Asmodia: "Well the ship of apparently simple and believable stories has sailed, what with Cayden Cailean handing out cookies.  And even if it hadn't, Keltham is a dath ilani.  He's going to think about things no matter what.  All we have is a choice of what he spends his Conspiracy-decoding time trying to decode."

Ione Sala: "Okay, look, what are you actually thinking at this point?  Specifically?  Maybe it'll sound more convincing to me if you sketch it out the way Keltham would see it."

Asmodia: "Keltham wakes up tomorrow, is allowed a chance to pray first - we don't want to let him pick out spells after he knows what he'll be doing with them - and probably do some other things, eat breakfast, we can't time it precisely to after he prays.  Suddenly there's an emergency, no, they're not supposed to say what, he gets rushed straight to Maillol's office."

"Maillol says that he realizes exactly how stupid this is going to sound -"

Ione Sala: "The fact that your plan requires this step should be a hint, Asmodia."

Asmodia: "I'll be sure to give you full credit for all of your ideas."

"Anyways, Maillol tells Keltham that he suspects they have an enemy upstream in Egorian, one who got their hands on, at the very least, yesterday's transcripts.  Because the day after Keltham talked about his Conspiracy analysis and told Security that if there was a criminal investigation he wanted to be in charge, even knowing that was tempting the tropes, there's now a dead body in Gregoria's bedroom, which looks like a suicide but that's not hard to fake and there wasn't any obvious reason for her to do that.  Last known interaction was that Gregoria finished preparing spells and then requested a simultaneous Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom early that morning, to see if she could solve any of Keltham's homework problems that way after resting the previous night.  She died sometime between then and a quarter-hour later, when Sevar tried to send a message to her about her availability for a morning meeting with Keltham."

"Keltham predicts that truthspells aren't going to turn up any murderer for some weird reason.  Maillol says yeah, and he bets when they hear back about Gregoria getting Raised or contacted in Hell, she has no idea who killed her, and he wants Keltham to be really fucking cautious about interpreting anything he sees here.  Somebody may be trying to fake the appearance of what Keltham seemed to expect."

Ione Sala: "Or Keltham goes, nope, not buying it, and heads outside the Forbiddance to try to get in contact with Osirion."

Asmodia: "If he had that short of a probability-temper he'd have walked out after the Cayden Cailean candy thing."

Ione Sala: "You would have walked out after the Cayden Cailean candy thing because you're a Golarion native who knows how weird that actually is.  Keltham will walk out after Maillol tries your line on him, because that will be the point where Keltham recognizes that he's inside the classic hilarious maneuver that dumb dath ilani kids think up the day after they find out about the Law of Probability."

Asmodia: "You're underestimating me, and you're underestimating me with that headband even more.  If Keltham is a bit above average for a dath ilani I should have been noticeably above average for a dath ilani while wearing it."

Ione Sala: "Which your total lack of experience more than makes up for."

Asmodia: "I'm thinking using Law now.  It's fucking math, Ione, I don't need experience to tell me how the world works, what I'm doing works in all of them."

Ione Sala: "So if Keltham actually says 'nope' and walks out, math itself crumbles with him and the universe ends?  This is not making me feel any more reassured about your plan."

Asmodia: "Fine, you don't get it, shut up about not getting it."

"I think we can rely on Keltham to worry on his own that it was maybe actually just a simple regular suicide, as searching through the whole installation fails to turn up any clues or even anything that was meant to fool him.  Then we find out that Gregoria is supposedly refusing resurrection and can't be scried or contacted in Hell, which freaks Maillol out and Maillol says he just has no explanation for that unless Gregoria's body was faked and this is a kidnapping.  Then unexpectedly two days later Gregoria is able to be Raised, and back with no memories of what happened, and Hell has been successfully contacted but says they're not answering any questions about anything."

"Keltham not only gets wary around Fox's Cunning - which was not what the Conspiracy was trying to make him believe as the whole point, obviously, because in that case we'd have just never told him in the first place - he also concludes that it wasn't a faked-up story to keep him busy, because it ended up being the case that there was no apparent mystery for him to solve and no exciting clues to follow up.  But the idea's been planted in his mind that maybe he missed something and maybe somebody is trying to make him believe in a Conspiracy."

Ione Sala: "Whatever happened to the girl who incorrectly shot me down on grounds of being overly clever, back when I showed Keltham that the whole class wasn't too terrified to ask him any questions about his fascinating Conspiracy example?  We need some way to suspend time inside this fortress for one month, and send you off to learn how to do all this in real life, and fail a few times somewhere it's less important than here."

"Failing that, I am telling you now in my capacity as Nethys's chosen one that this is a setup that is inevitably going to explode.  Prophecy is broken - for everyone except me, I mean - and now Nethys alone can predict events in enough detail to be like, ah, yes, I will do this exact thing, and then Keltham will think this exact thing and react in this exact way.  The only way I'd buy this plan is if a god signed off on it."

Pilar : "Hey.  Apparently I am supposed to give you cookies because that will serve Lord Asmodeus.  Make any comments on this and I will punch you."

Ione Sala: "FUCKING GODS, PILAR!"

Ione Sala: "...no.  No, no, no no no this isn't happening."

Pilar : "I'd ask what has upset you so but I really, really don't fucking care."

"Asmodia.  Here's your cookie.  According to my curse it's a consolation cookie to cheer you up about not getting to carry out your brilliant plan that wouldn't have worked."

Ione Sala: "Thank you, Cayden Cailean."

Pilar : "Ione.  Here's your cookie.  It's a congratulatory cookie for your good foresight in having already made and carried out, a few days earlier, one of the key choices that enables solving your current problem in a much simpler way."

Ione Sala: "Wait, what?  Can you be any more -"

Pilar : "Don't tell me, talk to the fucking cookie.  I'm not the curse."

"Also my curse says it can't do this reliably so don't rely on it."

