Asmodia: "Then why would you want to go to Hell now instead, if you could continue to serve Lord Asmodeus in Golarion and still be received by Him later?"
...it's actually easier to say this sort of thing and sound terribly sincere, for some weird reason, now that she absolutely doesn't believe it at all.
lintamande: "....right. Of course." She looks confused but that's not the kind of statement you're allowed to argue with.
Asmodia: "It might help if you explained why you were asking me that." She has a suspicion, but not a certainty, and she would have formed the suspicion faster if her mind was not filled with thoughts of how slow and dead her mind feels now. Losing +4 to Intelligence is 30% like dying; losing +4 to Intelligence, +6 to Wisdom, and +4 to Splendour, by extrapolation, is 105% like dying.
lintamande: "Well, we were told to choose, and told it was - a real choice, though probably we'd want to stay, and we could ask you if we were considering Hell. So I was wondering if. It's - I mean, we're Project Lawful, right, we're different..."
Asmodia: "Told by who. Just to be sure."
Asmodia is not actually stupid, she just feels incredibly stupid, and her thoughts are moving now.
lintamande: "Sevar."
Asmodia: Does Sevar - not believe, any more, that Asmodia was given a secret to keep by Hell itself? What the Abyss is Sevar thinking? Asmodia should, perhaps, have just showed Sevar Gorthoklek's message - has she screwed up, has she failed her unknown Patron -
And then Asmodia's thoughts move faster, and calmer.
She is not what she was, but she remembers.
Asmodia did figure out, she is not stupid now, let alone then, she did figure out that Aspexia Rugatonn's question might be about how Asmodeus sees a mortal worshipper. And then Asmodia didn't mention that part at all, because she'd been clearly instructed not to think about the why and just solve the question itself.
The tropes, if they are real, are not mostly-blind like Asmodeus. The tropes can see precisely and navigate precise futures.
Then Asmodia can perhaps reason that what is happening now, was intended to happen. And if the tropes see not perfectly, but still far better than Asmodeus, Asmodia can reason about ideas like keeping to more predictable paths, and the tropes will know what she thought about it, if she thought a sufficiently predictable thing... but Asmodia would have to think more on this new form of the Most High's question, before she dared anything like that, preferably think with more Cunning and Wisdom.
"Give me a quiet minute to think," Asmodia says. Maybe it's already too much of a giveaway, saying that. But Sevar clearly considers the away already given, and Asmodia does not get to dispute that, for she has already lost that game.
But suppose nonetheless that Asmodia has not failed her Patrons yet, by events coming to this point. What then do her Patrons desire of her? Asmodia cannot guess, and she has been given no instructions at all.
Look inside herself? Act on impulse? Would that help her Patrons, would that help the tropes, is she easier to steer if she acts on predictable impulses and lets herself be subject to frequent correction, rather than trying to hold fast to a course where she does as little as possible? Asmodia needs the crown back, and longer than fifteen minutes to think.
She has not been given instructions. Perhaps that is because she can deduce the goal and because her own thought can prove adequate to reach it.
The meddling gods - who might be below real tropes, or above fake tropes, or both at once - do seem to want Project Lawful to succeed, or keep going at least for now. They could have let Nidal smash it, or a sword take Keltham, they did not.
Then -
Asmodia: "All right, look, Sevar should not actually have told you that, given what she believes, but what happened to me in Hell did suggest that Project Lawful girls might get special treatment. Might. It might have just been something they did for me because I was the first Project Lawful girl they actually got to see. They grabbed me away from the standard bad painful situation my contract devil put me in, stuff happened I'm not talking about, but at the end I was put somewhere I'd end up in good shape when I got back, which I don't think is at all usual."
"I don't know if that works for you if you're not staying on the Project, I would not advise dying just to test it, I'm not sure that Hell would be amused," or her Patron, for Erecura did say that the price that had been paid was very high. "But if what you're looking for is a tiny shred of hope that Sevar is right about anything, fine, yeah, that happened."
"I wouldn't rely on it, so my advice is for you to stay on Golarion for those hundred years, if you can. If Hell is even better for Project Lawful girls than for everyone else, you can always go there later."
lintamande: Chelish people don't say 'thank you', Jacme nods, silently, and flees.
Nefreti Clepati: Nefreti Clepati does not prostrate herself before the pharaoh of Osirion. Nefreti Clepati casts a very powerful illusion of herself gracefully prostrating herself before the pharaoh, and stands at the illusion's feet, smiling cheerfully at the pharaoh, who is a powerful enough cleric in his own right to see through it. But his guards aren't, and anyone who might carry away rumors is not, and it's not, actually, a fight the pharaoh of Osirion can afford to pick with Nefreti Clepati. He needs her more than she needs him, and they both know it.
