Carissa Sevar: "Showing up to Detect Law is one way of being the kind of person whose commitments are real but it's not the only one? Most people in Cheliax are Lawful, so I'm starting from a high expectation that you're Lawful, it's not like you're trying to convince someone who doesn't know anything about you."
AlterPeranza: "So you... just need to talk to me for a while, because also I'm younger than you and your Sense Motive probably beats my Bluff, and when you're sure enough I'm Lawful, we both commit in the name of Law?"
Keltham: ...Peranza is being very pliant here, and if Carissa can talk her into mutual Cooperation this way, she could probably also talk Peranza into Cooperating while Carissa Defected; which, as he understands it, Carissa should not really end up doing if she promises in the name of Law.
Well, everybody Cooperates the first time, and the older kids usually have to nag them for a while to get anyone to Defect ever, even for purposes of understanding the counterfactuals that real Civilization is meant to rule out. Maybe Golarion isn't so different that way? Still, Keltham would've thought the instruction to 'earn as much copper as possible' to maybe be a bit more effectively understood, here.
Carissa Sevar: "I think so? Or I think this isn't the whole true solution but it's the bit of it we're likeliest to actually get working. So, are you actually Lawful? If you make a commitment do you mean it even if later you think of a way to make more money doing something else?"
AlterPeranza: "Yes," says alterPeranza, because what's she going to say, no?
Carissa Sevar: " - I don't actually feel like that answers the question! Or - I feel like a Peranza whose plan was 'play very dumb, nod along, then defect every time' would also say that! Whereas there are some things she'd have a harder time saying. Just, 'yes' isn't one of them."
AlterPeranza: "I'm - an Asmodean living in Cheliax and a follower of Asmodeus in good standing with the Church who was slated to take the Worldwound oath? I'd rather live in a Lawful country than a Chaotic one?"
Keltham: Asmodia and Gregoria.
lintamande: "I was kind of hoping you had some clever math since otherwise we're obviously both going to defect the whole time," Gregoria says.
Asmodia: (That does NOT SOUND like a conversation that was already going on before Keltham entered the room but Asmodia will speak to Gregoria about that LATER.)
"Apparently the clever math was going to be in today's session except for, you know, and now we're getting this session instead."
"It can't just be about knowing a piece of math, though. Otherwise you could say that piece of math out loud, and then Defect anyways."
"I bet dath ilani kids don't Defect, even before they know the math. I just don't know why. There's a version where they're bad at following instructions but I bet that's not why either."
Keltham: It kind of is the kids being bad at following instructions, if they've got no idea how to consider the logical-probabilistic correlation between their actions, or examine each other for evidence of being the sort of agent who runs internal logic corresponding to outward verbal representations.
Not that it isn't adorable to watch a bunch of eight-year-olds make up totally specious and implausible reasons for being nice to each other, but.
...maybe he should've had everyone run a version of this game where they pretend to be Abyss demons, first, so as to test actual comprehension of instructions / willingness to write Defect literally at all.
lintamande: "I have been sort of thinking that a lot of dath ilan is powered by - mutual knowledge of everyone else's Lawful Goodness, and so the kids all have mutual knowledge of each others' Lawful Goodness, and probably there are ways to cooperate if you have mutual knowledge of Lawful Goodness. Which doesn't help the farmers any, obviously, and I don't think it helps you and me either."
Asmodia: "I think you should just need Lawful or Goodness, not Lawful Goodness, and we do have mutual knowledge of that."
Keltham: ...possibly this problem is, in fact, easier, if you've got some weird version of Law called Lawfulness, that you can detect with spells, that whole regional factions polarize around, and which has gods related to it.
lintamande: "Okay, we're both Lawful, what does that get us? There's Law against stealing someone's grain but there isn't Law against writing 'defect' on this piece of paper."
Asmodia: "That's kind of where I'm blocked as well. We're probably supposed to do - some math thing that there'd obviously be Law against breaking?"
lintamande: " - swear to it? But I'm not doing that for a game and dath ilan wouldn't have its children do that either."