"I need to get back to sleep, try not to come up with any more stupid fucking plans requiring preventative cookies, bye."

Carissa Sevar: "All right," Carissa says to Peranza, when they've gone down the list. "Last thing - I swear that everything I've said to you in this conversation has been true, as far as I know. I don't have satisfactory answers to everything, yet, but I mean to find them, and bring them to you - all of you - so that Asmodeans can be dath ilani. And if you think of something else I don't have a satisfactory answer to, you bring it to me so I can try to find one. If you wake up one day and realize that you aren't loyal anymore, you won't die for it, assuming you don't actually undermine the project - we'll just keep looking until we can answer whatever pulled you away. 

And if you undermine the project you will die terribly for it whether you're a heretic or not, so. All understood?"

Peranza: "Understood," Peranza says from a place of inner numbness that is mostly not processing any of the many many words it has heard.

Peranza has now been thoroughly retrained to find any ideas about questioning Asmodean orthodoxy, or any thoughts about the relationship between that and dath ilanism, to be scary and painful and possibly leading to death and Hell.  Future thoughts anywhere remotely close to matching this pattern will be immediately shut down by early-bad-thought-detectors.

This will probably be pretty effective at preventing problems for a while!

Carissa Sevar: Carissa has a bunch of halfway theological questions for Maillol and Subirachs but she needs to go see what idiocy the smart girls have talked themselves into first. "Had any bright ideas?"

Asmodia: "I developed a cunning plan to make it look like somebody in the Ordinary world was trying to trick Keltham into believing in the Conspiracy and tropes, so he wouldn't only be questioning evidence that points in a direction favorable to us.  The Cayden Cailean snack service which suddenly showed up claimed that my plan is unworkable, and that Ione already did some key thing a few days ago needed to make a better plan work.  Now Ione is trying to list out every choice she's made about Keltham and see if she can figure out what the fuck Pilar's curse was talking about.  I'd recommend not distracting her while she's working.  Pilar's curse also says it can't do this reliably and don't rely on it."

"I don't suppose you're ready to hear my report on Law of Probability which, also, the Grand High Priestess did like the way I performed in the last fifteen minutes too so if you're willing to deliver an accurately glowing report there's a chance I'll be able to get a good enough headband before this project collapses -"

(Asmodia looks kind of wired, like somebody who's been on for more hours and off for fewer than might be really wise.)

Carissa Sevar: "I am ready to hear your report on the Law of Probability and you are one of those people who reacts to their first combat situation with glee and overconfidence, correct for it. Proceed."

Asmodia: Overconfidence?  Is that even POSSIBLE for a DATH ILANI?

"We should maybe step away from Ione and, before I start, how many of the seven did you derive math for, besides #2 I mean since that's basically already there, if you've already got formulas I can skip derivations on those and talk about meanings and implications -"

Carissa Sevar: "I got the first five."

Ione Sala: Message to Sevar as she's leaving the room:  Please don't reply I'm concentrating but if I was a fourth-circle cleric of Nethys and Asmodia was first-circle I'm pretty sure I'd be locking her away from any things that explode and forcing her to read books.

Asmodia: (They've now stepped into the next 'breakout room' over from Ione.)

"So #1 is, I assume you got this part stop me if you didn't, about the way that the implication-probabilities for all the different observations or things that can happen or different pieces of evidence you could get, all have to sum to 1, or no more than 1 if we're not assuming the list exhausts every possibility which in real life it obviously never can."

"Meanings and implications.  A world or a theory or a way things can be, has a limited resource like money, like it has one gold piece total divided into a hundred coppers, which it has to spend on all the possibilities that it wants to claim credit for having predicted.  I can't let you spin the coin and then say, Queen has 100% probability, Text also has 100% probability, that adds up to 200%.  That's why they try to train dath ilani out of assigning more probability afterwards, than they would beforehand, it's why that's contrary to the nature of Probability's Law, if you assign more probability to a happening, after hearing that it happened, then when you add up all the probabilities you'd assign to all the happenings afterwards, you'll get way over 100%.  Only if you do it in advance are you guaranteed to have it add up to 100%."

"Golarion doesn't understand that Law.  Golarion doesn't know that Law.  Which means that everybody who's got a belief in their minds, is looking at, whatever happens, and trying to convince themselves, sure, that thing there, that is just what ought to happen in the world I think I'm living in, that should happen with 100% probability.  They'd say that for anything just the same.  So if you try to - turn that back into coherent math - it says that every outcome has the same probability, and if there's five outcomes, maybe each of them gets 20%, after you're done telling somebody it can't be 100% for each.  But 20% for each of the same five outcomes is the same as if you just said 'I don't know' for each of them, instead of, in every case, there being a clever way to twist things around to make it sound like that thing is totally what should have happened."

"The poetry Keltham quoted us for #1, I suspect if he said it in his own language it would rhyme, or there's a version of it that does, it had that feel to it, and I think I've got it memorized by now:  Your strength in the Way is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.  If you're equally good at explaining any outcome you can see, that's the same as not knowing anything.  It's not about how good you are at explaining away whatever happens, the only thing that - focuses, concentrates - the limited supply of what you can predict, into some predictions and not others - is that your explanations will sound more plausible for some things and less plausible for others, if there aren't some things you can't explain, that's the same as not being able to predict anything will happen, because you can't predict anything won't happen.  Explaining and predicting are the same thing to a dath ilani, the degree to which a belief says, 'I'm great at explaining that, you should credit me for being totally compatible with that thing you saw', is, to the dath ilani, just the same number as the probability that got put on there, and probability is conserved, so you can't be equally good at explaining everything.  To predict reality you have to be the sort of person who, if you were told a fiction instead, would go 'wait what I can't explain that thing how surprising' instead of coming up with a clever explanation of that thing you were told that wasn't real."