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Rise," says the pharaoh of Osirion, and there are very few people on Golarion who would detect even the slightest trace of irritation in his voice. The illusion of Nefreti Clepati folds itself back into the real Nefreti Clepati.
Nefreti Clepati: "The answer is no, regrettably," she tells him.
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "We, ah, haven't yet made the request."
Nefreti Clepati: "Don't do that to an old woman, boy, you know I can't keep that kind of thing straight."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "We need a scry done by someone powerful enough to overcome Aspexia Rugatonn's caster level. There aren't too many people that powerful in the Inner Sea. Do you want.... the contents of the buried pyramid of the Pharaohs of Ascension? We have a lead on where it is. Some spell diagramming notes dated to Nex? Azlanti ioun stones?"
Nefreti Clepati: "Is that everything, then, boy? We are both of us very busy."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: " - Cheliax has a powerful magic user from another world and they think whatever they're doing with him is incredibly valuable to Hell."
Nefreti Clepati: "I know."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Is this about - worry about being constrained in receiving context from Nethys, that's been a concern or us, but this plan was conceived of and made by my foreign affairs team without input from Abadar either in my person or otherwise, and we're not intervening, we're just looking, in order to adjust our probabilities on war with Cheliax in the next ten years. Priestess, you don't want to see Sothis fall. And the pay is very nearly anything that I have and that you want."
Nefreti Clepati: "Oh dear, we did do this conversation in the wrong order, didn't we, and it's my fault, for trying to get to the end of it sooner, when we can't do that, you have to walk through all the parts. It makes sense that you, not being omniscient, are nervous. It seems like it would be very nervewracking to not be omniscient."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Do you....know what's going on. Is there a plan."
Nefreti Clepati: "Probably!"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Will you bet in Merenre's market."
Nefreti Clepati: "One of the downsides of omniscience is that it really ruins the appeal of gambling. You could just give me all your money, save us some time."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "...if you want, if you go and place your bets now and tell me that they are genuinely your best bets, We'll pay out right now like they resolved in your favor."
Nefreti Clepati: "Have you ever thought to yourself, maybe I'm trying to solve a flood with a Fireball?"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Am I trying to solve a flood with a Fireball?"
Nefreti Clepati: "No, I think I'd actually characterize this specific error slightly differently. You're - trying to solve childbirth with a Fireball. It's a delicate process."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "You can solve childbirth with a Dimension Door."
Nefreti Clepati: "When the baby's ready! Not sooner!"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "When the - baby's ready - when whatever Nethys is planning has come to fruition - then will you help us?"
Nefreti Clepati: "...no."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Nefreti, if there's anything at all you can tell me that would help me understand -"
Nefreti Clepati: "Imagine a little bird flies into town and starts breathing Fireballs, and says 'pay me to go away!' What do you do?"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Kill it."
Nefreti Clepati: "But what if it only wants a little bit of gold to go away! You'll have to pay far more than that, to get some adventurers to kill it."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "We kill it."
Nefreti Clepati: "Not in the mood for delivering a lecture on Law today, I take it?"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "There is no one listening but you, Nefreti."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Is the palace being spied on?"
Nefreti Clepati: "Do you want to hear about the little bird or not."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: The pharaoh of Osirion is much less inclined to casually murdering people who annoy him than not just the Queen of Cheliax but nearly any noble in Cheliax. This doesn't speak particularly well of him; it's a very low bar.
The pharaoh of Osirion finds himself, to his alarm, contemplating the murder of the High Priestess of Nethys in all of Golarion. Luckily, he reminds himself, he couldn't do it if he wanted to.
"I would like to hear more about the bird," he says pleasantly.
Nefreti Clepati: "A little bird comes to town and starts sneezing Fireballs everywhere. 'I have a terrible illness that causes Fireball sneezing', it says, 'please help me'. What do you do."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Is it telling the truth."
Nefreti Clepati: "Yes!"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "And the cheapest way to get the bird to go away is to cure its Fireball sneezing."
Nefreti Clepati: "Indeed!"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "I make the bird a loan it can pay off by being a ship's wizard for a year or two, sneeze Fireballs at all the pirates."
Nefreti Clepati: "The bird isn't that patient. You can either pay it to get cured, or you can kill it, and until you do one or the other it's just going to sit there sneezing."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "If there's no threat involved then the department of ....bird handling... solves it in the cheapest available way, which I suppose is curing the bird."
Nefreti Clepati: "But why didn't they do that with the first bird?"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Nefreti...."
Nefreti Clepati: "You're not very good at answering questions!"
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "We don't give in to threats because if we predictably give in to threats, everyone will threaten us. We occasionally spend money to solve problems that look like threats, if they're not threats and we have some way to verify that they're not threats. If the bird genuinely isn't here to get money from us - just landed here randomly - and isn't staying because it thinks it can extort us - then maybe we pay it to go away, because that doesn't get the city swarmed by hundreds of copycat birds."
