Keltham: "I'm confused. Why can't I just say that Conspiracy gets to allocate 100% of its probability to whatever happened, but Ordinary doesn't?"
Asmodia: "I'm not sure what is going to be Lawful but I can very strongly guess that will not be what Lawfulness looks like."
"With ninety-nine point nine nine percent probability."
Keltham: "There's a saying out of dath ilan, don't criticize people for using what you think are the wrong general principles for arriving to their correct answer; if you're right that they're using the wrong general principles, you can wait for an occasion when they're wrong, and point out the error then."
"So I'm not going to criticize you for claiming you could make ten thousand statements about that strong, as confident as you are now, and be wrong on average about once."
"I'll wait until you're actually wrong. Which will take, say, somewhere about four more occasions. Fewer if I actively try to lure you into it."
Asmodia: "I await your lures."
If she never flirts with Keltham, Sevar will know the tropes aren't real.
lintamande: Meritxell feels that Asmodia doesn't even want Keltham and is just flirting with him to mess with Meritxell, and Meritxell is going to destroy her for it. Somehow.
Iarwain: A watching Security thinks Meritxell could stand to learn a valuable life lesson about the importance of visibly flirting literally at all.
Keltham: Well someone obviously came to a fast decision about whether she wants to be his nearly-ace harem member. Or maybe, only about whether she might want to be; but sufficient to start flirting about it, at any rate.
"But yes, you aren't particularly allowed to reallocate the probability of observations after you observe them. One way of thinking about it: Probability of Carissa-Ione-Pilar given Conspiracy is meant to capture the probability that Keltham would assign if you asked him beforehand about what was likely to happen at lunch. And all of the possible mutually-exclusive observations you can consider explicitly, need probabilities summing to at most 1. The probability that exactly Carissa-Ione-Pilar go off at lunch, that Carissa-Ione-Pilar-Asmodia go off at lunch, and that nobody goes off at lunch, must sum to at most 1. Realistically less than 1 because, say, I should've assigned some probability that, for example, just Ione and Pilar would run off, or that the whole lunch would be disrupted by a Nidal attack."
"This is why, especially at your stage of learning, we'd consider it a much more believable probability estimate, if you say in advance what will probably happen, compared to if you look back afterwards and come up with a reason why that event was clearly very predictable."
"If I'd thought in advance about the probabilities that Ostenso wizard academy would have any available books listing cleric spells, I could have considered the possibility that it would, and that it wouldn't, in an Ordinary world, and then considered the probability that Governance would need to stall me, in a Conspiracy world, versus having appropriately doctored books already made up. If I'd done that in advance, I couldn't be influenced, either when thinking about the Ordinary world, or the Conspiracy world, by wanting to make a world give the 'correct' result, because I wouldn't know, in advance, which result I would observe."
"Since I didn't think that quickly, I had to go back and make up the probabilities afterwards. And then there's a risk that, for example, maybe you don't want to believe in the Conspiracy world, so once you know that the real result is no-book, you're tempted to twist things around inside your mind and come up with a story for how the Conspiracy world would definitely have finished making up a doctored book of cleric spells by then, because they would anticipate my question and not want me to be suspicious about an absent book."
"If I make my prediction in advance, my mind will be less tempted to do that because I won't know that an absent book is the particular outcome that the Conspiracy world needs to dispredict in order for me to end up not believing that unpleasant thing."
"Dath ilani do have any skills for fighting that, for being able to come up with reasonable probabilities even after the fact; but those skills are difficult even for average dath ilani, which you frankly are not at this point. You can ask two groups of medium-rank Keepers for their conditional probabilities, one group before and one group after they find out the real answer on some problem, and there'll be no significant systematic difference between the groups. Because Keepers, that's why. You would not find zero detectable difference between groups of dath ilani with around my age and intelligence levels, asked to say the likelihood that there'd be no book of cleric spells available, in the Conspiracy world, and in the Ordinary world, both before and after they actually got that result."
"Everyone gets trained in skills that partially protect against assigning-different-conditional-probabilities-to-outcomes-once-you-know-what-the-outcomes-are, but that's, like, diminishing the distortion by a factor of five, not driving the distortion down to undetectable levels. That's the realm of, I would expect, sufficiently old devils, or gods - but definitely, it is known, Keepers rank four and up."
"Because - I would assume, and among other reasons - they practice really really hard until they stop doing it wrong, and not everybody has the time for that."
"So even I try to make my predictions in advance, if I remember and I'm not too lazy and it's important. So you at this point should strongly, though not invincibly, question and distrust any probabilities for observations that you make up after seeing the answer."
lintamande: "What's the screening like to become a Keeper," says Tonia, "are you allowed to know?"
Keltham: "Be smarter than us, learn faster than us, be better at this particular stuff than us, be twenty times more naturally Lawful than I am, and my guess is that there are at the very least different tracks for Keepers who don't lean pretty heavily Good."
lintamande: That's so disappointing and she doesn't bother hiding it.
Carissa Sevar: "We'll get there eventually," says Carissa with cheerful determination. "...not the Good part."
Keltham: "I think once your Good people have enough Law to, you know, not end up being incredibly destructive and tearing through any social order they find themselves inside, there is frankly a lot to be said for having the people who keep custody of dangerous information, probably incredibly dangerous information, probably even more so in Golarion than in dath ilan, being people who innately lean towards defending alike the welfare of all sapient life. Provided those people are actually making correct predictions about what defends sapient life from harm without a bunch of terrible second-order effects, and not being systematically wrong in audience-predictable directions like fictional Good supervillains. There are, even I think, any places for Good in the universe, and that sure seems like one of them. If you have enough Law."
Actually, why isn't Otolmens classified as Lawful Good? Maybe ask Broom that at some point?
Carissa Sevar: Carissa can think of counterarguments but isn't sure this is a point it's wise to argue. "Everyone in Hell is Evil and it works out all right? I guess we're lucky Asmodeus wants the universe to keep existing and have lots and lots of people who can grow into devils in it."
Keltham: "Yeah, what does Asmodeus actually get out of it? Or is he just the god of Lawful Evil people, who, if he fell into the system himself, would actually be Lawful Good, but like actual Lawful Good and not whatever passes for horrible chaos-infused 'Lawful Good' in Golarion? I haven't actually heard any motives or plans attributed to Asmodeus except for Good ones like wanting Cheliax to have better technology and governance etcetera."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom is worried about the sheer bizarreness of what Keltham is ending up believing; it seems one plausible way that Keltham could end up planning some very great deed about whose consequences he is very mistaken.
Carissa Sevar: "I mean, He wants more people to become devils, so he wants Cheliax to be prosperous and have a large population; He wants other kinds of god-resources that are harder to directly explain but I think having more people and Lawfuller and Eviller people helps - like, He can pick them as clerics, He can interpret them better. He likes contracts - I think just in their own right, a contract that enables something weird and complicated is inherently pleasing to Him, which I suspect is why a devil took time out of his day to help you with ours - I think He's actually Lawful Evil, though, He's just pursuing his own ends, but it happens you can do lots more with a rich and Lawful civilization than with a weak and stupid one. I guess the gods who are Good would want a Lawful Evil god who had selfish goals that Good approves of, so maybe there was some selection operating long before recorded history."