Asmodia: (You're not QUALIFIED yet to take oaths, in alter-Cheliax, and AGAIN Asmodia will be having a talk with Gregoria about this LATER.)
"No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't tell their children what oaths were, until they were old enough... though they wouldn't have Abaddon..."
"No, I feel like in a really Lawful civilization, you don't tell your children what oaths are, even if there's no Abaddon, because you just don't want kids breaking oaths. Keltham, are we allowed to ask you dath ilan questions so long as you're here?"
Keltham: "Let's say no."
If she literally gets to the concept of the Algorithm on her own, Keltham will, will, he doesn't even know.
Asmodia: "Right. Well, I think I remember, though it's been a while, that Keltham was surprised about our oaths working because people who break them lose their Law and go to Abaddon." Asmodia makes a mental note (an orange one, but in big letters) that this implies that Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral people wouldn't be trustworthy on quite the same level, which she should've realized earlier. "But there's a word for something similar, in his language, something equally powerful that works without Abaddon existing there."
"So we obviously shouldn't try to figure out what that is, and actually do it, because that would maybe be more dangerous than a Golarion oath."
"But Keltham wouldn't assign us to figure that out and do it, either."
Keltham: "No shit." Who are the remaining - Ione and Tonia. Okay, neither of those seem terribly at risk at figuring out how to make, and then break, an Algorithmic commitment.
Not that it should be even remotely possible in terms of the amount of math you'd have to invent. But. Thank you, Asmodia, for reminding Keltham of what kids grow up knowing before they learn too much logical decision theory.
lintamande: "I'm not sure how it can be more dangerous than getting your soul devoured," Gregoria says skeptically, "but I agree that's not the answer. ...it seems possible that actually everyone defects repeatedly and then we're more motivated, when we get back, to try to figure out something better."
Asmodia: "That's basically what we're going to have to do if we follow the instructions to earn as much copper as we can individually, and it's annoying, and I keep trying to figure out if there's a way to - how did Keltham put it -"
Keltham: "To do Something Else Which Is Not That."
Asmodia: "Yeah."
lintamande: "Well, instead of that you could Cooperate."
Asmodia: "I believe this illustrates an important general principle, with which I expect the teachings of dath ilan to agree, that when you embark upon the sacred quest of doing Something Else Which Is Not That, you do not confuse this with the far less useful quest of doing Any Random Thing Whatsoever That Is Not That or, worse yet, doing An Even Stupider Thing Which Is Not That."
lintamande: "Well, I picked you as my partner because I figured if anyone was going to think of Something Else Which Is Not That it'd be you, so, go on, think of it."
Asmodia: Asmodia wonders if this is how her hypothetical goddess feels all the time.
Keltham: Tonia and Ione.
Ione Sala: "- one of us needs to be the sort of person who'll Cooperate if the other person Cooperates, and the other person needs to be the sort of person who's going to Cooperate given that, and we both try to read each other past what might be a bluff about that being true. We're not breaking Keltham's rules, that just is how you earn the most copper."
lintamande: "Well, are you the sort of person who's going to Cooperate?"
Ione Sala: "I sure would if I thought you were the sort of person who'd Cooperate if you thought I would Cooperate! Though I'd probably also want to ask you things like, is your Sense Motive good enough that you can read me?"
lintamande: "And if I can't read you, and you know that, then you'll defect. All right," says Tonia. In a way it's a very Asmodean game. "Well, if that's what we're supposed to do to get the most copper, I'll try it. I'll Cooperate if I think you'll Cooperate." Which she doesn't think at all.
Ione Sala: "Bluff. Now you know my Sense Motive isn't that terrible."
"I'll Cooperate if I think you'll Cooperate." (Truth.)
lintamande: Tonia bites her lip. "But you don't think I'll Cooperate, so you don't in fact plan on Cooperating."
Ione Sala: "But I am sincere about Cooperating if you Cooperate, which reduces this to the problem of, first of all, you actually intending to Cooperate, and second, once that happens, my being able to read you about that."
lintamande: "I'll cooperate, if you'll cooperate," says Tonia. (She's confused enough she's not sure if this is true. Probably not.)