"Ione thought that only #6 and #7 were going to be deadly to Asmodeanism.  She's wrong.  All seven are going to cause problems if the others in class really understand them.  Everything that people see, they're trying to explain how their version of Asmodeanism predicts that thing, so Asmodeanism can claim credit for having predicted it, but if they'd seen something very different, they'd predict that too.  Keltham's world trains Keepers out of that all the way and it trains people like Keltham four-fifths out of the way of doing that, and when you've started practicing with numbers and maths for some things, it affects all the rest of your thinking, the way you think in words.  I remember seeing it when I wore the headband, it was so vivid then and it's faded now but I remember what I saw, the way that - the beliefs inside me - were trying to warp and distort themselves and pretend to shove more probability into the things that they knew had already happened, that they'd never have predicted or never have predicted that strongly, and the more that people are lying to themselves the more that distortion is going to be holding all the lies in place while they try to suck the credit of being right out of whatever-happened by explaining it - and dath ilanism trains that out of people, Keltham's going to make people play some game and when they're done playing the game they'll do that less and then everything that was held in place before becomes shakier - if you had a headband like the one I borrowed, you'd be able to visualize the right Law as math at the same time you watched your own mind trying to do it wrong -"

(There's no obvious sign that Asmodia is ever going to stop talking about problem #1 in particular.)

Carissa Sevar: At the Worldwound they solve mania with lashes but she's not actually sure how they do it in Taldor. 

Message to Security for Maillol if he's awake: this is a standard problem with a standard solution, right? What is the standard solution. 

"Problem two?"

Iarwain: Reply from Security:  Maillol's asleep long since.  But while I don't exactly understand your policy against torture, by this point, slapping her hard enough to knock her over isn't torture, it's medicine.

Asmodia: She wasn't FINISHED but FINE "Okay but before we go on to Problem #2 you didn't get that far, right, you didn't get all of that without the more powerful headband I need, you can see I'm talking like Keltham and completing the Law of Probability and maybe I'm not really a dath ilani but I'm also not really not a dath ilani anymore -"

Carissa Sevar: Carissa hits her. Not hard enough to knock her down only because she's a wizard and doesn't do a lot of hitting people with her actual hands and isn't that strong. 

"Asmodia. You are not a dath ilani. You are in an altered state. This was conveyed to you, by me, ten minutes ago, but you did not listen because you are being impervious to information, which is not very dath ilani at all. I'm very close to locking you up until you sober up, but I'm curious if all this Law you've learned will let you react appropriately to this information all on your own."

Asmodia: Being hit is like a cold rush of water, interrupting the cycle of whatever part of her had won and won and been terrified by Rugatonn and then won again, and stayed to try to win more, and devised more and more complicated plans with Ione arguing but not actually authorized to hurt her, at some point she'd started thinking she was immune to everything and not just to Hell.

"I... suspect I need to try not to do anything for thirty minutes, maybe reading will work, I don't know, and if that doesn't work somebody needs to set my hand on fire for thirty seconds, and if that doesn't work somebody needs to hit me with a sleep spell for an hour.  I apologize.  I can show you the equation for #6 and sketch the theory for #7 but should not try to explain any implications."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa feels enormously relieved. Not just that Asmodia is recovered but that hurting people works. Not that she didn't believe that. 

"Sure, write it out for me and then go read a history of Taldor or something, one of the dry ones."

Asmodia: Asmodia writes down the equation that a far distant place might call Conservation of Expected Evidence, and then, which takes longer, a brief sketch of the idea of filtered evidence and that P(they tell you about the 4th coinspin ◁ the 4th coinspin came up Queen) being a necessary item of evidence to take into account and not just P(the 4th coinspin came up Queen) in order to not violate Keltham's #6.

"There are important implications and I still think you should hear about those before composing a final version of your report to the Most High.  But not having a headband for another day won't kill me, so long as I don't start thinking I can kill the pharaoh of Osirion to steal his crown, again."

She should NOT kidnap Keltham to trade him for the crown, even if she could.  That is not what her Sponsor probably wants.

Carissa Sevar: "If you pull this off, we'll all be rich beyond our wildest imagining and I'll see you given a headband fancier than any yet conceived on Golarion. We have to win first, though. Go take a rest."

Asmodia: Asmodia goes.

She hopes it is possible for her now to function without a headband, as opposed to her previous wearing of an overpowered headband having left ideas embedded in her mind that only a more powerful mind is competent enough to contain without going mad - is that why there are Keepers -

She needs to not think about that.  Thirty minutes, boring history of Taldor.

Asmodia: Maybe it was just being happy that did it.  She's... well, in retrospect, she's never actually been happy before, not really.  Maybe her mind just didn't know how to handle that inside.

...Asmodia hopes one of these days she can be really happy, somewhere that isn't Cheliax, and just fly away like that, safely, and return to the ground when she tires herself out, to sleep.

Carissa Sevar: An hour before dawn she gathers the not-fired students and also Security around for the great big project briefing. She's already told bits and pieces of the whole story, to various students, as it seemed necessary to assuage various specific worries of theirs, but saying it in front of everyone makes it clear that she didn't select the stories she told them, and that they're insiders, now, among the very few in Cheliax who know what's really going on. 

It's a long story. Her voice is getting hoarse.

"I was irritated, at first, about the rumors, but the judgment of people more experienced than I was that they are completely inevitable. This is, unambiguously, the most important thing that has happened in Golarion since the death of Aroden, and arguable the most important thing that has ever happened; we are at the center of it; our successes and our failures will not go unnoticed. The Queen is not only reading our transcripts, she is reading our thought-transcripts. One of the rumors is that every devil in Dis knows my name, which must be false, but all the contract devils do, necessarily. 

Do you want your names to be known? Pride is one of Our Lord's domains; you may think, if you'd like, on what you'd do with money and power and titles and all else that would result from our triumph. But the path ahead is very narrow. We are not worth that much yet; it is simply the judgment of those wiser than us that we might be. And in deference to their judgement, I am doing everything in my power to unlock the value in you all, wherever it's found, and to build in Cheliax and if necessary in Hell a system that can use you to your fullest potential. It will succeed spectacularly, or it will fail spectacularly; there is no middle ground.

