori would have given it to one such, who would have needed to exercise more effort along His Way and learned something more from walking it.

Project Lawful: PL-timestamp:  Day 6 / Morning

Iarwain: The morning mail arrives on the Project Lawful site, possibly now named Dragonfort.

Carissa Sevar finally receives a certain lightly enchanted dagger, suitable for a county's heiress to stab anyone who commented on her appearance; it was supposed to arrive a few evenings earlier, but there was that whole Nidal attack.

Asmodia is called over to the true temple to discuss some minor Security matter having to do with her family's relocation.

Keltham: Keltham, now refreshed by sleep and food, realizes that he's been an idiot.

Keltham: Kind of a massive idiot, actually.

Keltham: He owes some people an apology.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa gets word of this and is - confused, honestly, which is the feeling she least likes having around Keltham. "I'll go find him." 

Keltham: He can be found in one of the High Priestess's auxiliary offices, since that would be the appropriate venue for forwarding a Carissa-approved apology.

"So I've now realized exactly how clearly I wasn't thinking yesterday, and this would, in dath ilan, be considered an appropriate time for a girlfriend to whap her boyfriend if she deemed that necessary or simply pleasant."

Carissa Sevar: - oh, okay, that's one of the best possible possibilities. She can feel some terror of what Keltham is up to now draining out of her. 

She offers a hug, wordlessly.

Keltham: He'll... hold off on deciding to feel comforted about that until he's actually apologized.

"Right, so.  Remember why I started thinking, way way back, that there might be a hidden cleric of Zon-Kuthon somewhere in the villa?"

Carissa Sevar: "...because of the thing you couldn't explain to me because it had too many prerequisites."

Keltham: "Because we thought that Ione's prophecy might have triggered the attack, and that Zon-Kuthon had eyes on that."

"But not eyes on me, which is why they didn't know to look for me outside the villa."

Carissa Sevar: " - right. Oh. So - once all the girls who were in the villa were cleared -"

Keltham: "It couldn't possibly have been you, Pilar, or the Security who was with us."

Carissa Sevar: "...well, no one else thought of that either."

Keltham: "Yeah, 'cause I told everyone it involved mysterious inexplicable 'trope'-based reasoning and everyone gave up on questioning it."

Carissa Sevar: What is the dath ilani Evil answer, here. 

"It was a silly mistake. If I'd believed you incapable of those, I guess I'd be changing my mind. I notice you haven't hit me for any of my silly mistakes."

Keltham: "Nothing's coming to mind, that you've done, which is that silly."  Keltham leans into her a bit, though.

"I at least need to inform Jacint of the update Security-wise.  In the increasingly incredibly-unlikely-seeming eventuality that there's a 'trope' in play, we could somehow have missed a Zon-Kuthon stealth cleric among one of the other girls present by Ione.  Not you, not Pilar."

"How much of an apology is it to her and Governance, how do I give an apology like that in Cheliax?"

Carissa Sevar: What a good question. It's not an apology to a superior, which she knows how to give; straightforward, precise, not earning further punishment by being extra trouble to correct. Apologies to trade partners aren't... a thing, if they didn't notice the mistake that speaks poorly of them, it's not on you. She can't say that. "Uh, I'd just tell her what you believe now, and that you think this should've been possible to catch sooner, and are willing to repay expenditures that happened because you didn't catch it sooner? If you are. Once you start making money, obviously, not now."

Keltham: Ow.  Still, his own fault for it.  He'll go make that apology now, then.

Jacint Subirachs: Subirachs receives this apology graciously and with perfect Bluff, asks Keltham to send in Sevar a few minutes after he's done for more post-Queen checkup - she needs to compose a quick report to the Grand High Priestess first, about this - and shoes him out.

Subirachs then silences her office and screams at the top of her lungs for half a minute, after which she feels only slightly better.

Part of her is wondering if now rechecking Sevar would show that she is not any more a hidden cleric.

What this means about Keltham and 'tropes', Subirachs can't begin to guess, she gives up, she has nothing to do except compose a report to Rugatonn and await instruction.  Subirachs already sent off a report last night about the actually fairly alarming contents of Sevar's thought transcript, and was instructed in return that she should probably treat the continuing growth of Sevar's and Keltham's feelings as an unalterable fact of reality and try to arrange so that all roads leading there must inevitably lead Keltham to Asmodeus and Sevar away from Irori, which is not the most operationalizable advice she's ever received.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa comes in for her post-Queen checkup. She looks better. She still feels off-balance but in a way she suspects will just be a permanent feature of her life. She has actually had fewer nightmares about being turned into a statue since it actually happened to her; it feels, in a way, like it was a bad nightmare, and one she now knows can never happen for real.