Ione Sala: "Now you're feeling confused but trying to go along with things, and the reason I know this, is, that's not what you'd say if you were tracking this."
"If I'm like 'I'll cooperate if I think you'll cooperate' and you're like 'I'll cooperate if I think you'll cooperate' then where does that leave us, nowhere, is where it leaves us, unless and until somebody can be like, okay, I'll cooperate. Now I already told the truth about cooperating if I think you'll cooperate, and I think you know that, so what you need to do now, is just decide to cooperate."
Maybe Ione can get Asmodia to overrule Tonia about what alter-Asmodeans would do here...
Keltham: ...actually, if the wizard students weren't already familiar with first-order logic, the chances are roughly infinity to zero against them already being familiar with the principle that (for most proof systems put together the obvious way) you may freely assume a proposition's quoted provability within a quoted system, in order to prove the unquoted proposition within the unquoted system.
Without which principle the problem of 'I have to know/prove/guess-with-sufficient-probability your decision before I can decide' is in fact unsolvable. Oops.
Well, you could state about yourself that you were adopting some informal version of that principle, it's not like humans actually meet the assumptions for the simple version of the math. But, yeah, that probably makes it a lot harder to see how the solution works, doesn't it.
lintamande: "But it'd be stupid for me to just decide to cooperate without any caveats!" objects Tonia.
Ione Sala: "You're not! You're deciding that after you read my sincerity about Cooperating if you Cooperated! Otherwise it'd be stupid, yeah, which is why I didn't just say, I've decided to Cooperate."
lintamande: " - okay. So, I'm saying, since I can't bluff you, and since if you actually read me as planning on Cooperating you'll Cooperate, that means I'm just better off, if I cooperate, since you can tell. Unless you've changed your mind since when you said that thing, say it again."
Ione Sala: "I will definitely Cooperate if I think you'll definitely - no, if I think it's pretty likely, reasonably likely, that you'll Cooperate."
"You're currently confused, suspicious, sort of testing the waters there, but not in an insincere way. You're sort of trying to make up your mind about it and see what happens, but you haven't really made up your mind. This is progress! And I don't want to just say, you don't get rewarded at all, for coming a little further. So, even if you don't get any further than that, if you stay in just this state of mind, I'll spin a coin three times, and if it comes up Queen each time, I'll Cooperate with you. That's about how likely I think you are to really Cooperate in what appears to be your current state of mind. We've made progress, now try taking it a step further."
Keltham: ...orrrr you could complicate your reasoning processes to the point where they were no longer valid, and add a slight dash of motivated reasoning, that might also work for crossing the gap.
lintamande: "I'm likelier than that to cooperate!" objects Tonia. "I think I'll probably cooperate though not if we stop talking right this second because if we stop talking right this second you just said there's only a one in eight chance you'll cooperate. But I expect we'll keep having this stupid argument in front of Keltham until I'm convinced. ...and a dath ilani would be convinced already from predicting that. So I guess I'm convinced. How likely are you to cooperate right now."
Ione Sala: "One in four, let's say? You don't really believe that but you're trying to convince yourself, which is something I want to go on encouraging."
Keltham: ...okay, his being here is probably influencing this, if only through his not being able to fully conceal his horrified expressions at their version of the Algorithm. So he is going to go check and see if there's a Silent Proctor waiting for him, and if Security explained the instructions already.
Iarwain: Paxti is repeatedly spinning a coin and noting down the results, while a (visible) Security officer watches with a bored expression.
Keltham: Keltham will wait until Paxti stops spinning, then speak. "Yo. Your bid on the job?"
Iarwain: "Two coppers. I was bored."
"Pilar and Meritxell finished before I got here, Sevar and Peranza just left. I don't tell you the particular results, right?"
Keltham: "Correct. You tell me the total number of Defections and Cooperations, unless that number was one or zero for either, in which case you tell me nothing. You also tell me the total payout, and an amount of copper and silver you can use to make those payouts."
Iarwain: "Which means I tell you nothing right now, right?"
Keltham: "Right. Well, repeat back to me your scoring instructions so I can make sure you got those right."