Go to your rooms and prepare your spells, and if you think of anything at all that might be a barrier to unlocking all the value in you, bring it to me. Dismissed."

And she has a bit of the post-combat high herself, at that, though she's not as childish as Asmodia, and doesn't show it.

Iarwain: Security message to Sevar:  We've been ordered to tell you:  Keep it strictly professional, she'll also keep it strictly professional, she will not read your thought transcripts from while she's in your presence because you're not ready for that.

Abrogail Thrune II: "Actually, why don't you all stick around another moment," Abrogail Thrune II says pleasantly, dropping her Invisibility.

Carissa Sevar: Thank you for the heads-up, Security. Carissa manages to keep her face convincingly-to-everyone-in-the-room-but-Abrogail calm as she kneels.

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail waits until not only the Security with appropriate combat reflexes, but the younger wizards who manage to be paralyzed with horror for half a second, have succeeded in kneeling.

"First.  Many of my subordinates in the Asmodean hierarchy, from time to time, find it in their best interest to tell their own subordinates that their project is of vast value to Cheliax, to Hell, to Asmodeus, or of course, to me.  In most cases they speak falsely, and in many of those, dishonestly.  I don't consider this a flaw in my regime.  If you are weak enough of mind to believe what you should not believe, you deserve what you get."

"This does create a problem of justified skepticism within those very rare projects that are of vast importance."

"I hope this problem to be easily corrected, when I say that I am not in the habit of visiting on behalf of those overenthusiastic subordinates to address their underlings and back up their stories.  As, perhaps, a clever mind might expect some important people would do, if the project was actually important."

"Consider it confirmed from my own mouth and affirmed by my presence, that the Queen of Cheliax considers this project to be possibly vastly important."

"Getting information out of Hell is often harder than torturing it out of paladins.  They will not tell us of prices in Dis, but we can learn buyers.  Your new owners are of rarefied heights.  It seems that Hell also considers you, and I do mean you personally, to be potentially important."

"With matters indeed being that important, after walking around and seeing the disarray things are in, I've decided that this project is not ready to resume operations today.  You are not organized, you are not actually rested, you have not rehearsed your new stories, and you are not caught up on your paperwork."

"Keltham is currently a statue resting in his bed.  This is not usually an option for deceiving important people, because they have some notion of the current date, and will notice if days suddenly go missing.  In this case, nobody does seem to have informed Keltham of the current date at any point, according to his transcripts.  Let's not tell him for a while longer unless he asks."

"The key resource that this project burns with every working day is not some timer in the outside world, but Keltham's time aware and learning.  There is no point in spending that resource while you are not in good condition to make use of it.  I do not think you should skip more than one day like this at a time, Keltham may notice that you change too much from night to dawn if you do this often; but for this day, and mayhap the day after Keltham's next true day, it will give you a chance to catch up while waiting on your Rings of Sustenance."

"The Nap Stack was a clever idea, dear little ambitious Asmodia.  But you are not as yet any match for the cleverness of myself, nor Keltham when he puts his mind to it.  And no, that is not a problem you could solve by stealing my crown from me, it is a skill that enhancement alone does not convey.  The Nap Stack was clever, but it was not cleverness enough to save you had there been trouble.  You are not ready, this minute, if Keltham starts taking matters seriously when next he wakes.  You are not ready, even, if he asks for a Fox's Cunning while Ione has not yet solved her riddle.  There is a terrible gap between being clever, and being clever enough.  To contain and deceive Keltham you must learn to be clever enough."

"Use today to get better organized.  Though each of you must actually get three hours' rest, this time; your Queen commands it."

"Oh, and also this:"

"While I have no intention of disturbing Carissa's experiments while they yet seem to be bearing fruit, there are limits to merciful experiments.  Should you knowingly, deliberately, and unambiguously betray Hell's vital interests here, then, after you have been executed and your owner asks after your life, let them see this within your thoughts:  That the Queen of Cheliax did instruct them in Asmodeus's name and as His incentive to make you suffer the most they possibly can, even at the cost of their own profit.  Be it clear, I am not talking about the kind of betrayal you can accomplish by accident or while trying even slightly not to, I mean deliberately attempting to enlighten Keltham or selling out the site to Lastwall.  With all the talk of diminished punishment going around, accompanied by other talk of pride and vast rewards, it seemed prudent to remind you that there are limits."

"If Carissa achieves even a tenth of her ambitions within her lifetime, if you contribute even the fiftieth part of the work towards that, there is not one Asmodean among you who could not be a Duchess in the new Golarion we would conquer.  That in life, and after to be among the higher devils in Hell, coming to it already a being of Law.  Though Asmodia, I'm given to understand, has already had jurisdiction of her own fate claimed by my colleague the Most High, which I will not dispute."

"As I confirm what Carissa told you of this project's importance, I also confirm what she told you of the rewards if you succeed, such as fall within the Queen's hands to give."

"Now you are dismissed."

The Queen of Cheliax is gone.

Carissa Sevar: - petrify Keltham to give them some time to organize. Of course. Why didn't she think of that. 

Because Abrogail is actually better than her, truly and actually better than her. She serves someone worthy in ways she can understand, not just in mysterious ways that aren't meant to make sense to mortals. 

"If," she says with her voice mostly steady, "you thought I was lying to you, or exaggerating, that I had not absorbed enough of dath ilan to make this project Lawful in the manner in which its government is, well, now you know otherwise, and next time perhaps you'll think a little differently. Let's all go get some rest."

Project Lawful: PL-timestamp:  Day 8 (7) / Morning

Keltham: Keltham wakes!  It's another bright day in Cheliax... well, not literally bright, some rainclouds seem to have blown up overnight, but, same essential principle.