That said she is aware she's in line for a very serious punishment at this point and she's scared of that in a way she did not used to be scared of punishment.

Jacint Subirachs: Not quite fully recovered, but getting there; fit for all but the fullest of full duties.  Probably still not somebody who ought to be tortured right this minute, if the Queen of Cheliax's painstaking work is to be treated with the respect it deserves, and in fact, rather stringently commands.

Apart from that, Carissa looks like somebody who thinks herself due for severe and painful rebuke.  "Your fear is showing," Subirachs observes.  "Is it for your feelings with Keltham yesterday, or have you erred or transgressed in some other way than that?"

Carissa Sevar: " - possibly, but it's that I have in mind. I - didn't expect this, and I understand why Asmodeans aren't supposed to indulge it, and I - am only afraid of failing in my duties here." Which isn't true, but should be.

Jacint Subirachs: "The Grand High Priestess has already told you that the improbability of your entanglement with Keltham and its escalation bespeaks the intervention of something with at least a shattered fragment of prophecy; 'tropes', or Nethys, but nothing else known to us.  We are hoping that Asmodeus is aware of this, benefiting from it, though we are frightened and unsure; in the end we do not wish to smash whatever this is while our Lord seems to be perhaps being making use of it.  If, indeed, it can be smashed by anything at all short of our Lord's direct assault, when it holds a fragment of prophecy and we do not."

"Only Aspexia Rugatonn is authorized to wholly reshape or destroy your feelings for Keltham, should that seem the wisest way.  I am not."

Jacint reaches out a hand then, and strokes Carissa's cheek.  "But if you have reached the point where you are feeling guilty, and knowing yourself worthy of punishment, out of your own faith," she says gently, knowing exactly how much fear she must be causing, but aiming to make it more than simple fear, "then I think I would be remiss in denying that to any faithful Asmodean.  Is there any transgression you've committed, about which you've come to so feel?"

Carissa Sevar: Carissa really needs to do something about the new phenomenon where her internal monologue gets all drowned out by a rush of internal screaming. 

"It is not - a necessary consequence of my feeling love for him - that the thought occurred to me that I could tell him we should leave. I shouldn't have. It should be possible to endure whatever feelings without contemplating betrayal. It should not be possible for me to think of."

Jacint Subirachs: "And if I did not correct even that - how would you feel about that?  Be honest, Carissa; your answer here might not much determine your punishment, or perhaps not in the direction you expect."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't know, High Priestess! Maybe you don't care because it's not like it'd be hard to stop me, except Dis doesn't think I'm that interchangeable. Maybe you don't care because there's a plan, in which case, all right, I don't need to know the plan, I just don't want to fail it. Maybe - this is something I'm wrong about like I was wrong about how many people want to be perfected in the purifying flames of Hell, where almost no one does because we don't teach it right, where there's actually a massive epidemic of people contemplating treason and I didn't run into it all that often at the Worldwound only because most people are too broken to send to the Worldwound lest they immediately wander off and join the paladins! If the answer is that this isn't surprising, and doesn't portend poorly, then - that's good, I guess, for the mission - but this all feels like applying far too much cleverness in the wrong direction. Obviously you have to punish contemplation of defection so people stop it. ....but we don't know how, do we, we don't know how to make the rest of us into Pilar -"

Jacint Subirachs: "Stop, Carissa.  You are letting your thoughts run too far ahead with complications," Jacint says, with a soft smile backed by enough Splendour that even Sevar might pause before concluding that, no, it wasn't sincere.  Trying that hard to send the false message still sends a message in its own right.  "The Queen, I was recently told, also now suspects that only Pilar will be able to become a true dath ilani out of our project.  Why?  Because the Queen thinks that among the important qualities of her own competence is that the Queen does not go about constantly terrified of thinking the wrong thing.  It was part of why she felt it necessary to take her time to remake you, that she'd noticed your thoughts collapsing under the pressure of being read so often."

"That part of the Queen's work is not something I mean to undo.  Nor even threaten, not today while her work is still recovering itself into its new shape."

"But do you understand why Pilar could do it so easily, this thing with which you struggle so?  It's not that Pilar never thinks thoughts she knows might incur punishment.  It's that, having thought such things, she knows her transgression, and desires to be punished to expiate her guilt.  Not, necessarily, successfully corrected so that the thought never occurs to her again.  Just punished.  Pilar might wish for that correction, but she knows that only Hell has that power, and that for Hell she must wait."

"Would you still be afraid of punishment for your admittedly severe transgression of thought, if you asked yourself how much punishment would be required to ease your sense of transgression and make matters right between yourself and your faith, and did not ask yourself to what extremes you would need to be tortured to break you and remake you to correct and erase the thought forever?  Answer honestly; I can have your thoughts read, if I like, but these words I think it important for you to speak with your own lips, whatever they may be."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is being entirely honest, terrifyingly vulnerable, doing everything she can to give the Church what they need to know to fix her. 