Nefreti Clepati: "And what if - this is a tricky one - the bird is sincere and not threatening you, but the reason it happens to be in Osirion rather than somewhere else is that Cheliax put it there, wanting the bird cured, and thinking we'd do it to make all our buildings stop being on fire."
Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Kill the bird. Can't let people make threats at one remove, either."
Nefreti Clepati: "Well, there you go, I explained the whole thing."
Nefreti Clepati: "Have a good day!"
And she leaves.
Cayden Cailean: That was fucking nerve-wracking.
And who was she even talking to? Nefreti Clepati was distinctly not looking in the direction of Cayden Cailean's hidden presence when she turned around to look at that angle.
Why isn't Otolmens freaking out about her, Cayden Cailean doesn't know.
Asmodia: Asmodia consults with Paxti and the others about their alterCheliax reactions to being fired, often interrupting Sevar with further questions about how alterCheliax needs to look to appeal to Keltham, but still taking slightly less Carissa Sevar time than if Carissa Sevar had needed to be present for the whole thing.
Neither Asmodia nor Sevar are actually getting any downtime tonight, realistically speaking, but Cheliax expects that of its upper management, even more than do fast-paced dath ilani startups.
What are they doing about Asmodia reporting to Sevar on solving Keltham's problems 1-7 and having comprehended the game between dath ilani? Asmodia wants a report on her awesomeness moving quickly to the Grand High Priestess so she can get a headband again soon.
If possible, Sevar should at least appear to make her own run on the Law, it'd be alterCheliax-weird for her not to do that, given what Asmodia has seen of Sevar anyways. How far Sevar gets with her +4 headband will be a good proxy for how far Asmodia could have gotten on Fox's Cunnings. Asmodia should not show up tomorrow being visibly no-longer-entirely-not-a-dath-ilani, that did not happen in alterCheliax.
Then, Asmodia proposes, once Sevar has taken her own run, Asmodia can show Sevar how much more progress Asmodia made with +4 INT, +6 WIS, and +4 CHA. And Sevar can report to the Grand High Priestess that Asmodia actually needs more than just +4 Wisdom in a headband, even if they have to send somebody to Hell temporarily or turn them into a statue temporarily, so that Asmodia can have their headband. It's super important to Project Lawful. The fate of Cheliax and maybe Hell itself depends on it. Whoever has the third most powerful headband in Cheliax after the Most High probably isn't doing anything that important.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa doesn't actually feel like she needs downtime. She does feel like she's playing to her weaknesses, rather than her strengths - the thing she's good at is understanding Keltham, and going off even very good gut intuition for that isn't going to stand up against him, so they need the whole tapestry and she can't be the whole tapestry. Project management is not a strength.
Also apparently after two days of project management you start to pick up on its attitude of 'ugh, wizards'. Which she doesn't endorse at all, because Asmodia is completely justified in wanting to be smarter, in a sense it's the only want that's justified at all. "I'll give the problems a try, but even if I am persuaded that you on a headband is a massive asset to the project, I'm not going to make that request and if I did it'd be denied. Wizards make that request whether it's actually necessary or not, see, and you have absolutely no idea what whoever has the third most powerful headband in Cheliax is doing but it might be 'winning the war with Nidal'. And your loyalties are questionable."
Asmodia: Asmodia doesn't regret asking. You want to keep pushing until you get a 'no'.
Maybe she can figure out who in other countries would probably have a very powerful headband and could most easily be killed by a half-dath-ilani.
Also, Asmodia's loyalties are not questionable. The Grand High Priestess personally declared that Asmodia was not loyal to Lord Asmodeus. This settles the issue; to question the judgment of the Grand High Priestess is heresy. Hahaha.
Peranza: Peranza's current thought processes would make fascinating reading from a dath ilani perspective, once the dath ilani stopped screaming, which would take a while.
She now works on an important secret project where her thoughts are being read a lot compared to Ostenso wizard academy. In principle, that's not a huge difference because, even when you're mind-read less frequently, they can just ask you if you've had any bad thoughts since your last review. Still, Peranza is very aware that somebody could be reading all her thoughts literally right now, and probably is.
One might consider that there is an obvious way to look at things where Sevar just told her that everyone's Asmodeanism is based on lies, and Keltham is going to tell them the truth, and then they'll all be executed as heretics for believing him and go to Hell and be hurt very badly. Not eventually, this week.
Peranza is not looking there.
It's not that she's safe if she doesn't look there. It's not that she's better off if she doesn't look there. She's just not looking there. This is not a thinkable thought. It cannot be processed. It is detected by several early-firing bad-thought-detector pattern-recognizing heuristics, well trained by previous punishment, and shut down before it gets into her stream of consciousness and becomes a problem for her next Detect Thoughts review.