Iarwain: "Everyone starts with three copper plus one copper for each of ten coinspins that comes up Queen plus one if they Defected minus three if their partner Defected." Never mind flunking out, anyone who can't follow instructions on that level doesn't get to go to wizard school.
Keltham: "Yup. Carry on, then, sorry for interrupting."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Keltham."
Keltham: Keltham manages not to startle. Over the last days of sitting quietly in a far corner of the room not saying anything, Broom has achieved something tantamount to cognitive invisibility.
Or, actually...
"Broom, are you using magic to make people not much notice or think about you?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "It is not magic. It is a talent of my people. We are simply good at being unobtrusive."
Broom knows, speaking, that these are not the words of a slave. He sets aside old anxieties at the thought. It has been claimed to Broom that he is not a slave anymore, at least not of Cheliax; and in alterCheliax he has never been a slave. He has been requested to conduct himself accordingly.
(He knows of alterCheliax now, the divergent mini-reality they are constructing to contain Keltham. Broom spoke for a time with the one called Asmodia, who, despite her strange mission, seemed harried and exasperated in a way that made Broom feel oddly sympathetic towards her. In her own way Asmodia seemed like a slave with too much to clean up, much like he once was; he would not, without reason, make her work any harder.)
Keltham: "Is your people's talent, by any chance, a sort that gets blocked by Mind Blank."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "No," Broom says, Security having swiftly instructed him that this is the true answer so far as the Security knows.
Keltham: "Right. Well, what's up, then?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "I wish to play against you the game that you are having these others play."
Keltham: "...why."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "In search of understanding."
Keltham: "Understanding of the game, or understanding of Keltham?"
"- don't say 'yes', either."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Understanding of Keltham."
Keltham: All right, that seems honest enough. "Okay then. We'll get paper and find a breakout room."
Abrogail Thrune II: "I want both of those two idiots humbled, and by humbled I mean raped."
Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn frowns. It's not out of the question, but a measure that should be resorted-to on relatively rare occasions, at that level of management.
"Subirachs's choice there hadn't particularly seemed like the best possible decision, no, but I hadn't thought it bad enough to warrant that. Sevar was - not beginning to think herself unpunishable, but thinking herself unpunishable except by going to extraordinary lengths. She thought that Cheliax still had threat to hold over her, but in the form of yourself, or say Gorthoklek, not in the person of Abarco."
"Sevar didn't reflect on her faults in that explicit a manner, but she wanted to break that dangerous sense of invincibility within herself. This was accomplished."
Abrogail Thrune II: "That could have made sense if Sevar wasn't engaged in an incredibly tangled honeypot operation with somebody who has an alien power to sense her sexuality even if nothing else and also forcing her to lie when many of the relationship breakthroughs with Keltham have been based on a bizarre form of honesty presumably empowered by tropes."
"I don't even want to think about what dath ilani romance novels must say about this, except that Subirachs and Abarco are going to end up not just dead but in Abaddon - actually I don't think dath ilani novels would do that to their villains? But something is going to happen to them that a dath ilani reader would find satisfying, and I worry that this may involve the ruination of Cheliax if not Hell itself."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Ah. Hm. And you think we should arrange their rapes ourselves, to be proactive about that?"
Abrogail Thrune II: "That thought hadn't even occurred to me! I'm just enraged by the sheer stupidity! Why do my subjects do this? Why does nobody in Cheliax understand what pain and torment do inside people on any level more complicated than it being scary? How am I supposed to run an Asmodean country like this?"
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Need I point out that your own commandment of disciplinary torment for Sevar greatly shook her faith -"
Abrogail Thrune II: "Because Sevar chose to undergo a torture order timed at her discretion, immediately before she needed to have an emotional conversation with Keltham and then meet with the Crown! The thought that Sevar would be that stupid literally never occurred to me! What do unwitting Irori clerics think torture is supposed to do? Why is my life like this? Do I have to personally order, execute, explain, and sensibly schedule every instance of torment in all of Cheliax for any of it to be remotely productive?"