Keltham: Makes sense. Well, sort of. Wanting people to be devils still sounds kind of Good unless you're doing something else with them? But Keltham wants to get back to math.
"To put Asmodia's argument into symbols, we could rewrite," after a quick Prestidigitation, he should really hang two of those so he's not stuck constantly asking for help if he fails to catch one, "like so:"
P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar ◁ Conspiracy) = 1/2000P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar-Asmodia ◁ Conspiracy) = 1/2000P(Everything else ◁ Conspiracy) = 1998/2000
"Because in fact, I would have maybe assigned something like a 0.1% probability, if I'd had to start listing possibilities in advance, that either of those groups would go off by themselves at that particular lunch."
"But this doesn't completely trash the Conspiracy theory, because you could say something very similar about the Ordinary World; an Ordinary World wouldn't have given me any more reason to think a group of girls would go off by themselves at that particular lunch. Right?"
P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar ◁ Ordinary) = 1/220,000
"And so, I claim, we end up in the same place as before."
lintamande: Concerned silent students!
Pilar : Pilar raises a hand. "I think I have something I'd say, even if I didn't know anything about the actual story?"
Keltham: "So you think you can successfully correct for knowing the real answer? I'll let you try your hand at it, and see what I think. Go ahead."
Pilar : "I have a strong sense that rules are being broken somewhere. Why is Carissa-Ione-Pilar 1 in 220,000 in an ordinary world and 1 in 2000 in a conspiracy world? What are the rules that say that part?"
Keltham: "Simplicity itself: In either an Ordinary world or a Conspiracy world, there is, from my perspective, a 0.1% chance that some group of girls will mysteriously vanish at lunchtime. In an ordinary world, the further chance that this group is exactly Carissa-Ione-Pilar is 1 in 220, via picking from 12 then from 11 then from 10, and there's six possible ways to pick Carissa-Ione-Pilar in any order, that way, which works out to 1 in 220 probability. If there is a dark government conspiracy, on the other hand, the group must clearly be either Carissa-Ione-Pilar or Carissa-Ione-Pilar-Asmodia, and for simplicity's sake we'll say that either case has equal probability."
Pilar : "By what rules does one get from the dark government conspiracy to Carissa-Ione-Pilar, or for that matter, Carissa-Ione-Pilar-Asmodia?"
Keltham: Keltham speaks with grave authority. "Tremendously advanced mathematics, far too advanced for you to understand."
Ione Sala: "He's lying, Pilar."
Pilar : "I did know that, it's just..."
Keltham: "'Trolling' is not lying. Lying is when the person actually ends up persistently believing you."
Ione Sala: "Since all my special knowledge is just about the Ordinary world, not about the Conspiracy one, I think I should be allowed to say the same as anyone else that I don't see any way that the Conspiracy world actually does single out Carissa-Ione-Pilar in particular."
Keltham: "You're obviously the more powerful operatives of the conspiracy, who'd need to occasionally hold meetings, and hence, find some flimsy excuse to have a private meeting among yourselves."
Ione Sala: "As opposed to just passing Message around at the regular lunch table?"
Keltham: "Well, I think the general point passes. What actually singles out Carissa-Ione-Pilar isn't the Conspiracy hypothesis at all, it's a completely different hypothesis, so, yes, the probabilities I wrote down were utterly bogus."
P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar ◁ Conspiracy) = 1/220,000P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar ◁ Ordinary) = 1/220,000P(Carissa-Ione-Pilar ◁ Weird Other Hypothesis) = 1/2,000
"We're not going to worry about that last one, I mostly currently think it's incorrect. But now let me ask - do you all agree that, absent this weird other hypothesis, in either the Conspiracy or the Ordinary world, that in probable realistic real worlds where some set of three women go off by themselves, the chance of it being Carissa-Pilar-Ione is in fact 1 in 220? Carissa, Pilar, Ione, you're again not allowed to say anything here."
lintamande: "I mean, it depends why?" ventures Gregoria.
Keltham: "Well, sure, but if you don't know anything about why, any set of three women is as likely as any other. After we see some particular set of three women, we can go try to make up a reason for why those three, but that gives us no advance reason to expect any three women over any other three - I so claim."
lintamande: Is Project Lawful over? Is their cover blown? They sit there silently, nervous and confused.
Asmodia: Even if he can't read the nervousness or confusion, that silence is probably not a good look for Project Lawful in front of Keltham.
"Some reasons you could make up, even if you had to make them up afterwards, would be more plausible than others," says Asmodia. "Meritxell and myself are more likely to find something to talk about with Sevar, than, say, Ione and Peranza talking to Yaisa."
"You could say that in advance, you wouldn't have to wait until afterwards. The hard part would just be - going through enough different groups of three girls, in advance, to hit the one that actually happened - and maybe you'll say that we shouldn't try to go back later, if we don't say it in advance. But you're a full dath ilani, you can do that, even if not perfectly."
"It's not true in real life that every group of three girls is equally plausible."
Keltham: "Most possible groups of girls might seem pretty equally plausible from my perspective. Probabilities are in the mind, after all, and I don't know your interpersonal interaction details as well as you do."
"But, yes, I can think of any reasons why Carissa-Ione-Pilar might be a favored group, aside from 'anthropics' even. And yes, even if you're not a dath ilani, it can make more sense to, like, actually ask what the alleged reason was, before you conclude that it was a dark government conspiracy. Though, obviously, if it's a conspiracy under consideration, you can't blindly trust the putative conspiracy's answer either."
"What was it actually, Carissa? I've got my own guess mentally noted down already and at 40% probability."
Carissa Sevar: "It came up at debrief that Abarco let a bunch of the girls copy Invisibility off him while Pilar and I were at the palace and Ione was in a coma, so I said they could have it off me. I invited Asmodia too but she wanted to talk to you about something."
Keltham: "That was my guess except that I guessed Asmodia already had Invisibility. I'll count it as a partial win for me."
"And, you know, if the three of you happened to take that time to talk about anything else that you didn't want me to know you were talking about, which is why Ione and Pilar didn't just copy Invisibility off another Security, I'm not going to count that as lying, dath ilani do the same thing. You want your words to stay meaningful to others, by only uttering them when they correspond to reality; that's not the same as always revealing all your information."
"You don't need to comment on that, just saying."
Carissa Sevar: "We also shared all the details of our secret plan to become gods but you're not going to be let in on them just yet."
Keltham: "Interesting euphemism for that." Obviously the main way one would accomplish this is by dating Keltham.
"Well, that's another run on Probability and what it looks like to parse things up with it. I wouldn't say that we've really seen anything like the Law of Probability, but it's a large concept and this probably takes multiple runs from multiple angles."