What Sevar said is causing a lot of early-bad-thought-detectors to fire simultaneously.
Peranza, then, consists of whatever is left.
It's proceeding in fits and starts and not uncommonly runs into all cognitive avenues being blocked simultaneously, whereupon Peranza's incipient wordless awareness that she's no longer convincing herself that she's trying to follow orders becomes stronger and stronger and more demanding until finally, in desperation, she thinks something anyways.
A more experienced member of the Inner Ring would not have put an Outer into this position, unless they wanted to cast Detect Thoughts and watch the Outer's verbal thoughts tie up in increasingly tight knots and circles of not having any available pathways for safe thinking and then, presumably, have some fun punishing them for doing their assigned task poorly.
Peranza is supposed to list out, not her own heresies for Sevar to correct, obviously, Peranza wouldn't be willingly thinking any heretical thoughts, obviously, she's supposed to look at other members of Project Lawful and determine places where incipient heresies might be (such as can be listed without damning herself). Only she's also supposed to list out places where Peranza thinks she might be confused, and it's supposedly okay to admit you're confused, only Sevar called those lies, which means everything has to be screened for how bad it would be if whoever got this report jumped on Peranza and asked if her listing that thing meant she thought it was a lie.
Not that Peranza is allowed to think any of that out loud, either.
Peranza: The first item written on Peranza's report is that Ione Sala seems to think it's okay to worship Nethys which really seems very confused and definitely like the sort of thing where she might get even more confused listening to Keltham.
After this is not written that Sevar herself is also an enormous glowing heretic, but those thoughts are safe to think, you don't have to be a heretic yourself to notice that Sevar is a heretic. So Peranza's calculations about how it would be stupid to list this item in a report that Sevar reads, and Peranza's thoughts about Sevar's particular heresies, are all allowed to be in the forefront of her mind and actually thought to herself. Her mind spends quite some time there, where it's safe, before she is forced to move on by the increasing volume of the incipient-wordless-shriek of how she will no longer be able to pass a Detect Thoughts inspection on whether she successfully pretended to herself that she was trying to follow Sevar's orders.
She has to put down something. Even if it makes her punishable. She can't put down nothing, obviously you'd make the punishment for that be worse. Even in Taldor you must still get tortured severely if you deliberately disobey orders.
Peranza writes down that somebody else might get confused about why Asmodeus permits so many opposing gods to continue to exist and oppose him when they're so much less mighty than Him.
It's obviously going to get her somebody staring at her and asking if she believes Asmodeus is weak and that the part about Him being mightier than other gods is a lie and all she'll be able to do is say that she was trying to follow Sevar's orders and guess what other people might get confused about and obviously Peranza has never thought for a moment that anything the Church said is false she is just trying to follow Sevar's orders and guess what other people might think.
Peranza writes down that somebody else might get confused about why people in other countries, especially wizards who can teleport, don't all flock to Cheliax given its clearly greater benefits.
This is safer; if Peranza is asked if she believes Cheliax isn't really a better place to be, she'll be able to say, no, obviously the people in other countries are weak and afraid of pain, this is just something somebody else might be confused about.
Now she has three things, and the first thing about Known Heretic Ione Sala is visibly not really trying, but Peranza doesn't dare cross it out or recopy because that is the sort of thing Security will report and it is a bad look.
She needs more things to write down. She can't turn in this report to Sevar with only those things written on it.
Why do things have to be like this? Why does she have to hurt like this? Peranza is confused about that.
For a very brief moment, then, Peranza's mind remembers the silent image of Keltham's city of towering metal blocks, a teenaged boy's private apartment-mansion inside it, but an early-bad-thought-recognizer fires before she can think anything fatal in words.
(To be clear, this is not Peranza's worst day in the last month. It's not a good day even in Cheliax, but not the worst day of the month in Cheliax either. Nobody's breaking her bones or whipping strips of skin off her back right now.)
Peranza: By the time two hours are up, Peranza has twenty items, and when she looks back and reviews them all at once she realizes in the back of her mind that she's going to die a heretic's death, if not right now then after following Sevar's next set of orders, but it's too late now and trying to burn the paper just means Security stops her after they see the intention and then things get worse.
Not that Peranza thinks any of that in words either.
She just picks up her completed report and gives it to Security to deliver to Sevar, with horrible nausea running through her that is no doubt the result of having spent so much time thinking about sickening possible heresies.
(The trouble with not thinking in words, the trouble with running entirely off pattern recognition to decide which next step is safe, without being able to calmly reflect on where the whole sequence of steps goes, is that sometimes you end up cornering yourself.