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Sevar was not making progress in learning that art herself. Sevar was putting off the tortures required for herself, declining to inflict tortures on others. Not from selfish calculation, not even from heretical kindness; she forebore to advise Subirachs when Subirachs was selecting instruments for Keltham to use on her, and paid some small price for that. Then, having failed to learn her lesson, Sevar again failed to suggest any alternative specifics to Subirachs when Subirachs requested those and told her that her punishment would be otherwise worsened. I expect Subirachs was justifiably frustrated by Sevar at that point; the sort of frustration of one's expiator that a penitent ought properly to regret -"
Abrogail Thrune II: "Are you telling me to have sympathy for poor Subirachs about her failure at her one task? Let Subirachs inflict whatever worse punishment on Sevar she likes so long as it is not a sexual one! How about a pit of venomous spiders? Many people fear being thrown into a pit of venomous spiders! Even the ones who don't fear it the first time oft fear it more the second time around! Has anybody even tried throwing Sevar into a pit of venomous spiders? No! And why not? I DON'T KNOW. WHY RAPE."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Abrogail, how many people did you have burned, lashed, boneshattered, flayed, near-drowned, and raped, before the first time you got bored enough to try a pit of spiders instead?"
Abrogail Thrune II: "...I suppose you have a certain awful point. Many ordinary people, indeed, may never realize they have the option of throwing someone into a pit of spiders. And if I suggest a corresponding reformation of Chelish schools, your response will be that, in fact, very few people are ever faced with a problem to which a pit of spiders is the best solution."
"And this response will be very true, Aspexia. It will be very true. Do you know who I would nonetheless expect to be expert enough to have options come to mind other than the barest, simplest methods? The SEVENTH-CIRCLE cleric of Asmodeus specializing in SLAVERY that YOU PERSONALLY appointed to oversee the shaping of the MOST IMPORTANT SLAVE IN CREATION."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "And which of the dozens of competent subordinates you no doubt possess, whom you deem much superior to Subirachs in that task, would you appoint to replace her?"
Abrogail Thrune II: "Are you sure I can't just personally -"
Aspexia Rugatonn: "No. Bad Abrogail."
Abrogail Thrune II: The noise that comes from her throat then is one that you might, hearing it in Hell, not know whether it was issuing from a tormented soul or its enraged tormentor.
"Well, I am, for whatever it is worth, now much more resolved upon our diabolical secret plan."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Oh? I confess I don't see the connection."
Abrogail Thrune II: "Because if Keltham actually tried to study torture HE WOULD ACTUALLY BE GOOD AT IT."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Yes, that is exactly how I feel about 'corrigibility'."
"Do you feel it would be beneficial for Project Lawful if you disciplined Subirachs and Abarco in this matter? Not beneficial for your indignation and fury, beneficial for Lord Asmodeus."
Abrogail Thrune II: "I will instruct Subirachs that further orders for sexual torment are to be routed through me for approval, and not suggest to her that I was displeased with her current order, because as you say it did serve its foolish, minor purpose and I would not have even that pittance of a benefit lost."
"And I shall quietly arrange with his owner that when Elias Abarco is welcomed forever into Hell, he will spend the first thousand years of it being raped. The tropes, then, will not need to act, in his case."
"Is there anything similar you can arrange for Subirachs?"
Aspexia Rugatonn: "I do believe she had hopes of the Chosen of Asmodeus personally taking care of her, when in time she reached Hell. Or so she said aloud, and surely she would not mislead the Chosen about matters of faith? I will send instruction to Hell of it and pray to our Lord of the matter, and approve due civil orders for making her a statue until Sevar is ready to receive her."
Abrogail Thrune II: "That should be satisfying to the tropes as well, one way or another."
"I will instruct and pay Abarco's owner that, may Sevar wish his ownership, he is to be sent to her embrace as well."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "And should Sevar fail in her ascension, and never become a Power of Hell to receive anyone, I doubt Hell will be much pleased with Subirachs about it either."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "I am the chosen agent of a Lawful goddess, Otolmens, who preserves. I might pledge upon the Law, and be believed, within Golarion, by any who knew, or any who could sight my alignment."
"You are an alien; why should anyone believe your own pledge?"