"Among the lessons you could take from this run, I'd say, is how this method can accumulate gentle evidence over time. I'm currently flailing around wildly because I just got to Golarion, and my attempts at Probability Sight mostly give me results that don't add up to coherent sense, everything is still failing all of the local consistency checks like 'Why doesn't Asmodeus count as Lawful Good then'. But once I'm actually used to this place, if I am in the Conspiracy world, I'll be able to accumulate a bunch of things like the convenient absence of cleric spell compendia from the library, and eventually figure out the Dark Governance Conspiracy, even if no single piece of evidence is decisive. They don't have to give themselves away with one big failure of an event that could never happen in the Ordinary world, I just need to be oriented enough to notice the soft accumulation of things that are 1.3 times as likely in the Conspiracy world than the Ordinary world, day in and day out. Plus, because noise and error, another bunch of events that seem more likely in the Ordinary world than in the Conspiracy world, like Ione telling me about her book powers at all. But if we're actually in the Conspiracy world and I've successfully calibrated my numbers on Golarion, there's more evidence pointing to Conspiracy than Ordinary and eventually it all adds up."
"Or maybe you could also do that gentle accumulation as a non-dath-ilani, I don't know how it actually works if you don't know any Law and never think in numbers. But my sense of some of the crazy books I've read here is that there'd be more - people's thoughts switching around wildly, thinking, what if this, what if that, this leans that way, that leans this other way, and not really being able to add it all up properly until they encountered some" globally-decisive-local-victory "single revelation that decided the whole issue."
"All of this is of course ignoring the point that realistically Corrupted Governance just has a sufficiently high-powered caster hit me with a Suggestion spell, the recent demonstration of which to me was the point where I became comfortable enough to, like, actually say this sort of thing in front of you."
"But if for some strange reason I'm mistaken about that being a decisive point in real life, if you're all here as part of some grimdark plot, and even your highest ranks genuinely had no idea how Probability worked until I explained it today - then you'd better learn very fast if you want to keep this up, and hope you haven't already given yourself away with anything that I'll remember later."
"And if you specifically are here on some grimdark plot against your will, as would be really incredibly stupid of them, and your actual two-way contact with me is letting you learn faster and better than the people holding you here and just reading the transcripts - well, in that case, all of you are obviously the real protagonists of this story rather than myself, and may the 'tropes' be with you while I continue on in my obliviousness."
"Time for everybody to stand up and walk around and take a break. Pilar, has Cayden Cailean got any snacks for us?"
Pilar : You cannot, even if you are from Cheliax, tell that Pilar is anything but cheerful; she is making an actual effort about it, and drawing on her faith in Lord Asmodeus's inevitable victory.
So Pilar smiles cheerfully, as she stands up and brings forth cookies from wherever they wait.
...Apparently larger and nicer cookies than usual, iced with laughing faces.
Pilar's curse apparently thinks that some people need a bit of extra care, at this point, and also thinks that something is funny.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa ducks out to use the bathroom and goes to Maillol. "We need him more distracted," she says without preamble. "He's smart and he's paying attention to the right things and I don't think we've lost the plot yet but I do think we're getting closer every day, which isn't sustainable. I want to try - having 'Lastwall' and 'Taldor' and 'Osirion' send emissaries, if we can swing it. I want to arrange that scrying field trip to Absalom and maybe an actual field trip to Goka on the grounds that it's far enough almost no one would be able to try anything - and as a bonus it's far enough away no one will know things about Cheliax. I want to catch someone attempting to infiltrate the grounds. I want a large bag of things we can pull out if he seems to be getting his bearings."
She pauses for breath.
Ferrer Maillol: "Asmodeus's instructions to me are a medium-hard no on a Goka trip, and Hell's instructions imply that's because there's a divine noninterference zone centered on Ostenso; if we take Keltham outside that zone, it's possible Abadar or Iomedae could sic Osirion or Lastwall directly on him. For the rest, I'll get it done if those are my orders."
"I register that after Keltham's interpretation of his Vision of Hell spell, I myself considered faking a Zon-Kuthon attack on this project, a smaller one, and not with a god-war starting afterwards. I rejected that plan without checking it with you," back when you were not my boss, "because at Keltham's Intelligence level I expected him to be suspicious of us having fed him exactly what he'd said he suspected. If we throw too many distractions at him, he may start thinking that he's in a game we're controlling." (Maillol isn't being a good Probability-user per se, he hasn't reviewed the Probability lecture, he is just an experienced project manager suspicious of Complications.)
"Opinions on specific proposals: The emissaries seem safe enough to fake, it seems like something alterCheliax would do and Keltham has no way of checking anything he sees. Scrying trip to Absalom sounds shaky, too much we're not rigorously controlling that could go wrong on us, but if you think that'll reassure Keltham, it might be worth it. Attempting to infiltrate the grounds - that makes him think this location is not secure, got known somehow, he maybe starts watching other people more closely if he thinks they might be infiltrators, requests a 'Glimpse of Beyond' spell to check. Again, might be worth it if that sense of insecurity is what you think we want. Clarity on goals and reasons would help me design an exact infiltration incident to your purpose."
"My original plan for keeping Keltham distracted, if that became necessary, was having girls dogpile him with overtures, and for them to fake interpersonal difficulties with him and each other as needed."
Carissa Sevar: "I'm terrified of anything that might bring him back around to concluding that tropes are real, and I suspect romantic drama is that. Maybe non-romantic interpersonal difficulties among the girls, if there's any that won't ring outrageously false to him in the fashion that many real things do. I think Absalom is valuable precisely because we don't have control over what happens there, so it's credible, and it's not like people walk the streets proclaiming 'never contract with Asmodeans and the reason people don't like Evil is all the torture!'. But if there's somewhere like Absalom where Iomedae has less of a foothold maybe that'd be better."
Absalom is where the Starstone is, so where She ascended; all the Starstone gods are worshipped there.
"Oppara, or Isfahel. If Keltham asks the person scried-upon to ask some specific questions of the locals we can swing that with Suggestion or Dominate Person. Let's say no on infiltrating the grounds for now unless we need an emergency distraction for Keltham having a bright idea of some kind or another.
Next question. Do you think your Asmodeanism is built on a bunch of lies that will fall apart in contact with enough dath ilanism."
Ferrer Maillol: "Mine, no. An Atonement flatly wouldn't work on me, and I would not actually take eternity as a statue over Hell. I do not, in fact, have better options."
"All of the girls except Pilar, yes. They're not Inner Ring at all, weren't being tracked for it at second-circle, even after they sold their souls I was thinking of that more as an anti-oracle measure and a way of keeping them in line, and I admit my failure in not realizing earlier that this would create an inexorably developing problem as the project was redirected towards mastering dath ilanism."
...it actually is easier to say, and think, if he mostly doesn't expect to be punished significantly for that failure. Well. In the short term.
Carissa Sevar: 'wasn't being tracked for the inner ring' also describes Carissa, and she's not on the brink of betraying her god and her country to run off and hide behind Iomedae's paladins. The question that comes immediately to mind is 'why them and not me' but the answer comes to mind just as quickly which is that, yes, they also expect Carissa's Asmodeanism to fall apart.