Keltham: ...oh, wait, he's got to fire some people today, doesn't he.  First thing in the morning, that should probably be, if Maillol has his options-to-offer in.

Keltham: Keltham prays for his cleric spells, once again requesting a whole lot of Wisdom.  There's no personality to the reply he receives, as there hasn't been since coming to the new site, nor any unrequested spells received; but he does receive all his spells and that hopefully indicates that his god is okay at all with whatever barrier has been erected here to keep out non-allied deities.

Keltham: Maillol's office first, then.

Ferrer Maillol: Maillol looks just as worn as he did yesterday!

Keltham: Tough job and, at least over the next hour or few, Keltham's job won't be a great one either.

What options does Cheliax have for Paxti, Jacme, Pela, and Yaisa?

Carissa Sevar: Over tea and biscuits yesterday afternoon, out in the yard because they're really not getting much sunlight while Keltham is active, Carissa and Maillol worked these out. 

The options are:

There is another secret project that can accept second-circle wizards; the girls would have to be screened for suitability, and might not prove suitable, in which case they could pick one of the other options. They can go to Hell for not longer than five years, shorter if Keltham and Cheliax agree they no longer know any state secrets.

They can go to the afterlife of an allied god, if they'd rather that than Hell and the allied god promises the same secrecy Hell could provide; the cost of this is hard to estimate, but it seems like maybe the kind of thing Cayden Cailean would agree to. They can remain on site and get a tutor to teach them some useful and valuable magic, and interact socially with the core project girls; this might be healthy anyway, so the girls can have some friends and romantic partners who aren't their collaborators in a high-stakes project.

Keltham: Keltham undergoes some slight blinks about the 'romantic partners' part - homosexuality is statistically-ambient three-people-you-know-personally in dath ilan, but biromanticism is rarer than that, though still not unheard-of (and of course statistical rarity is meaningless to social acceptability per se).

But yeah, those sound like basically decent options.  Keltham will see how the nonretained wizards react.  If it seems okay to them, that may be good enough.  Otherwise he'll decide where to go from there.

For the onsite option or the other-secret-project option, is there a relevant wage quote he can tell them?

Carissa Sevar: "Either one can be at 20% above the Worldwound wage," Carissa the previous day said to Maillol, "and he'll be happy. And that's low enough we don't have to explain why the girls aren't getting lots of fancy magic items either."

Ferrer Maillol: 12gp/week minimum in both cases, which is 20% above the Worldwound wage for wizards with their experience.  For the secret project that'd be a normal wage, or it might turn out to pay a bit better but not much.  For the onsite project it'd be generous.  But Cheliax does understand the concept of good incentives to suddenly volunteer on secret projects you might fail out of.

Keltham: Thank you.  Those are better options than Keltham was afraid he'd have for them, and make him feel better about this; he is very glad to know that they won't be financially worse off for having tried to deal with him.

Ferrer Maillol: (Utterly predictable.)

Keltham: Have them called in, then... should he let them get breakfast first, or... no, because then they'll be around Meritxell and the others having to conceal their knowledge.

Please have them called in here individually once they've prepped spells or are otherwise available to be called, and please have snacks or light breakfast foods available to them when here in case they're hungry.

Ferrer Maillol: ...sure.

(Even most Abadar clerics aren't that bad.)

Keltham: Time for the worst part of any startup-founding experience, including the part where your project site gets invaded by minions of a torture-god or... actually not as bad as the part where you worry 150,000,000 people are going to die because of you being there, nevermind, that was worse.

Who's in first to get fired?

lintamande: Pela did her hair somewhat elaborately this morning, on account of waking up early. After extensive discussions with Sevar she concluded that alterPela would ask if this was decided already or if she was allowed to have a counterargument, so she's going to do that. 

She didn't sleep much the last couple nights, but Keltham shouldn't be able to notice that.

Keltham: People's one-week contracts are up.  1/3 of the wizards seem to be doing great at absorbing Law, 1/3 are plausibly on trajectory to form a productive second tier, 1/3 seem to be struggling.  Pela's among the final third, and her options include looking for another secret project guaranteed to pay 12gp/week minimum, or 20% higher than Worldwound pay, or taking an onsite option here for 12gp/week and tutelage in some skill and continued interaction with her friends, going to Hell for at most 5 years or until the knowledge she has isn't deemed hazardous, whichever comes first, or her choice of other afterlives if say she likes what Pilar has to say about Elysium and Cayden Cailean is on board.  Though Keltham admits to not knowing the details of how that would work exactly.

Sorry.

lintamande: Oh. 

Is this decided already or can they disagree with it. 

Keltham: Keltham should have thought of his response to that question earlier.

"I should have thought of my response to that question before you entered, sorry again that I didn't... you can definitely first-order disagree, how likely you are to shift my first-order opinions by argument is a separate question."

"If you solved six out of seven problems from yesterday on your own before you walked in, and what I thought was the middle third only got five while trying on their own, that would - well, frankly, it would surprise me enough that I'd want further verification with more tests, but it would de-convince me of my current opinion, at least."

lintamande: - headshake. "I only got two." She could've gotten more if she'd spent more time on it but Sevar said she could only have an hour, because if she could only keep up with Keltham time-stopped that'd have implications for the fabric of truth elsewhere. Sevar's gotten kind of grandiose about the fabric of truth. 

Keltham: "Well, if nobody else from the middle third got any -"

"I probably shouldn't say that, given how unlikely it is, in my estimation.  Sorry."

"I am not expecting this question to succeed, but is there some alternate test or challenge that you would propose?  Inorganic challenges of that kind are inherently biased, if you're there thinking your job is on the line and the others in the contest think their job is secure.  But if you think you can not just match but outperform my median tier-2 researcher in some challenge, to make up for that bias, I'd hear of it."

lintamande: Pela thought of a dozen clever ideas all of which Sevar told her didn't seem worth it. 

"....I don't know. Sorry."