Keltham: "I'm an alien from a place Lawful enough that everything on Golarion looks to me like randomized insane nonsense by comparison. You've heard my lectures. You know that."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "You are from a place with much knowledge of Law. This does not say who you are, only what you were taught there."
Keltham: "Got four cleric circles off a Lawful Neutral god the first night I was here."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Gods are not infallible. They sight us but dimly." This was told him, in the course of explaining how he must not in fact assume that Otolmens saw all, knew all, understood all, that She was able to move him with vast wisdom and every consequence foreseen. "By the laws of choosing, you must be within one alignment step of your god. This permits that your alignment might be True Neutral. As is, for example, Nethys, god of destruction and madness."
Keltham: "Yeah, pretty sure my god and Asmodeus and Cayden Cailean are sighting stuff here more than 'dimly'. What with, you know, some pretty precise timing and spell choices and all that. Which would be handily explained if Nethys, god of knowledge, was tipping them off."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "None of this says that the purpose to which those gods are acting is one that would not alarm my goddess of preventing enormous messes. None of this says that you yourself are in truth a Lawful being."
Keltham: "I can think of further arguments but I'm wondering if you have some test you're working up to applying, in which case you could just mention it now and save a lot of pointless conversation."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "No. No test. Only a question."
"What kind of being are you? Who is Keltham? Not your world, not the knowledge taught you, not the god who chose you, not your alignment aura, none of these things outside you, that are not you."
Keltham: "I'll state for the record that I was talking about that part because it's easily visible and verifiable strong evidence that you don't have to take my word about, as might be relevant to the game we were theoretically going to be playing here, where people have incentives to say something apart from truth."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "I did not say your words were empty to me. If I had to stake my soul on it, in this moment, I would guess that you were a Lawful being."
"There remains doubt. Why am I here if you are so orderly? Perhaps my Lawful Neutral goddess saw imperfectly. Or perhaps your Lawful Neutral god saw unclearly. Nethys might tell them more, but Nethys is also god of madness and destruction, and not Himself a Lawful being."
"Who is Keltham? He has not said much of himself in my presence, only spoken of things outside himself. Does he know, himself, what he is?"
Keltham: "There is a sizable chance that I know myself better than any other mortal in Golarion, what with the fact that I alone have had any training in introspection or education in how minds and brains operate. What exactly do you want to know?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Whether you are liable to destroy Golarion, destroy all that lies beyond it. But this Broom cannot say.
"If I knew so plainly, I would have asked you plainly."
"Why are you Lawful? Why did you choose that?"
Keltham: "Okay, see, Lawfulness is not a thing in dath ilan. We learn to use some math. Because it's useful. Then you get to Golarion and all of a sudden everyone is like 'what an incredibly Lawful person this is' but that's your weird system, not mine. I was, am, and remain, Keltham, whatever other people call me, and whatever system they think I fit into."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "What is Keltham, then, that those of Golarion, seeing him truly, might call him Lawful in their own weird system?"
Keltham: "I could answer that more clearly if your concept of Lawfulness was not itself such a mess. This language uses the same words for mathematics that is timeless and invariant between all worlds, and regulations made up by people in particular regions and factions, calling both by the word 'law'."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Laws obeyed by matter and magic. Laws obeyed by people. Shapes that they take on, without which they would dissolve into formlessness and chaos. Constraints that should not be violated. You see nothing the two have in common?"
Keltham: "Those who taught me to think, who are vastly better at that than anybody in Golarion including me, taught me that it is not a good idea to think of two things as being the same, just because you can point to some property the two have in common. In due course I'll probably be lecturing on that."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Who is Keltham?"
Keltham: "Keltham is a very large data structure and he needs you to be more specific about your search query."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Who is Keltham that Keltham will do as he says he will do, in this game? Not, what god bears witness to it; who is Keltham that a god would bear him that witness?"
Keltham: "Okay, so I got here knowing literally nothing about Golarion, and then, a few seconds later, that this place was really cold, or at least the part of it I was standing on was cold. But in short order I found out about gods and clerics, which are not a thing where I come from. So I decided to try talking to a god who might be helpful."