Or maybe just that they think the reason Asmodeus picked her, out of all the girls, is that she's different from them.
If the girls all deconvert then the project fails, they're all executed, and Cheliax plays catchup stealing inventions from other countries and maybe eventually becomes Nidal, a god-sponsored country without ambitions beyond its borders where its god can't sculpt them precisely enough.
She can't allow that to happen.
"Do you think - the operative ingredient - of your Asmodeanism not being built on lies is the thing where an Atonement wouldn't work? You're not doing anything we could duplicate in students for whom an Atonement might work?'
Ferrer Maillol: "I will give you my opinion if requested, Chosen of Asmodeus, but you might be needing to talk to Subirachs. You exceeded my ability to correct you a while ago."
"From my perspective, which is narrowly focused on our Lord's aspect of tyranny, it's about what people want and what their options are. Pilar needs Asmodeus and has no other options among divinities. You are willing to undergo any amount of pain to become everything it is that you want to be, and I get the impression you've noticed at this point that there are things Axis and Heaven would demand you cut off from yourself. So you don't need lies to serve Asmodeus, and that qualifies you for the Inner Ring of people who are allowed to think."
"Most people don't like pain. Their inner lives aren't much more complicated than that. We put the Outers into whatever situation we have to put them into, to make sure they end up in Hell and stay productive in their mortal lives, and teach them to deceive themselves into believing that's their own choice."
"I respectfully register that you may not have grasped how stupid most people are and how short their horizons get. You may not have been read in on this part, Sevar, desertion is a major problem for Cheliax with wizards at fifth circle and above who can Teleport. Selling your soul is mandatory before that point. They desert us in significant numbers anyways. It's not even that they'd prefer nonexistence and are planning to buy a Plane Shift to Abaddon at the end of otherwise indulgent lives. It's that having to accept the hierarchy in Cheliax is an unpleasant thing that's happening to them right now, and the punishment in Hell can wait seventy years or so they hope, so they pick now over later and run. That's with people who were Intelligent enough to become fifth-circle wizards, though of their Wisdom I couldn't attest."
"What we've got going for us, with this set of students, is that they've sold their souls and will end up in Hell if they end up anywhere at all. Asmodia already decided that she'd rather take Abaddon, which isn't encouraging, but maybe losing half that way is still half left."
"But if our Lord put you to this task, then it must be a task that is possible. And if I had to guess myself, the answer might be - those who would rather take Abaddon cannot become dath ilani of Hell, only those who've sold their souls or cannot sincerely Atone or have wills incompatible with other gods can become dath ilani of Hell. But maybe dath ilanism does teach people not to be fucking stupid about their options like soul-sold wizards who desert on us, and that lets us scale about as far as other countries can take their own versions."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is confused, that fifth circle wizards desert even if they've sold their souls. It's confusing. It doesn't quite feel sufficient, that they're just very very stupid. Broken in some way, sure. She feels like Keltham, missing something that'd make the whole picture fit together, except usually when Keltham says that's how he feels he's actually missing eight things.
"I didn't know that. I'm - going to talk to High Priestess Subirachs. I - don't think it's a hopeless task but I did not have any idea how hard it was, and you should in fact have warned me sooner. I am aware you are all somewhat constrained by - trying to manage my situation - but what's important here is that the project not fall apart of contagious heresy and I didn't know it was close until Ione warned me." It doesn't carry a lot of force, as a reprimand with no punishment behind it, but it is what it is.
Ferrer Maillol: Ferrer Maillol bows his head. "Acknowledged, sir."
He does not, in fact, require further punishment to understand that he has fucked up.
Iarwain: Message from Security: Keltham looks like he's thinking about reconvening. Ione Sala requests permission to conduct a fake poll of the class to see if they want an hour to digest Probability, tell Keltham the majority voted yes, and send him off to study magic with Meritxell for an hour; or, Sala's preference, permission to take Keltham aside and scold him about producing anxiety in the class. Sala also wants to know whether Asmodia in fact has superpowers and if she should read Asmodia in on, in Sala's words, the Asmodean sanity issue.
Carissa Sevar: Ione is showing too much initiative and should stop it's kind of stressful having major decisions proposed by someone who is a heretic and not obviously working towards Asmodeus's goals here. She'd like closer attention to Ione's thoughts, please, what's she playing at, and -
- try to forget that she heard the suggestion itself and just think about whether she wants class to reconvene right now -
- no, because the kids could use more of a break.
Tell Yaisa to pull Keltham aside and ask very apologetically if he can walk her through the thing she got stupidly wrong again, she's worried if she doesn't understand it when we restart then she'll be even more confused by the end of the day. Tell Asmodia to try to come up with something clever to do with the underlying laws that produce Probability to distract Keltham with after that. Tell Ione that she cannot take Keltham aside and scold him for that end of section lecture, even if she thinks she would in alter-Cheliax, that's too many layers. Tell Ione that Asmodia doesn't have superpowers but is now doing a seduction gambit with Keltham off the lack of superpowers, and that Ione should not bring Asmodia in on anything.
And now to Subirachs, at a bit of a run.
Jacint Subirachs: Subirachs is in her usual abode.
Carissa Sevar: Being totally candid works really well when you've been declared important by Asmodeus Himself and He's suspected of fighting with other gods over you. "Do you actually want to go to Hell?"
Jacint Subirachs: "...I recently realized that I was not looking forwards to it as much as might be hoped-for in one of Asmodeus's own, Chosen. I don't fear the pain. I don't fear being a slave myself again for a time. I do worry - that my art might be smashed and remade entirely different in me, rather than perfected from this beginning."
"And what prompted this thought was wondering if - you might perhaps - be better at it, than those who now train souls and devils in Hell. The only reason I can think of for your price, not even to Lord Asmodeus, but merely to one devil of Dis rather than another, is that they think you will be much better at creating devils. I am wondering whether the correct way of training devils might - produce a devil whose arts of slavery are more like my arts, at the end."
"I have given some thought as to whether to request, as a reward for all my own service in this matter, to be Petrified until a thousand years after your own death, in hopes of being received by you in Hell."
Carissa Sevar: " - that's what I was thinking too. Or -
- not specifically you, I don't know enough about you to know if I have anything to teach you, but Hell values the Project girls, so Hell can't be imagining that the point of us is to turn us into Contessa Lrilatha, because they already know how to do that. ...I guess we could just figure out how to do it more efficiently. But it seems to me like there's something Hell wants us to learn how to improve. And so the best answer to the girls is that I'm going to make sure that Hell is a place where they grow. Except.
They're not going to believe that, because it sounds completely ridiculous."
Jacint Subirachs: "We do have the option of swearing to Asmodeus of the truth of those things that we might tell them, by which we ourselves have come to suspect this. It doesn't do to overuse that option, lest they come to expect it and suspect all unsworn is lies. But it is an option, when you need to tell a fellow Asmodean something ridiculous and true - if you are about Asmodeus's own work, that is, lest you invoke His name for only your own benefit."