A better course of action given her beliefs would have been to fail at her task, and be tortured however much you get tortured when you tell them that you couldn't find it in yourself to obey orders because they were too heretical and you didn't want to become a heretic yourself, which is no doubt very painful, but not anywhere near as bad as going to Hell. This, however, would have required deliberate planning. The mind-without-words doesn't learn heuristics that steer you into that much immediate pain and visible failure on your next step.)
Carissa Sevar: Carissa brings the paper over to her a couple of minutes later. "These are good questions," she says. "I think some people think of them and then avoid asking them, because they're worried on some level that the questions don't have good answers, or at least that if they asked then people might think they think the questions don't have good answers."
Peranza: Peranza nods in obedient terror. She's not going to be punished by Sevar right now, for not having done a good enough job on her assigned task, but she knows without words that this was a mistake and very much not the fate she should actually have been avoiding.
Carissa Sevar: "Do you know why I asked you to do this?"
Peranza: Because I'd outlived my usefulness.
"Because you believe Keltham might turn some of us into heretics, and you'd like to minimize how many."
Carissa Sevar: "Say Keltham asks you -" she glances at the paper, "why all the Chelish wizards are born in Cheliax, when wizards from all over the world should want to live here. What would you say to him."
Peranza: This is a much easier question to answer.
"That wasn't in the official background material, so if I had to answer right away and couldn't wait on an advisory from yourself or Asmodia, I would tell him that I don't know, but my guess is that the wizards on-site all look native-born probably because that helps with passing the Security screening. I've seen non-Chelish wizards in Cheliax ever but did mostly keep to Ostenso wizard academy while I was there, and I wasn't in a big town before then."
Carissa Sevar: "Good.
Say you accidentally at some point thought the question to yourself, what would your answer be?"
Peranza: "They're weak and afraid of pain."
Carissa Sevar: "It would be better for our souls to leave it at that, wouldn't it? But I think we unfortunately can't. All of these questions have real, good, satisfactory answers, obviously; devils aren't constantly afraid of heresy. Devils don't carefully avoid thinking about specific things. And we are going to have to become like devils in this regard because it's too late for us to be like -" gesture - "other people. Which of these questions would you be most relieved to know the real true answer to, an answer you can think about as much as you like because it's actually just satisfactory and thinking about it more brings you closer to understanding the will and greatness of Asmodeus?"
Peranza: If she just picks one at random is she safe -
Is it better to learn from her mistake, and be punished for disobedience rather than die for heresy -
No she just needs to glance at things until she finds any item with a plausible excuse -
Peranza: Why do we have to be hurt so? - wasn't one of her questions and she mustn't process the real meaning of Sevar's question anyways
SHE HAS TO PRODUCE AN ANSWER
Peranza: "I - don't know how to answer that, if I haven't already been told the real true answers then I'm not deemed ready for them, I don't know how to guess which answer I'd be ready for and would help me -"
Carissa Sevar: "You haven't been told the real true answers because it's been a very busy week and this is the first time we've had a couple hours away from Keltham. You're ready at minimum for the answer to every question that you're scared of thinking about, because we can't have you scared of thinking."
Peranza: Why is she lying. Who would believe that?
No, belief is mandatory. Believe it somehow.
Peranza nods obediently.
Carissa Sevar: "Shall we just go down the entire list, since you can't name one?"
Peranza: If Sevar has true, reassuring answers for everything on the list Peranza will be genuinely impressed; for an instant there's a flare of hope. Maybe Sevar's price in Dis means something? "Yes," Peranza says.
Carissa Sevar: "Ione Sala thinks it's okay to worship Nethys.
There is - something of a realignment, happening among the gods, right now. It's hard to see from a mortal angle, but gods are doing Asmodeus favors who would not have been expected to do Asmodeus favors. Cayden Cailean gifted Pilar with the ability to track down every spy for Iomedae in Egorian, as long as she threw a party for them before kicking them out of the country, instead of executing them. That's what she was doing in Egorian. Broom's god - this is secret from Keltham, but permitted to know in the project - teleported every diamond anywhere in Nidal to Broom, at the same time as Asmodeus sent Maillol a vision saying we should set up near Ostenso where there's some kind of divine interdiction. Nethys warned us of the Zon-Kuthon attack.
It's hard for mortals to know for certain what the gods are doing. But there's a thing that would have been something a heretic might have said a week ago, which was: if Asmodeus is destined to win, why don't the other gods act like they know that? Why do they oppose Asmodeus? They don't have the excuse of being mortal and stupid and scared of pain; they should submit, if they see how it's destined to end, or I guess try to let Rovagug out if they're too opposed to submit. But in that we have the start of our answer - Asmodeus doesn't want them to let Rovagug out, and so He has left hidden from them the ultimate result He sees. When Good gods tell their priests that Asmodeus will not win in the end, they're telling the truth, as far as they know.