"How do you suppose I targeted my call, to the first god I tried to talk to?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "A god that would prove useful to you in your project to change Golarion, a god who might offer you protection from any unknown threats about you, a god whose concerns appealed to you enough that you could be Their cleric."
Keltham: "No. I was looking for a better partnership than that. In Civilization we have traditions about that sort of thing, looking for somebody where you can start a business venture with them and stick to that for years and years. People have proverbially better luck about that if they treat it less like the problem of finding an employer, or employee, and more like the problem of who to monogamously marry and have a kid with."
"So I asked myself the question 'Who is Keltham?' from a direction that seemed useful to matching up with a god ideally suited to me, and the exact form of that question out of dath ilan isn't exactly easy to explain, but - I asked myself what a world of Kelthams would be like, how Civilization would have been different if I'd been an average person there, instead of a relatively strange person for a dath ilani as dath ilani go. Imagining the world-of-you is one way of seeing yourself."
"And because the thing that was different about me, in Civilization, is always that I was more selfish than the people around me - I asked myself whether a world of Kelthams would just fall apart, because of farmers stealing grain from each other. Goodness is something that helps to prevent that, that people won't damage others because they care about those others, even strangers. Then if there's a world of people less Good, doesn't it end up looking, as your goddess might say, a huge mess?"
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "I do not know. I agree that it seems like a wise question to ask, before trying to remake a world in one's image."
Keltham: "I am not trying to remake Golarion in my image or in the image of dath ilan. When Asmodia showed up one morning with a +6 Wisdom headband supposedly to compensate for a disability she picked up from a maniacal experiment, starting to use concepts and talk more like somebody out of Civilization, I was sad because I didn't want Golarion to just turn into a copy of dath ilan. I said that out loud. Ask Asmodia, she might remember me saying it."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "Then I do not understand why you asked the question in that form."
Keltham: "Because my answer to how the world of Kelthams held together - is that even if you're selfish, you can still value for its own sake, have as part of your 'utilityfunction', that you will do those things that a Civilization must do to hold itself together, even if the people in it care less for strangers than do those of dath ilan."
"Kelthams don't cheat strangers. They keep their promises to strangers. They trade fairly with strangers. They have, in their utilityfunction, very strongly, the shards of - a thing I was going to teach in future lectures - the essence of Coordination - that made its way into humans, long ago, because people who didn't feel anything about keeping their promises, did less well in trade, acquired poorer reputation, and in the end had fewer children, than the honorable. And we know that this must have happened, long ago, because there is no other way that human beings could now be what they are, things that have a word for honor."
"...though I don't know if the Baseline 'builtin-honor' is translating well when I translate it as the Taldane word for honor."
"The very first shard of Coordination that children are taught about, in the very beginning, is this game I set them to play."
"The real solution to it takes more Law than I think I can teach in a little while."
"But you don't need the full Law, if you don't have the part of the instructions that say you're to be strictly selfish and care about nothing else."
"One solution is to care about other people - as much as you care about yourself, so that if you can gain nine coppers at the expense of their losing ten, you still won't do that, because it would be a loss to the cosmos, to larger reality."
"The other solution is to care about honor. Care about Coordination. Be someone where, if somebody else cooperates with you, trusts you, then you would sooner walk out of this reality through Abaddon than betray them, when they hadn't betrayed your own trust."
"That's why a world of Kelthams can exist, and not turn into a huge mess."
"That was the god I called out to - the god whose domain is following the forms of Coordination for their own sake, as a term in the utilityfunction. Because that is something very deep and strong in what Keltham is, that goes with his selfishness, and makes it okay, safe, for him to be selfish."
"All you need to do to solve the real version of this dilemma with a Keltham, minus the game instructions to roleplay being purely selfish in a way that demands complicated math to solve by pure Law, is to say under truthspell that you'll Cooperate with him. You don't need to say why. If you're not going to Defect against Keltham and take his own stuff, then he's not going to take three coppers away from you. The end."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "And if I pledged upon my Law to write Cooperate on my own paper, if I believed you would write Cooperate on yours - you would say - what, then, to convince me? That you pledge it upon your honor? That you pledge it upon your Law?"