"....I don't know," she says. "I hadn't - thought about it that way - what does it serve Asmodeus to punish me if it doesn't fix me, in what sense ought my guilt be eased if I haven't stopped being someone who could make the error again -"

Jacint Subirachs: "Stop thinking about yourself, Carissa.  Think about Pilar instead.  How does it work for Pilar?  I expect she is not too displeasing in Asmodeus's sight, as mortals go, and she is firm in His purposes."

Carissa Sevar: "She's - pleased to be punished because - it's the right order of the universe? Because as long as there's someone over her to punish her, then - it's more bearable to be a mortal and flawed in the ways mortals are?"

Jacint Subirachs: "When her superiors punish her, Pilar then knows for certain that what she did has been deemed wrong, and ought not to be repeated, and that we have the power to inflict that pain on her confirms to her soul that we are her superiors.  She does not need to be certain of our infallibility, to trust us so; it is wrong because we say so and we are Asmodeus's appointed tyrants over her.  The reason why Pilar even needs us to be a good Asmodean, when her faith is already stronger than our own, is not that Pilar would flinch too much to punish herself if she decided all her own punishments.  What would break Pilar if she stayed in Elysium is that she could never feel certain of her guesses about what is a wrong thought, wrong act, if she had nobody like us above her with the power to punish her will-she-nil-she and thereby make something be permitted or forbidden with certainty.  Once we have spoken, she need but obey, and if there is fault from there it will not be hers.  For this reason, among others, did she return to us from Elysium, I think."

Carissa Sevar: "Oh. 

It didn't occur to me that that was something I could have. That it would ever not be my fault, if I wasn't good enough."

Jacint Subirachs: "Oh, it almost always is."

"But not when you are given an order and follow it correctly."

"Those such as Pilar can be too greedy about chasing that, even when it might better serve Asmodeus for them to use their own initiative.  I expect this was among the Most High's thoughts when she granted Pilar so much authority in the palace two days ago."

"But even after using her own initiative, and erring, it is possible for Pilar to be made clean.  Because we, her superiors, tell her that she erred, we tell her how much punishment she has incurred, and she undergoes that punishment, and implicitly we have told her she deserves no more punishment than that, and therefore it is true, and once punished she is finished.  You have done this for her; did you not understand what you were doing?"

Carissa Sevar: "No, I did, but I thought that she needed - us to be genuinely competent enough to be actually correct, in the punishment we assigned - I felt resentful, about my punishment from the Queen, before I saw the codes and realized that she was just correct, and had identified real things - and I imagined Pilar to have that same failing, I guess -"

Jacint Subirachs: "It certainly helps if we are competent.  I am not confident of what might happen to Pilar's faith if she served a string of superiors far less intelligent and competent than herself, bumbling and failing in their service to our Lord, letting severe transgressions go by and punishing what she knew to be rightful.  This is among the reasons to exercise due care in commanding the slaves more valuable to our Lord; they are, in the end, His possessions and not ours, if they are things of noticeable value at all.  Though never forget, it is heresy to care whether they are happy, it matters only that they remain useful."

"But again.  Pilar's severest transgression by far was her appointing Paxti as Cheliax's most deadly Project Lawful girl, which she did out of fondness for another, at cost to Lord Asmodeus's interests, as an overt act and not a thought, with flawed intent and not just flawed execution.  You did not try to assign Pilar enough punishment for that to break her, remake her, and drive every trace of fondness for others out of her heart forever, so that Hell on her arrival would have nothing left to do.  You did not try to assign her a severe enough punishment to leave her in horror that the pain might ever return if she repeated that behavior.  You assigned her a punishment severe enough that her soul would know it had made a serious mistake.  That Pilar then knows this deep down is what does most of the work in correcting her, and improving her, somewhat, rather than all at once for the rest of her life in a single torture session."

"You are afraid of me doing something to you that you would never be foolish enough to try with Pilar, and I would say that you must consider me a very great incompetent, but I am well aware that it is actually just because you are stupid and unable to see past your own fears."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is one of the smartest people in Cheliax, and she knows it. - not the time. 

"Yes. I'm sorry, High Priestess."

Jacint Subirachs: "Intelligence 22 cannot prevent somebody from failing to see obvious things when her own mind is set against itself."

She is, in fact, having Sevar's thoughts read; why wouldn't she?

Carissa Sevar: Of course. Carissa is both important and, now, at risk of being a traitor; she should assume they are going to great lengths to mindread her. She regrets obliging them to expend the effort.  "I know, High Priestess. I am very annoyed about it and it is one of the first things I want to learn how to fix in people."