Or that's what was true a week ago. I think that Asmodeus is now beginning to show his hand. We are valued in Dis not for the work we'll do in this world, but for the work we'll do in Hell, where the gods do know that Asmodeus reigns totally supreme and that there is nothing to do to oppose Him. With more Law, it will be possible to create better devils.
That might seem like - an advantage, a substantial one even, but not a decisive one, not one that turns Cayden Cailean against Iomedae and has Nethys serving Asmodeus in the absence of prophecy. Do you see why it's a bigger advantage than that?"
Peranza: Peranza doesn't gape, since such reactions are suppressed by default in Cheliax.
Is all that even slightly true -
But maybe it is true, Project Lawful being what it is, the answer is maybe yes, it's not like they haven't seen Pilar with the cake, Peranza was there when Ione called her warning, and they were told about the Cayden Cailean thing before any of these issues about heresy came up -
"I'm not sure I understood the question, sir? Is the question, why being able to create better devils is a decisive enough advantage to make Cayden Cailean and Nethys believe in Lord Asmodeus's inevitable victory? It would just be, because with better devils Hell gets stronger and wins, right?"
The flash of horror that goes through her at the thought is buried very very deep.
Carissa Sevar: "If you just make a devil a little better than any anyone has ever made, then that devil will be able to get even better at making devils, and make one a little better than that. And get better at the process, not just the result - think how much mortal running-around-in-blind-panic would be prevented if being shaped into some kinds of devil didn't hurt, so we could just tell everyone who's scared that they can be that kind instead."
Wryly: "it'll probably still hurt the way this conversation is hurting you. But I believe maybe mortals, if it was just that, could muster their courage and go gladly to it.
With better devils you could have a summoned Keltham in every classroom, teaching all the children Law, which devils right now don't understand in such a way that they'd be able to do it.
And all we have to do is make a devil which is just a little bit better at making devils - which is, in a sense, a kind of teaching, a kind of shaping, the precise thing this project is doing.
Ione Sala shouldn't worship Nethys, and you shouldn't start, but it's not threatening the way it was a week ago, any more than it's threatening that I venerate Dispater. Because Dispater works for Asmodeus, and Nethys does too - not fully, yet, but it's not surprising at all that Nethys, who sees farther, was the first to see it. And Ione believes Nethys to have charged her with helping the project succeed, and with making it visible to Keltham that the project has the backing of many gods - he'd be suspicious if it were just Asmodeans. He told me yesterday that he was tremendously relieved Cayden Cailean was backing us, since the fact Good gods too support this project gives him confidence in it.
What a gift, which Asmodeus could not buy, if He weren't going to win!
Why did Cayden take Pilar, and not anyone else, to Elysium, if He is Good and wants to save people from Hell? Anyone else might have been tempted to stay in Elysium - it's all right, you can think it, many people would be tempted to stay in Elysium - and that would have been a cruel thing to tempt them with, when Elysium will fall soon anyway; Pilar was the one who was done no cruelty, by showing her. They asked her at the end if she wanted to stay and she said 'no' and they said 'we knew that would be your answer'. She is meant to bring that little that Elysium has to teach us with her to Hell. And someday it'll be fine to worship Cayden Cailean, too, as it's fine to worship Mephistopheles."
Peranza: There's a flash of contempt -
There's a flash of contempt openly in Peranza's thoughts. It's safe to think that Sevar is a fool, because the Security reading her thoughts will be thinking that too. If you look at the way Cheliax is set up, that Hell is set up, you'd have to be a fool to think they'd ever make devils in a way that didn't hurt. The people of Cheliax are not that lied-to, they are openly told that Asmodeus's domain is tyranny and that the cruelty they endure is pleasing to Him. You couldn't pray to Him if you were that mistaken about who He is.
"Why believe Hell would go along with making devils less painfully?" Peranza says. It does not take heresy, it is not an executable offense, if you suggest that Hell likes hurting you in the course of your correction. The corrected deserve for the correction to hurt, and the weak deserve to suffer; this is the doctrine of Hell. Peranza has had to whip her classmates, and practice torture spells on children with no other uses, to make sure she experiences it from both sides, just like any other wizard. Even if they could make devils painlessly, they wouldn't.
Carissa Sevar: "Because I think it might interfere with making them think. I observe you all to be terrible at thinking, except Pilar who doesn't mind it. I would love to teach you how not to mind it. But I don't have that figured out yet, I'm not Abrogail, who did know how to hurt me in a way that made me better and stronger and worthier, and I can't promise people 'look, we'll hurt you in a way that makes you better and stronger and worthier', because they've never had Abrogail and on some level don't believe that that's even real. So if all goes well, I'll have my own collection of souls in training in Hell, and I'll figure out something better than paving stones to do with the ones who fall apart when they get hurt. Yes, they're contemptible; yes, they deserve to suffer; yes, it'd be better if I could figure out how to both deliver what they deserve to them and make them into something useful. But everyone's trying at the first thing and no one's trying at the second.