Keltham: If Pela is feeling disappointed right now, that is at least in part Keltham's fault for having not thought about this possibility, or more accurately, his having not wanted to think about this possibility, and not communicating clearly about that possibility.  If Pela holds herself injured by all this, Keltham will hear her out.

lintamande: " - I mean, this is obviously - like, we were prepared for it to go way worse? I don't think it's unfair. But. I don't talk much in class. It's hard to go back from math to words. And I'd have talked more if -"

Keltham: "Civilization knows very well that people vary along that dimension.  I wasn't going on talkativeness or participation or being the first to speak out, I was going on the problems that everyone was trying in parallel.  I don't want to tell you names in advance of telling them, but when you see the complete list of who was over and under the threshold, it should be visible that the threshold wasn't based on how much you talked in class.  I hope."

lintamande: "Okay. Can you - repeat the list of options."

Keltham: - 12gp/week generous salary to do something productive here on-site, if say she wants to stay close to her friends from school.  12gp/week is 20% more than the Worldwound would've been, but without the stress, any magical gains that would've come from the stress, or the implied reward of knowing she was doing something to preserve Golarion, if Pela has that much Good in her.

- 12gp/week minimum-but-not-by-much-if-at-all salary, if she's accepted by an as-yet-unidentified alternate secret project of which Keltham knows nothing.

- At most 5 years in Hell, probably less but no guarantees; after which, this wasn't told to Keltham explicitly, but he assumes this was part of the point, she can be revived at her current age, and get back on track to the Worldwound and increasing her wizard powers faster.  Presumably that revival is at Governance expense?  Keltham didn't hear that explicitly, but if it's not true Keltham will make a fuss and get it done.

- Keltham is not at all clear about this part, but apparently if, for example, Pela asks Pilar about Elysium and likes the sound of that, maybe some arrangement can be made with Cayden Cailean.  Or any other gods that might be interested?  Keltham knows basically zero about this but it's what they told him her options were.

lintamande: Pela snorts. "Elysium's supposedly an infinite wilderness full of floating islands and fountains and so on. I guess it sounds all right for a vacation but if I'm going to be stuck for five years I'll have some civilization, thanks. I.... think I'm inclined to stay here? But I'll ask the others what they're doing."

Keltham: "Understood."

"Thank you for trying.  Someone had to, and take that risk, or something like this could never get done."

"That was all I had."

He'll forebear to jump on that 'infinite' part.  He can ask somebody else later.  To be clear, Keltham is very nearly certain that this is merely a mistranslation by people who use 'infinite' to mean 'anything large enough to break the measuring stick', and who don't actually mean to imply that they have excellent cause to believe that Elysium is larger than any number that can easily be expressed with nested exponentials or, oh, say, the fast-growing hierarchy...

Who's next?

Iarwain: Jacme, then Yaisa, then Paxti.  Nobody else asks to be tested.

Jacme mostly just seems distantly sad, like she knew it was coming.  Yes, she'll stay, her friends are here.

Yaisa doesn't mention anything sexual, and obviously neither does Keltham, but she immediately chooses to stay.

Paxti says that she'll ask more questions about that secret project, but to save her a seat in the fortress.

Keltham: And that's over.

Pilar : "Apparently you need cake."

Keltham: "Correct.  Thanks." 

It tastes more filling than sweet-fluffy... 

Why was he trying to do that without any quick-breakfast?

"I wonder if I've gotten to the point where an actual god of Good is trying to remind me to be more Evil," Keltham says out loud.

Pilar : "Don't ask me what Cayden Cailean is thinking.  I'm just suddenly there with the cake."

It's slightly nice, somehow, the degree to which Keltham immediately just takes the weirdness in stride.  Maybe all the rest of Golarion is the same as this, to him, and 'suddenly Pilar' is not significantly weirder than any other part.

Keltham: Off to actual breakfast, then.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is pretty sure alter Carissa would think her boyfriend wants a hug. She has picked out a cozy breakfast spot by the window and piled up a lot of food at it and raises her eyebrows at him when he comes in. 

Keltham: (Yep, he sure looks like he needs a hug all right.)

Keltham uncertainly raises his eyebrows back at her.

Carissa Sevar: Message: Come get a hug and eat something.

Keltham: Carissa apparently has enough food for him too, and utensils.  A bit odd, to try to guess his own exact food-desire preferences like that, but he'll give her guess a shot.

He'll go get the offered hug, and then sit down by her.  "Done with hiring stuff.  Went okay.  How're you doing?  Slightly more rested?"

Carissa Sevar: "Yep, I slept in a little. And had a dream where you appointed Merixell duchess of Nidal because she happened to be in your bed when we conquered it, but, you know, slept restfully other than that." She has no idea what he'd want to eat but compensated by getting everything she's seen him take before.

Keltham: Keltham successfully deduces that after realizing that otherwise Carissa would have needed to guess a food-intake need much higher than food-intake needs she'd previously observed!

(It doesn't occur to him to consider that food might be wasted thereby; Civilization tries to inculcate that food is cheap enough to throw away, and it's okay to rethink your food choices in the middle of a meal and throw stuff away and get other stuff, and not try to make like your past guesses should control your future preferences.)

"Good to hear.  I don't usually remember my dreams for longer than a few seconds after waking, didn't remember last night's dreams either, though I know there were some."

"So Pela said something about Elysium being a quote infinite dequote wilderness.  Is it conventional belief that Elysium is literally infinite, as in, for any number you imagine, it's bigger than that number?  Or do they just mean the place was large enough to break whatever measuring instruments they used?"

Carissa Sevar: "The Chaotic planes are understood to be infinite, as in, you can go on in any direction forever and you will never get to the end of it or get somewhere you were previously."

Keltham: "There's rather a large gap between observing that you failed to find the end of a thing, or the place where it starts looping, and concluding that the thing is infinite.  Do you know from what premises this conclusion was reached?"