Keltham: "I'd just put myself under truthspell and say I'd Cooperate."
Keltham: "And if your next question is why I'm able to say that under truthspell, when I'm roleplaying being strictly selfish without honor, it's because I know that, when I actually need to write my move on the paper, there'll be a very strong correlation between the person I am right then, and my model of myself at the time I said under truthspell that I'd Cooperate."
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": "I believe you. I think we have no need to play out our moves, then. It would be purposeless, if we cannot learn our own true answers, and to show each other our answers afterwards would be an offense against the nature and meaning of this game."
"I will not ask you to spend a truthspell on proving all this to me. Just, sometime in the future, when you are truthspelling yourself in any case - would you also say to me that you told me no lies this time?"
Keltham: Keltham taps himself with a truthspell, and Abadar's symbol flashes above his forehead.
"As my people define 'lying', the act of 'lying' means intentional deceptive falsehood-speaking, and so doesn't include saying literally false statements as jokes, or teaching aids, or ways of 'trolling' people, if you don't expect them to end up persistently believing false things nor do you exploit their false beliefs to their own detriment during the bounded short time they persist. It also doesn't count if you catch yourself and say 'wrongthought' and explain why you accidentally false-spoke in the next minute."
"To the best of my knowledge and memory:"
"I've never lied to anyone in Golarion."
Keltham: Exit Keltham, stage right.
He's still got that weird symbol above his forehead, but there's no particular reason to get it dispelled.
Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": Broom watches him go with a sad, grim feeling that, like a wind blowing away dust, dissipates all the slight reassurance he was feeling a few seconds earlier.
That is a person who it is not hard to visualize trying to destroy Cheliax, once he knows what it really is and what it has done to him, and maybe taking some risks in the course of wielding power enough to accomplish it.
Asmodia: Asmodia approves everyone's game moves via Security before they actually enter them - only she knows those, to minimize the amount the others have to fake not knowing - and they work out to 3 pairs of Cooperate-Cooperate and 1 pair Defect-Defect.
Which means that either Asmodia and Gregoria were the stupidest pair when it came to working out the missing Law, or everybody else failed to really understand and follow the instructions, and Asmodia is guessing it's the second one.
But, 3-1 is close enough to 1-1 in the quick test trial, Asmodia thinks, that Keltham should not be mystified by it; and the conversations in Keltham's presence transmitted to her played well enough for alterCheliax. The more difficult part of Asmodia's job seems to be going well enough.
Iarwain: Security copies Sevar on key updates from Keltham's conversation with Broom. (The voice of the Security handling her comms is audibly that of Olegario, if that matters for anything.)
"Kelthams don't cheat strangers. They keep their promises to strangers. They trade fairly with strangers. They have, in their utilityfunction, very strongly, the shards of - a thing I was going to teach in future lectures - the essence of Coordination - that made its way into humans, long ago, because people who didn't feel anything about keeping their promises, did less well in trade, acquired poorer reputation, and in the end had fewer children, than the honorable. And we know that this must have happened, long ago, because there is no other way that human beings could now be what they are, things that have a word for honor."
"The very first shard of Coordination that children are taught about, in the very beginning, is this game I set them to play."
"The other solution is to care about honor. Care about Coordination. Be someone who, if somebody else cooperates with you, trusts you, then you would sooner walk out of this reality through Abaddon than betray them, when they hadn't betrayed your own trust."
"That was the god I called out to - the god whose domain is following the forms of Coordination for their own sake, as a term in the utilityfunction. Because that is something very deep and strong in what Keltham is, that goes with his selfishness, and makes it okay, safe, for him to be selfish."
"All you need to do to solve the real version of this dilemma with a Keltham, outside of the usual game instructions where we're not instructed to roleplay being purely selfish in a way that demands complicated math to solve by pure Law, is to say under truthspell that you'll Cooperate with him. You don't need to say why. If you're not going to Defect against Keltham and take his own stuff, then he's not going to take three coppers away from you. The end."
"I've never lied to anyone in Golarion."