Do you want to know what Hell conveyed of Asmodeus's will for me?"
Peranza: "Yes," Peranza says; she can answer that question quickly, what with the alternate answer of 'no' being very very obviously the wrong one.
It's good that she was asked that question so she didn't have to figure out how to respond to everything that came before it.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa carefully pulls out the sheet of paper on which it was reconstructed from Elias's memories, and passes it across the table to Peranza.
Peranza: Peranza reads, and is not particularly enlightened. Perhaps she isn't actually meant to be enlightened, only shown how small and stupid she is before Asmodeus's wisdom?
"Are we meant to understand why our Lord directed you so?" she says.
Carissa Sevar: "Not in full, I don't think. But I thought all the strange and doubtless mistaken things that I think, and He chose me, and He called Keltham my teacher; that we're meant to understand. Ordinarily it would be very stupid and pathetic to imagine that Hell is in an error we have the power to correct. I think now it is ambiguous, whether it is stupid and pathetic or not. If we succeed, Peranza, if we build Civilization on Golarion, then this ambition of mine to fix those souls Hell turns into paving-stones is small next to that, and I will be permitted it. If we fail then we'll all be worse off than if we'd never tried this, because we got halfway to Truth and ended up in a big muddle of heresy."
Peranza: Half of that prediction is certainly credible. (Probably fine to think this; Security is no doubt thinking the same.)
What would Ione say about all this if Peranza asked her
What would Pilar say about all this if Peranza asked her? (Pilar is obviously strong in her faith; to wonder what she'd think of something is a permitted thought.)
A daring thought comes to her, more daring than has come to Peranza in a while; a thought that might get her punished, and yet, it wouldn't be execution for heresy, and that punishment would show Sevar's hand and relieve a lot of frantic anxiety about how real the promise of reduced punishment actually is. "I think - the sort of question you're talking about - that somebody might be afraid to ask - would, for me, the most important question would be - why can't a devil tell us this, that Hell would go along with your plan, and swear to that in Asmodeus's name, and then we would know it was no heresy" and that the hope was real (actually you can just think that, Security's also skeptical of the truth here) and that Sevar's promises were remotely credible.
Carissa Sevar: "Very reasonable. So I'm going to mark this as - not satisfactorily answered until we have a devil to tell everyone the bounds of what I can get away with - the problem is that junior devils aren't going to know for sure, and I can't actually casually command the time of senior ones. But I'll figure it out."
Peranza: Is it possibly over?
Carissa Sevar: Nope! That was the first question. Now, second question.
Peranza: Peranza obviously isn't going to run out of the room screaming. That impulse gets trained out of you before you can actually form long-term memories.
Asmodia: Would the pharaoh of Osirion trade his crown to her if she could kidnap Keltham and deliver him to Osirion -
Ione Sala: "Asmodia. Are you plotting how to get your hands on an overpowered headband, instead of listening to me?"
Asmodia: "Yes. I was thinking about whether I could seduce my way into the pharaoh of Osirion's harem."
Ione Sala: "I now, on the one hand, regret ever mentioning to you that the pharaoh's crown was a thing, and, on the other hand, regret much less that I didn't try on that headband myself. Maybe, if we consulted with more senior wizards, there'd be a way to extract some of that conviction from me, and directly infuse it into Keltham -"
Asmodia: "You are going full Nethys again. Also I predict Maillol vetoes it."
Ione Sala: "Well since you refuse to check any of those predictions -"
Asmodia: "Given that he just got Raised, Maillol should be asleep right now. His Ring of Sustenance won't kick in much before ours do. So I'm batching them up and before I check with him I will write down my predictions with probabilities for each question, like a good girl. Which Keltham will later tell us is a training exercise for dath ilani, I predict with 99% probability." (Asmodia did try to adjust her confidences downward after Keltham warned her that 99.99% was too much.)
Ione Sala: "Keltham told us that we should do that if we were using divine advice to check about, what was it, which corn-breeding plans would be disastrous. You don't get to count that as a prediction."
Asmodia: "I don't think Keltham said to use probabilities then, so I get to count that."
"Look, we're drifting off-topic again, probably because of something to do with the ratio of time we've spent awake to asleep over the last day. Did you say anything important while my attention drifted off?"
Ione Sala: "I think I delivered a prophecy, but now I don't remember it either takaral."
Asmodia: "Interesting. I can actually tell you said takaral on purpose."
Ione Sala: "I wasn't trying very hard to fake it."