Carissa Sevar: "I think the gods told us, though also the properties of planes are directly study-able, for powerful enough wizards, including things like how space is shaped in them and how light from distant parts of them reaches us, and maybe some of that study is sufficient to know they're infinite, I don't know."

Keltham: "Anyone got the gods' exact wording, there?  For comparison, my home plane doesn't have a spatial boundary in any direction and doesn't spatially loop, but on the lower level of reality underneath that, there were limits on the size of structures that could exist and any two identical structures of entanglement were the same structure at that underlying level of reality.  It didn't actually contain an infinite amount of stuff; it was repeating at a lower level than space looping around.  If Elysium is infinite, nonrepeating, contains arbitrarily large entangled structures, and everywhere comprises a similar positive density of realityfluid, that literally breaks the Law of Probability I know."

Carissa Sevar: " - oh dear. Uh, I don't know that, but I guess we can have someone look it up. ....why does it break the Law of Probability if there are planes that go on forever?" What a good thing for Keltham to be extremely worried about.

Keltham: "Well, let's say you have an infinite number of INT 16 wizard students, of whom an infinite number become 5th-circle wizards, what's your chance of becoming a 5th-circle wizard given that you're an INT 16 wizard student?"

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think all infinities are the same size though maybe they are in the relevant sense - wait, yes, okay, they are. Huh."

Keltham: "Right, so, the whole requirement of being able to say, here I am now, what happens to me next, the required premise of being able to ask if it is more likely that you see the coinspin landing Queen or see the coinspin landing Text, is that there's entangled structures of realityfluid where your possible futures are entangled with your present and the amount of realityfluid making up your futures is such that you can have ratios between the amounts of realityfluid in entangled futures.  Like, you want to say that there's infinities you can draw ratios between, sure, but then you can just talk about the fraction that anything is of everything.  Like, maybe for a really really large infinite universe somewhere that was among the simplest possible ones, that one infinite universe would be 0.00001% of the infinite Everything, but then you could just leave out the talk of infinity and talk about the fractions."

"Anyways, not an urgent issue.  I just note that it implies, in descending order of probability, that you misunderstood your gods, your gods lied, your gods have no idea how the ass some parts of Law work, or Civilization managed to get some parts of the Law truly incredibly wrong."

Carissa Sevar: "It seems unfair to your Civilization if they could be wrong based off a - factual thing about how a different universe than theirs works."

Keltham: "The crap I'm talking about is part of the border between universal truth and local truth, like, the universal truth about why there are any local truths or people inside those local truths to experience them.  I mean, it's not like math and local reality are two totally distinct realms, there's a border where they meet.  Knowledge about realityfluids always being ratioable sorts of things, since it's knowledge about that border, falls on the universal side of 'is that true everywhere'."

"Like, there's a difference between saying that this table is real - where it's just being real here, and not being real over there or in dath ilan - and saying that since the table is real it's necessarily ultimately made out of some stuff that is how real it is, and this stuff comes in ratioable quantities."

"Oh, and if you're wondering why everything I'm saying sounds like gibberish, it's because we're currently talking about 'anthropics'."

Carissa Sevar: "The thing you warned Ione we mustn't speak of. Who knew it was lurking behind things people say all the time, like that there's no point doing anything about the Abyss because there are infinite demons."

Keltham: "Yeah, don't worry about that.  The ratio between the amount of nondemon realitystuff and the amount of demon realitystuff is not going to be finity to infinity, aka zero.  Even if surface reality looks that way, the underlying reality will be something else.  You can tell, because we're not demons, which we would be, if there was probability 1 of being a demon rather than a nondemon."

Keltham has now consumed any food!  He looks around to see who's present; is this a good time for general announcements about salary negotiations?

Iarwain: Among the Retained, only Asmodia is absent.  Pela and Paxti aren't here, Yaisa and Jacme are.

Keltham: He'll wait on Asmodia, then, he supposes.

Carissa Sevar: Okay but what the fuck are anthropics.

Keltham: Keltham probably will further mention such common aphorisms as "Probability is how much you believe in a possibility, realityfluid is how much Possibility believes in you" and try to explain the general notion that 'anthropics' is what the nice sane straightforward Law of Probability turns into once you're creating copies of people, destroying universes too fast for anyone inside them to notice, obtaining outputs in the mainline universe from computations that only happened with very tiny total amplitude, or otherwise manipulating how much realityfluid ends up within overlying experiences directly instead of via the nice sane normal road where you work inside causality to make stuff happen.

Carissa Sevar: Oh, well, as long as it's just that, then. 

She's memorizing everything he says to talk over with Asmodia later but she doesn't want to suggest now that that carries anything more than academic interest, since the only reason it does is that Tropes Are Real and in alter Cheliax Carissa doesn't believe that. It feels like a minor thing, but there are no minor things, no bits of evidence they can afford to give away.

Ferrer Maillol: Maillol strides into the breakfast area, looking so openly pissed that even Keltham is able to tell this purely by reading his facial expressions.

"We have an organizational issue above us," he announces.  "Not fatal, but urgent.  Keltham, has anyone explained to you that in a majority of countries that aren't Cheliax, eighth-circle wizards and above often start acting like they're above the law?"

Keltham: Now what.  And what sort of tropes is it going to initially look like and then turn out not to be... where the heck is he now, inside Reality, anyways...

"It's been touched on," Keltham says.  "I wouldn't say I really understand, but I get the general concept of high-circle wizards being powerful to the point where a not-very-Lawful government gives up on restraining them."

It's possible that he just knows too many tropes, can fit them to anything, and is somewhere else weird that he should be trying to decode from scratch.