"There is also some degree of corroboration, if the Queen is willing to declassify it for them."
Jacint Subirachs hands Sevar a brief report written in the hand of and under the name of Abrogail Thrune, marked with nearly the most extreme possible Crown seals and penalties.
The Queen notes that this report was written after she reviewed the most recent batch of Project Lawful reports, including Sevar's apparent price in Hell and Keltham's speculation about what younger devils may not be allowed to know. The Queen remarks that both of these facts were of higher urgency than they were treated as, and future such points should be reported to her immediately rather than batched.
After that review, the Queen at once set aside all her other work to inquire certain matters separately of Lrilatha and Gorthoklek. And then summoned a series of devils herself, up to the most powerful she could summon without that being a grave matter.
The results show that the most powerful devils the Queen can lightly summon - admittedly, not mighty ones by Hell's standards - seem entirely ignorant of matters like whether there are twenty-one or twenty-three pairs of packages of heredity-specification in a human body. Lrilatha answered correctly, but also answered affirmatively when asked if she had come by that information by way of Keltham.
Gorthoklek, who is nearly royalty of Hell (though, the Queen notes, relatively young for a pit fiend), cannot answer; and if Gorthoklek is shown the information by way of Keltham, he can then answer regarding what he has seen in the report, but he still cannot answer the question on his own terms.
The Queen speculates that the price for why Hell can seemingly back Cheliax to a greater degree than other Outer Planes back their mortal worshippers, is that Asmodeus and His highest slaves are extremely constrained in what they tell those beneath them in Hell who hold more commerce with mortals; saving perhaps the very highest devils who can perfectly avoid leaking any such information by any pathway. Such enforced ignorance, in exchange for power in the mortal world, seems not discordant with His aspect of tyranny.
The Queen speculates that there is however no prohibition against a soul being allowed to retain and use such knowledge that it learned in life. For if this is not so, Sevar's price in Dis seems inexplicable.
The Queen inquired of Gorthoklek upon all of this matter, and Gorthoklek said nothing to all of it, nor encouraged any of it, but neither did Gorthoklek call it prohibited.
Carissa Sevar: "Oh."
It's not in itself very important how many pairs there are in humans, devils might just have no occasion to know it, but.
The Outer Planes have secrets, everyone knows that. And Hell has the most secrets; few can even set foot in Nessus, Hell's deepest layer. And the gods are sharply constrained in what interference treaty permits them. Asmodeus sent Gorthoklek and Contessa Lrilatha to Cheliax as advisors; Abadar has done no such thing in Osirion, that anyone knows of. No angel sits at the right shoulder of Queen Galfrey in Mendev, the paladin of Iomedae who holds her country's border with the Worldwound.
So the shapes of the constraints are different for different gods.
Secrets not just about Asmodeus or about history, but about Law, about the fundamental nature of reality -
"If the project lasts even a few years, we'll know things that only senior devils know. And Hell wants us very badly, and will prize us highly.
I am tempted to tell the students the whole of the reason I didn't sell my soul at first, and the whole of my attempt to sell it yesterday, and then tell them that if in order to make my project work I have to set up an entirely new training program in Hell, then I'll do that, and the only thing they need to be afraid of is my failure. Does that sound right?"
Jacint Subirachs: "I think - there will be some for whom that will be enough, for Meritxell, it will be enough, for Gregoria enough, for Asmodia it will not be enough but perhaps she would be willing to serve in Golarion if not in Hell and that would be enough for us, Paxti and Yaisa are not thinking enough upon such matters for their thought-transcripts to be helpful and I know not what will become of them if they start thinking, contemplating that plan for Peranza gives me an uneasy feeling, and of the others I am not sure."
Carissa Sevar: "Huh. I guess I can take them aside one at a time and start with the ones that I have a plan for.
Are you worried for my soul? I feel loyal but I keep thinking that if I were a different person watching Carissa and adding up probabilities I would be worried, and - I want to be steerable."
Jacint Subirachs: "I'd be less worried if I did not feel concerned there were 'tropes' around you, or fear what they might arrange for you in the way of temptations. I don't know what to do with such matters except plead like a helpless baby to the Most High each time they arise."
Carissa Sevar: Sigh. "Okay. I have to get back to class." It has been eight minutes and that's likelier in the conspiracy world than in the bathroom world, if only a bit likelier.
Off she goes.
Keltham: Keltham was in fact pondering that, but decided that the evidence seemed slight enough to go under the heading of "orient more to Golarion first" rather than "note it on the list". If you want to pick up tiny pieces of evidence like that you'd better also start noting all the times Carissa doesn't take an eight-minute bathroom break as evidence the other way.
Besides, if Yaisa and Asmodia are meant to be distractions on purpose they're impossibly obvious ones.
Ione Sala: Ione would like it noted for the record that she strongly suspects Keltham is adding up additional Conspiracy evidence for every minute that this goes on, and she should really be allowed to just take Keltham aside and scold him properly for scaring everyone in alter-Cheliax.
Iarwain: (Security conveys Ione Sala's thoughts to Sevar. Sala's other thoughts show a weary contempt for Asmodean idiocy, but an apparently sincere belief that Lord Nethys would want her to keep on bailing these idiots out of their own idiocy until that's obviously no longer tenable. Sala is also contemplating trying to further advance her own relationship with Keltham, to make surer that she ends up with him if he leaves, and remains able to continue doing whatever Lord Nethys wishes her to do for him.)
(Also Sala is trying to figure out whether her interest in scolding Keltham is anything sexual or not, because she's definitely finding it strangely fascinating.)
Carissa Sevar: Carissa agrees that Keltham is adding up further evidence from everything that happens, because he told them that he was doing that in so many words not five minutes ago. Ione seems a little attracted to this vision of herself as the lone genius who can see what no one else can but Carissa is in this case incredibly unimpressed. Carissa does not want Ione to have a conversation about how scary this would have been if they were, you know, actually in a secret conspiracy, into which Keltham can meaningfully interpret lots of random phrases or facial expressions. She really thinks that conversation is likelier if Ione has something secret to convey to Keltham than if she does not.
And Ione's permission-denied was already communicated, which means that Ione thinks she's achieving what, exactly, by making the request again? Permission remains denied.
Carissa doesn't know whether people get beaten for that in Taldor but someone should look it up.
Iarwain: Security will put someone on it. Note though that Ione Sala has a previous agreement with Elias Abarco about her being treated as a friendly Nethys worshipper rather than an Asmodean so long as she behaves herself.
If that gets unilaterally renegotiated, there will be a lot of Securities wanting to stand in line and take turns.
Carissa Sevar: On getting back to the room Carissa takes a cookie and joins some other girls who are ranking the Securities by how much they look like they really hope Nidal attacks so they can kill someone, because if the people with individual questions for Keltham ceased immediately when she returned then that really would look suspicious.
The cookie is delicious.