"Look, I'm not feeling happy about this Gregoria Suicide Plan. I bet Sevar also won't be happy about this Gregoria Suicide Plan. I bet Maillol is unhappy in a way that involves fire."
Asmodia: "We'll be fine. They wouldn't use fire in Taldor."
Ione Sala: "They would if somebody showed them this plan."
Asmodia: "You invented this idea and three-quarters of what's in here!"
Ione Sala: "That doesn't mean I can't look back, think about how far I've come, and realize exactly where I have arrived."
"Also all the problems are in the remaining one-quarter, obviously."
Asmodia: "I think the logic is probably a lot clearer if you have grasped the key fragment of the Law of Probability, which, once you possess it, reshapes all of your thoughts and not just those thoughts which involve numbers -"
Ione Sala: "Asmodia, listen to me. If this were a temple of Nethys and I were in charge, this would be the point at which the experienced fourth-circle cleric of Nethys tells the first-circle cleric of Nethys that she is clearly on an exciting journey of the mind full of new ideas, and she's going to be locked in a nice safe cell with no weapons or spellbook until she finishes takaral."
Asmodia: "How fortunate for Project Lawful that I am in charge and not you. Also you've never in your life been to a temple of Nethys, stop making things up."
Ione Sala: "I flipped through all the Taldor romance novels looking for any mention of the word 'Nethys' and there were two pages about a temple of Nethys in one section."
Asmodia: "And that's the point where the high-ranking Asmodean sets the low-ranking Asmodean on fire. Yes yes you're not Asmodean, fine."
"Look, I'll try to put the Law I'm using into words, you may well be able to follow if you pay attention. What we're trying to avoid doing is letting Keltham narrow down a single Conspiracy world that he can figure out. We want to do things that make internal sense in the Ordinary world, even if they might seem sort of weird and complicated there, but which would be more complicated and hard to square up internally in the Conspiracy world. Yes, there's ultimately a world where that all makes sense, because we're living in it, but we want to make that world hard for his mind to narrow in on, and when we use weird complicated logic that's inconsistent with the logic we've previously used, that helps us so long as it's less weird inside the Ordinary world."
"The fact that we told him about Cunning and headbands isn't good but it also means that we were stupid then, and now if we do something very complicated and smart and clever about it, even if Keltham thinks of that possibility, it won't match up with our previous stupidity in telling him about Cunning at all."
Ione Sala: "And you don't think Keltham has read a dozen books back in dath ilan where somebody tries something exactly like this on the protagonist, what with him coming from a world of actual dath ilani where none of the thinking you're using is the least bit special."
Asmodia: "You don't get it! Yes, Keltham can think that we just planned the whole thing. But, if Keltham imagines a masterful intellect," like the one she has now, "the part where we previously told him about Cunning and had to execute the whole clever plot in the first place won't make sense. The villains in dath ilani books will be smarter and more competent than we previously were in the actual Conspiracy world."
Ione Sala: "And if he figures out that we really were learning as we went along -"
Asmodia: "That's the loss condition we inevitably reach eventually, where Keltham has enough information to figure out the exact world he's living in, but we can make that harder for him. He won't jump to that conclusion right away. It's like - putting extra coinspins on top of duck for lunch, merchant ships coming in from Absalom instead of merchant ships from anywhere. A more complicated idea is one that he has to assign lower probability to start."
"And Keltham isn't a perfect dath ilani. It may be possible to confuse him enough and win. If I have a sufficiently powerful headband, and he doesn't use any enhancements himself, I mean."
"Right now, Keltham has seen evidence that, if the Conspiracy is real, it's not actually that competent, because we weren't. The first time we do something smart, before any other time he's expecting us to be smart, we've got to get as much mileage as we can, out of that, because afterwards he'll be on the lookout for smart things."
"And besides getting him not to use enhancements, you yourself said that the most confusing thing we could do to him -"
Ione Sala: "I regret all of the choices that led me here."
Asmodia: "No! You were right! Righter than you realized! Right now, all Keltham's attention is on the idea that the Conspiracy world is trying to make him believe he's inside the Ordinary world. On the simple truth, exactly where we don't want it. At the very least we want to make it be complicated for him."
"So we make it look like he has Ordinary adversaries trying to falsely convince him the Conspiracy is real, and then he has to doubt all the evidence and not just the evidence we'd rather he didn't doubt. And if the Conspiracy faking the Ordinary world faking a Conspiracy is exactly what they do in dath ilani romance novels, then those villains would never have told him about Fox's Cunning."
Ione Sala: "And this is the point where they set somebody on fire even in Taldor."
Asmodia: "Let me guess, you think Maillol says that we want to keep the Ordinary world simple and believable and just not make Keltham think about things too much?"
Ione Sala: "Sevar says that. Maillol says, Abarco, hurt her."