Ferrer Maillol: "Quick briefing.  A significant part of Cheliax's entire military potential is one eighth-circle wizard, name of Manohar, born to Chelish parents outside Cheliax and rumored not to actually worship Asmodeus - relevant Security would know for certain, that doesn't mean we know - who serves the Chelish government under a compact where his foibles and eccentricities are treated with more laxity than literally anyone else gets.  Be it clear, he's not the kind of wizard who carries out dubious experiments on children, Cheliax wouldn't hire someone like that even at eighth-circle.  He's the kind of wizard who carries out dubious experiments on adults.  Not deliberately cruel ones, but not exactly safe ones either.  He has to get permission from the subjects for any crazy experiments involving other people, but is very good at talking people into it."

"He gets, by compact, special treatment from Security allowing him to peek in on projects he decides are interesting - though he does keep those secrets, from everything I've heard.  No mysterious leaks that nobody can prove were him.  Cheliax isn't stupid, and neither is he; he never does anything bad enough that it starts to look commensurately bad with him not being able to singlehandedly guard sections of border."

"His compact says that any time he misbehaves badly enough that anyone else would be fired, he can't do anything like that again for at least a year, or he actually does get fired.  Well, it's been a year and two months since the last time he blew up that interestingly, and I've received word that Manohar has found out that Project Lawful exists and has exercised his special viewing rights to look at our transcripts."

Ione Sala: "Well, he's not arriving here in the next thirty seconds, at least, because if Nethys warned us about just a Nidal invasion, He'd definitely warn us about that."

Ferrer Maillol: "You serious?"

Ione Sala: "Unfortunately no, sir."

Ferrer Maillol: "Then keep the smart remarks down."

"You understand that you'd plausibly be his first target for persuasion once he's here?"

Ione Sala: "I know.  Keltham, context, Manohar is very likely a worshipper of Nethys and, regardless of whether he really is, the fact that everyone believes that is something like 70% of why I didn't tell anyone about my book-summoning abilities until I met you.  Manohar is what most people think Nethys worshippers are like, especially people outside of wizard academies."

Ferrer Maillol: "I'm not allowed to literally give you this as an order, so consider it an extremely strong suggestion:  Nobody is to agree to doing anything with Manohar if he shows up here, and, if he does, tell Security to call me immediately.  Security isn't allowed to come get me as soon as they see him, but they can if he talks to you and you tell them to go do that."

Keltham: This would be the downside of running your government in a way where, for the greater Good, you would think it was ever okay for somebody like Keltham to demand that Carissa to be given to him even if she didn't want that, because Keltham is so important.  Well, it at least sounds like they didn't literally give 'Manohar' any women.

All right, trope-based prediction, Manohar can't possibly not come here.  He'll target one of the four existing Special Girls, who needs to be protected from him by something that Keltham has to do in some way; or successfully persuade a new girl who turns Special after Manohar does experiments to her and one of those backfires, in which case the event cannot possibly be stopped.

Nontrope prediction, all other possible outcomes; favored within that, Manohar comes in and pokes around and annoys people but everybody sensibly tells him to go away and he does.

"Among my reactions to this is to want to jump forwards immediately on organizing Project Lawful more formally and signing our own contract with the Chelish government that recognizes Project Lawful as in part our own property, and thereby not subject in a simple way to compacts solely between Manohar and Cheliax."

Ferrer Maillol: "Good idea.  Manohar shouldn't be able to get here too quickly, we're in the middle of a war and he shouldn't actually be deserting the front lines."

"Are you close to being ready to roll on that, Keltham?  Or can you get a version done in the next hour?  I'm seriously considering just suggesting that everybody should stick together in a group, if so.  Not if it's more of a one-day thing."

Keltham: It's at this point that Keltham notices that, like, you're not supposed to rush setting up your legal forms, or hurrying to sign a contract with a not-super-trusted partner, and that this situation could potentially be rushing him to do that.

And this does seem - well, everything here is so simultaneously alien and trope-laden that it all looks like a script on some level, about a world with economicmagic, but still, that Maillol-Ione interaction could be a script?  Or does it just feel that way because nobody else is speaking up?  Chelish people stay silent in class too, unfortunately.  Ione is the one who ever speaks up anyways, and she's already talking.

"There were a lot of issues to be hammered out even in an interim contract meant to be replaced," Keltham says out loud.  "What's the minimum content of a contract like that which would keep Manohar out?" 

Ferrer Maillol: "Depending on whether Manohar wanted to get sticky about it, which I can easily imagine him doing - it can't look too minimal, sorry.  Something that does set up the ability for Project Lawful to make any kind of contribution that entitles it to any revenue from the government of Cheliax which is then recognized as being owned by you."

Keltham: "All right, let me think."

Message:  Carissa, does this look on the up-and-up to you?

Carissa Sevar: Message: I think the girls to worry about are the ones you just fired. ....uh, the stuff about Manohar being a Nethysian with license to be difficult is true.

Keltham: Message:  Okay, we'll call that the sane-world prediction.  Tropes say it ought to be Meritxell.

"Anyone else got any knowledge about this guy?" Keltham asks the room.  "Also, I assume Security has already been dispatched to get Asmodia, Pela, and Paxti?"

Pilar : "Shit.  Paxti."

Ferrer Maillol: "No, I was focusing on you as the target to protect, didn't headcount, yes that was stupid of me.  Security, I need an immediate report on those three, then get them here."

"Pilar, you think Paxti would say yes to him?"

Pilar : "...maybe not actually in real life.  I don't know.  Paxti isn't stupid."

Peranza: "Up until five minutes ago I had maybe heard twice in the course of my life that one of our eighth-circle wizards sets a bad example of mature adult behavior and a great example of how much you can earn special treatment by being a good-enough wizard.  I couldn't have told you that his name was Manohar, and if he identified himself to me like that, I probably wouldn't have recognized it enough to be cautious.  I'd have assumed that if Security had let him in he was probably allowed to be there."

Asmodia: "Yeah, that's pretty much what happened to me, only with somewhat less ignorance and more stupidity."

"Plus side, I'm basically okay, I get to keep this +6 Wisdom headband I'm wearing, and he's used up his being-fired token for the next year."

Ferrer Maillol: "Son of a bitch.  Asmodia, report."