Asmodia: Message from Asmodia: Asmodia requested a Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom in order to actually be able to come up with interesting questions for Keltham on the fly like that, which is in fact harder than people might think and can't be reliably done on future occasions.
While she's still enhanced, Asmodia wants to say that she's worried about the lack of intraproject communication, and proposes that a Nap Stack be set up for everyone tonight so that they can all stay up and get caught up on everything that's happened so far, including whatever Sevar considers to be the official line on Asmodia, and on Keltham's romance-pattern theory that they don't want him believing.
Also Ione asked Asmodia if she did in fact have superpowers, and was now one of the special girls like Keltham thought. Asmodia told Ione that Milani came to her inside Hell and granted her the power to cancel enchantment-compulsions by hitting people on the head (not true). It only occurred to Asmodia afterwards that there is probably some kind of policy constraining information about Keltham's pattern-theory, since Asmodia hadn't already been told about it earlier. This is the sort of thing Asmodia thinks the Nap Stack plan might solve.
Carissa Sevar: A Nap Stack allowing for an evening briefing would be great. It'll oblige all the girls to sleep in a 30 foot radius and Carissa can't predict whether Keltham will want her in his bed tonight but maybe they can be ready to cast it tonight if she can join them and tomorrow if she can't.
Carissa told Ione that Asmodia did not have superpowers. She's not totally impressed that Ione also asked Asmodia. Carissa would love for Asmodia to be more candid with her about what exactly they're covering for, but in the absence of that, the line on Asmodia is that she doesn't have superpowers, obviously, because if she did then that would have been reported to the Crown.
Asmodia: Asmodia notes that she suspects Ione asked Asmodia first, since Asmodia can't order Ione not to ask Security after that, and only then asked Security. Rather than first ask Security, and risk being ordered not to ask Asmodia. This is obviously the sort of attempted cleverness that you'd punish if Ione were punishable, and that Ione did it anyways is evidence (in Keltham's sense) that Ione thinks she's not punishable for that kind of transgression. Asmodia is confused about Project Lawful's stance on Ione.
Asmodia did expect that Sevar would say the official line is that Asmodia has no superpowers. The question is if the other girls should be told that Keltham thought she might be part of a romantic pattern, but Keltham rejected that theory after Asmodia falsely told Keltham that she wasn't a full asexual, but Asmodia is in fact one, which Keltham must not be allowed to suspect. Or told that Keltham said having no superpowers except being good at math would be on-theme for an asexual. Asmodia feels like she keeps tripping up on inadequate information herself, and registers her own opinion that everyone who isn't Keltham should be told everything.
Also Asmodia herself requests, for whatever that's worth, to be read in on everything to do with Keltham's pattern, transcripts of anything he's said about it anywhere.
Asmodia registers, before she forgets, that she thought that two-thirds of the class going quiet during Keltham's conspiracy lecture was a bad look, and that Asmodia, Sevar, Pilar, Meritxell, and Ione should have some explicit policy about trading off turns on speaking up to cover any future frozen silences. Is it possible to train students out of going quiet like that? Asmodia imagines Keltham saying that you have to identify one person, at a time, who has the responsibility to speak up, so that the class doesn't look quiet. But you have to somehow do that in a way that makes the probabilities look the same to Keltham for which girl talks next.
Asmodia apologizes for all this pestering, she is trying to say it all while the Cunning and Wisdom still hold.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa should try Owl's Wisdom herself.
Those are good suggestions; they're appreciated. Elias Abarco unilaterally negotiated some kind of thing with Ione and Carissa needs to figure out what to do about it; everyone is pretty fed up with Ione but she seems to believe herself to be heroically saving the stupid Asmodeans from themselves, which is maybe useful. As soon as there's time Carissa will read Asmodia in on the patterns thing, and requests in the meantime that Asmodia contemplate whether, given what Carissa already knows, there's anything she could usefully be told about how Hell can be made good for girls who've started down the path to dath ilanism.
Asmodia: Um. There's a great solution actually but it's Secret and Asmodia doesn't know if it works for anyone besides her.
Asmodia Messages back, "I confirm I heard." She does not think she ought to acknowledge it as an order.
The Owl's Wisdom and Fox's Cunning wear off nearly simultaneously and it feels, not like dying, she has died, dying doesn't feel like this.
For a second Asmodia thought she could almost do it, almost think like Keltham does, match him on his own level and shape the probabilities he saw so that nothing would alarm him - if that's even what her Sponsor wants -
Asmodia Messages Security to queue a message for Sevar next time she checks, she doesn't want to disturb Sevar again now. The message says that if they're allowed to request anything they want in order to help the Project, Asmodia thinks a headband of +4 Intelligence and +4 Wisdom might barely suffice to let her run the probability-shaping side of Cheliax's game against Keltham.
Iarwain: ...uh huh.
Security acknowledges this queued message.
Asmodia: Asmodia almost had it, or she thinks so. Asmodia thinks she was almost seeing the way Keltham sees, in brief flashes she didn't know how to put into words, this more likely, this less likely, shifting balances between them that shift other probabilities - and it excites her, she can see the game he's pointing to, between opposed dath ilani. She almost saw the game, and Asmodia wants to play it. And yes, she also wants an excuse to get the headband that she'd need to win.
She can always fuck up deniably if it looks like her Sponsor would want that.
Iarwain: All thoughts thus read are duly recorded, to be noted to Sevar along with Asmodia's intended message.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa meant it, about giving all her slaves intelligence headbands because more capable people are just better.
She has somewhat mixed feelings about this exact specific instance.
- later. She can make that decision while Owl's Wisdomed herself, and possibly actually literally contact Hell about what Asmodia's whole deal is. But the fact of the matter is that she's not yet competent enough to win this game, and if Asmodia might be - and if Asmodia is on their side -
- but what in Hell could possibly have put Asmodia on a different one? Certainly Asmodia having secret powers from Hell is likelier in the case where Hell saw a way to help them, than in the case where someone is subverting the operations of Hell. Lots likelier. Call it....ten times likelier? A hundred?
She tells Security to tell Asmodia she's thinking about it.
Asmodia: Asmodia is not, in fact, particularly expecting that Cheliax has a +4 INT / +4 WIS headband available to give her.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 6 / Late Afternoon
Keltham: Keltham now continues upon his project of making random diving runs on Probability from random angles in hopes of conveying a fragmentary understanding to adults over days instead of a true understanding to children over years.
Based on how confused some people were at the end of the last session - assuming that wasn't an elaborate Conspiracy distraction as Carissa pretended to go to the bathroom while actually having frantic conversations about how Keltham might be on to them (again, said out loud) - Keltham starts by posing a bunch of mostly-algebraic problems for deriving various quantities from others, what other places might call sheer math homework.
Yes, he knows that he's using unknown dath ilani places and people and objects and statistics, and that he might as well be using gibberish words instead. He just doesn't know enough about Golarion to make up 12 realistic Golarion statistical problems, so just treat everything as algebra, please, and bear with the awfulness.
Likelihood ratio on ~~~ between ~~ and ~~~~ is 4, if P(~~◁~~~) = 68%, what was P(~~~~◁~~~)?
(It's pretty tame awfulness by comparison to math homework in almost any Chelish math class. The main awful thing about it is how Keltham doesn't work any similar example problems before expecting you to solve the ones he poses. The other awful thing is that Keltham sometimes makes mistakes in his own math, and when that happens he expects you to argue with him when he gives you the wrong answer.)
Asmodia: Keltham is constantly tracking the Conspiracy world in his mind. That's part of this. He's living in both worlds simultaneously and distinctly and unhesitatingly. There's no pause in him about whether or not the Conspiracy is real, for purposes of accusing Carissa of being in on it within the Conspiracy world. Keltham steps all the way mentally into the world where the Conspiracy is just a thing and Carissa is just part of it, and then in that world when Sevar suddenly vanished away 'to the bathroom' obviously she was up to something in response to his own lecture and obviously the other students' questions were meant as a distraction.
Asmodia sees the game now, has seen the game, even without the enhancement spells she remembers.
Cheliax can't rely on what anything 'looks like', they can't ask if it's a 'giveaway' or if it could 'just as reasonably be something else'. Keltham isn't going to wonder each time whether or not the Conspiracy is real and mentally back down from labeling Carissa's departure as suspicious. Cheliax has to consider what everything will look like to Keltham while he's mentally inhabiting the world where the Conspiracy is just real and there's no arguing with that.
There was only one guaranteed-correct move in that game, and it was to mentally live inside the alterCheliax world themselves, and just do what alterCheliax would do, notice every time anyone's overt behavior departed from their behavior in alterCheliax whether or not that looked like a giveaway at a first glance. Sevar needed to notice that the version of her not in the Conspiracy world probably did not suddenly need to go to the bathroom, because Keltham did notice that. If that was even twice as likely on the Conspiracy world as the Ordinary world, and Keltham correctly estimates that, Asmodia has grasped by now that a lot of "twice as likelies" multiplied together can add up very fast. Only - they can't just live in alterCheliax either, she doesn't think - they can't win that way, convince Keltham it's all real - he doesn't know what the real Conspiracy or real Ordinary worlds would be like, they have to use that somehow -
Asmodia sees the game, the game between true dath ilani. She can't properly play the game against Keltham without enhancement, but she can see how fast Cheliax is losing. They can lose it very quickly once Keltham gets oriented enough that he starts believing in his own numbers. Hours, not days. It's all there in the math.
Keltham: And that's enough of Keltham doing all the work of inventing homework problems himself. They've solved some, now, they should be able to make up their own probability problems.
Everybody in class make up one probability problem, copy to a scrap of paper, write what you think is the correct answer on the other side of that scrap of paper, then pass it around for others to solve, starting with Keltham.
lintamande: A man is walking down the street in Ostenso dressed in silk robes. What are the odds that he is a noble?
You see a wizard cast a Dimension Door. What are the odds that the wizard is fifth circle?
A bird that lands on your windowsill is behaving suspiciously. What is the odds that it's a polymorphed spy?
Six students gave the exact same wrong answer on a math test. What is the odds that they cheated?
Keltham: He'd kinda meant to make up a problem like, here are three quantities, determine a fourth one algebraically.
But that's fine; those four students can just make up the key quantities needed and note them back down on their questions, right? They don't have to be right, just plausible.
(Though that fourth one is gonna be kinda hard at their level...)
lintamande: Yep! Say one in two hundred people is a noble and all nobles wear fine clothes and so do one hundredth of non nobles.
Say that all wizards who cast Dimension Door are at least fourth circle and a third of fourth circle casters are fifth, but fifth circle casters would be twice as likely to cast Teleport in that situation.
Say that, uh, 999/1000 birds are just birds, and birds behave suspiciously 1/100th of the time, whereas spies behave suspiciously 80% of the time.
Say that a quarter of students cheat on math tests, and that a student cheating off another would definitely have gotten that wrong answer, and a student who wasn't might have a one in five chance of making that mistake by chance.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has a feeling that a quarter of students do not cheat on math tests in dath ilan but whatever, it probably would be true in alterCheliax. Maybe even more true, with the lack of whippings. (Do they whip students for cheating in Taldor?)
Keltham: Keltham is actually a lot more worried about, (1), the total number of students taking the math test, from among whom those six students were found, and, (2), whether it is actually the case that 1 in 1000 birds around here isn't a real bird.
lintamande: Probably a hundred students took the math test.
....no one is sure what percentage of birds are legitimate birds. One in a thousand doesn't sound egregiously wrong. Probably it's much less in forest but in places where wizards hang out - they wouldn't all be Polymorphed spies, but they could be familiars, or trained scry-focus animals. Obviously here the Forbiddance will kill birds that enter it.
Keltham: Running some numbers off the back of his head, Keltham estimates there are around 100 billion birds in dath ilan.
Golarion's population is 1 billion.
Is 10% of the population creating bird-spies or bird-familiars, or is 1% of the population making 10 bird-spies each? Are there many fewer birds in this world, somehow?
lintamande: It is news to the students that there are 100billion birds in dath ilan!! They would not have guessed there were that many here! No, wizards don't average ten bird spies apiece.
Ione Sala: "I think they're answering, like, the chance a bird is somebody's familiar if you see a bird landing on the windowsill and watching you at Ostenso academy. I mean if it's riding around on somebody's shoulder it's much more likely than that to be a familiar."
Keltham: ...okay then.
Ione Sala: "Was there some very interesting thing that would've been implied otherwise? Like, is there something that we're all hiding from you in the Conspiracy world, but if we say 0.1% of birds are spies then you've caught us?"
Keltham: "It would potentially imply a much larger planetary population than I'd been told about, which corresponds to a set of situations where the Conspiracy has much more resources to throw at me than they'd like me to know about."
Ione Sala: "Wow. I was not expecting that question to have a real answer."
Keltham: "Of course you'd say that if you were in on the Conspiracy."
Ione Sala: "...would I actually, though, or... you know, never mind, this is a huge digression isn't it."
Keltham: "It really, really is and I should maybe have thought twice about bringing up the topic because it just goes down that thing-conversations-can-go-down forever and ever."
Keltham: Keltham resumes trying to drill basic probability algebra from some different angles. Consider the probability that a fifth-circle wizard knows Teleport, and the probability that a fifth-circle wizard knows Dimension door. Given the quantities:
P(Dimension Door ◁ 5th) = 40%P(Teleport \/ Dimension Door ◁ 5th) = 80%P(Teleport & Dimension Door ◁ 5th) = 30%
...how many 5th-circle wizards know Teleport?
Asmodia: Security, pass to Ione and copy Sevar:
Ione, I know you'll say that was what alterIone would've said in alterCheliax, but I think it was still a misstep. Keltham himself may think that people are twice as likely to probe him about Conspiracy questions in the world where there's a Conspiracy, and if he thinks that, you just screwed us. Once he starts believing his own numbers, it only takes 10 things like that for the probability to go from 0.1% to more than 100%... wait, that can't be right. Still, don't.
Ione Sala: Reply:
You don't get it because you're Asmodeans. You don't understand the world you're trying to fake. People who aren't risking torture for asking wrong questions will ask things like that. Somebody needed to be clever at him, or Keltham would notice nobody was allowed to be clever around him. He comes from dath ilan, do you think nobody there dares ask a question like that?
Carissa Sevar: Strongly seconding Asmodia. Also, that conversation was pretty similar to the conversation you asked earlier to have and I told you no. When I tell you no, I don't just mean 'don't do the exact specific thing you were denied permission for', the denial should have obviously been understood to encompass having excessively meta flirtatious conversations with Keltham about whether we're in a conspiracy, in general, until you've convinced me that they are a good idea, which you haven't yet. Ignoring orders because you think you're smarter makes you incredibly costly to work with, and if you're incredibly costly to work with then I'll direct them, when this falls apart, to turn you into a statue rather than let you run off with Keltham and reap the benefits of fucking up our project.
And to put the statue somewhere where it serves Cheliax if it explodes.
Understood?
Ione Sala: ...understood. I think you're making a fatal mistake, but I acknowledge that it's your fuckup to choose and not mine. If that's what Asmodeus wants from Nethys, I'll obey.
Carissa Sevar: I'm glad we're on the same page about that.
Okay, math. Gotta do math.
Ione Sala: Wait, does her curse make her explode if she goes too long without reading? Ione has not previously been notified of this.
...Ione should probably find this to be a very cool and exciting prospect, right? Ione is very grateful to Lord Nethys for giving her a curse that makes her explode. It probably even helps protect her from silly Asmodeans. It's a protective explosion. An explosion of kindness. Ione is very grateful.
It doesn't interfere with Nefreti Clepati bringing her back though, right? Obviously right. Lord Nethys wouldn't make an oracle just to deliver one prophecy and later explode takaral...
Ione does have some remaining purpose other than exploding right?
lintamande: "So," Gregoria says, "the probability that a fifth circle wizard has Dimension Door is 40%, and the probability that a fifth circle wizard has one of Dimension Door or Teleport is 80%, and the probability that a fifth circle wizard has both of Dimension Door and Teleport is 30%? Am I reading all the symbols right? Does the 'or' include the ones who have both?"
Keltham: Yup, correct on all those. 'Or' includes both.
lintamande: "Okay, so, a hundred fifth circle wizards. 80 of them have some teleportation magic. Of those, 30 have both. That leaves 50 who have one but not the other. And 40 have dimension door, but that's counting the 30 who have both, so 10 have dimension door and not Teleport, so 40 have Teleport and not Dimension Door. ...did I do that wrong? I feel like I wasn't using the rule we learned earlier."
Keltham: "Well, I agree that 40% of 5th-circle wizards have Teleport but not Dimension Door. So what's the answer?"
lintamande: "Seventy. Right?"
Keltham: "Possibly. What do you think is the probability you're right?"
lintamande: "....I don't know! Lower, since you asked that!"
Keltham: "Well, everyone close your eyes, then raise your hands from the lowest level for zero probability, to the highest level you can reach for 1 probability."
lintamande: There's a pretty obvious split between the students who'd solved the problem themselves by the time Gregoria volunteered an answer and the students who hadn't and are just trying to guess off general principles of how Keltham enjoys torturing people.
Keltham: Keltham is starting to get the impression there's tiers of students here, even in this population already selected on Intelligence. Carissa-Asmodia-Ione-Meritxell, Pilar-Peranza-Gregoria-Tonia, Everyone-Else.
...well, it's not a very nice outcome, but, it is well known that sometimes in a startup, somebody has to take responsibility for deciding that not everyone has the same ability level and maybe not everyone gets to stick around.
Part of him wants to wait and see if intelligence headbands fix everything, but maybe now that Governance is taking the project more seriously, the correct thing to do is put those headbands on smarter people. They're almost a week in, and a week is when they said that their original one-week contracts ran out.
Argh, he hates this and must think about it eventually but will think about it later. He's too selfish to just decide that people need to get fired for the Good of Golarion, the personal awfulness is looming large compared to that.
Anyways, Keltham walks through the derivation by rules.
P(Teleport \/ Dimension Door) = P(Teleport) + P(Dimension Door) - P(Teleport & Dimension Door)
Obviously you can get the fourth quantity if you have any of the other three, because algebra, and that's all they need to do here.
P(Teleport) = P(Teleport \/ Dimension Door) - P(Dimension Door) + P(Teleport & Dimension Door) = 0.8 - 0.4 + 0.3 = 70%
The proof that this is all still true conditional on everyone being a 5th-circle wizard is left as an exercise for later... actually, Keltham doesn't think he's formally given them all the axioms they'd need for that, so, making up the required axioms is also part of the exercise.
Ione Sala: Ione would, given her own rein, point out to Keltham right now that nobody has actually set aside time during the day for anybody to do homework exercises.
Sevar?
Carissa Sevar: Yes, go ahead.
Ione Sala: "I observe that there is not, currently, any time actually set aside in anybody's schedule for doing exercises later."
Keltham: "That's really a very good point. Ione, how come you are the only person present who ever says anything when I risk piling too much stuff on people before they've had an Owl's Wisdom or when I don't notice that nobody has any scheduled off-hours unless I happen to decide to snuggle Carissa and then she doesn't have any off-hours?"
Ione Sala: "It's possible they'd give you a different answer but I'd say it's a Nethys versus Asmodeus thing."
Keltham: "Isn't Nethys... Neutral everything? You'd think that Evil would take better care of itself?"
Ione Sala: "You might hope that but unfortunately it's the kind of Evil where they all want to do incredibly well in class and master all the material and get promoted and become rich and not the kind of Evil where anyone anywhere along the line will ever ask for a ten-minute break."
Keltham: "Some guy I talked to said that Nethys was the god of insanity and self-destruction along with magic and knowledge."
Ione Sala: "Yes, that's all very true, and yet."
Keltham: "Well. Keep me informed."
Ione Sala: Ione would like to note that she did not plan for that to happen right now, and she knows it's not a good look that it happened right now, but she nonetheless had those answers prepared because it was incredibly obvious that Keltham would eventually notice and ask, and dath ilan is closer to Nethysian than Asmodean in several ways that only she understands and people should let her explain it at some point.
Carissa Sevar: "- Keltham, does dath ilan have a military. Like, people whose full time job is to be ready to fight wars if there were one."
Keltham: "There's a potential military that's supposed to be very rapidly actualizable so as to not make it easy to take over Civilization by being the only faction with a military? I'm not sure what you mean by full-time job, there are industries where people work four hours every other day for normal wages and there's much smaller industries where everybody works ten hours a day with one day off every six days for much higher wages. Since the military isn't actually fighting anybody, the people who maintain it in potentia and a state of readiness, or who crew the serious weapons, are four-hour people. If an actual fight started they'd convert to fourteen hours a day until it was over. They do practice runs to make sure they can."