Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Respectfully can you shut up for a minute, I'm thinking."
Asmodia: "Not how respect works, Avaricia, but you have the minute."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: She is quiet for a moment.
"Keltham is accustomed to a world with practically no coercion, right, that's the core of it. He hasn't noticed any of the other students are utterly terrified of being rejected. He says things like that the homework is 'optional'. When he gives orders, they're followed, and he throws lots of money at everyone, and in his world there wouldn't be - couldn't be - any threat there. He has not thought about how much coercion everyone everywhere is subject to even in alterCheliax. Yes?"
Asmodia: "Sevar's domain, my understanding here is inferior to hers. But yes. Keltham does not know where alterCheliax - no, where the true Golarion is, inside the spread of possibilities. He's given Sevar explicit permission not to tell him right away, when the truth will seem that dark to him."
"He hasn't noticed in part because he cannot read our expressions, he cannot read our voices, unless we show it to him very loudly by Chelish standards; the edges of that which slip around our control are wholly invisible to him. It may be related to how he has difficulty telling apart new non-dath-ilani without nametags."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "So the problem is that anyone acting genuinely uncoerced around Keltham, anyone declining to shovel his acid pits or inhale his noxious fumes, shatters the whole illusion. I don't care if that's Sevar's domain, it needs to be on that wall.
Have you considered that maybe you have your job because everyone with sense refused it?"
Asmodia: "I have my job for the same reason that Sevar has hers, because literally nobody else can do it, and I already told you all that the job drives anyone who does it insane."
"Keltham thinks we're shoveling his acid pits for our generous salaries and the promise of vast wealth if the Project succeeds. Or that Ione is there in hopes of following him when he leaves Golarion - that part's probably true - or that Pilar is in it because it's what Asmodeus wants from her - again true - or that Sevar loves him and wants to create Lawful Evil Civilization here."
"Dath ilan has histories about people like us, doing grand projects like this, who aren't there out of fear, and who'd inhale his noxious fumes for money if there was going to be healing afterwards."
"Showing him that the world is not like that would be a huge step, Sevar's game alone, her call absolutely and her timing on it. I expect we're supposed to time it for after Keltham is turned more than halfway Evil, if he ever is. If you can't figure out how upset the Chosen of Asmodeus would be about you usurping her moves there, I'll have Security float your torso over to her and Sevar can explain in person."
"'We're doing this because we're getting paid' and 'nobody is threatening us' are already on the wall, almost the first sentences I wrote, but I'll rewrite them at greater length and larger letters. I suppose it's hardly adequate to the depth of the orange."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "That's the wrong thing to write on the wall. You don't want us to act like we're not being threatened; if not threatened, I don't shovel acid pits. You want us to act like the consistent obedience Keltham has experienced from everyone up to this point was the product of some kind of - non-threat-based-social-habit-against-insubordination that you haven't invented."
Asmodia: "The existing Tiers were slated for the Worldwound, before Cheliax pulled us for the Project. We are all the sort of people who were expecting to accept much harsher regimens of obedience, as Keltham has now heard, in exchange for pay and the chance to grow as wizards and because somebody had to do it."
"In honesty, Lady Avaricia, I find myself thinking that the truth of alter-Cheliax was that Avaricia was an interesting candidate but a poor fit for Keltham's Project. She's not the sort to shovel acid pits, not for knowledge like Ione, not for Asmodeus's interests like Pilar, not for pride in outperforming like Meritxell, not angling for vast future wealth like Asmodia, not in exchange for more present wealth than she ever imagined like Tonia, certainly not for love like Sevar. What other motive could alter-Avaricia have, in alter-Cheliax?"
"It'd be unfortunate to see you go, and take your knowledge of alchemy with you. Maybe Keltham would be willing to create a non-acid-pit-shoveling position for you, I don't know how dath ilan feels about that."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Alter-Avaricia wanted to see if anyone here was smart or competent. I'm indeed reaching the conclusion that none of you are, and that your project is so doomed it's probably better to get clear of it now than die spectacularly with it when it dies spectacularly next week. But I assume you disagree with me, and think that if she talked with her fellow project-members she'd think some of them were smart and competent after all? And in that case she'd stay; competence is a precious thing."
Asmodia: "I fear, Lady Avaricia, that we are too busy about our god-given tasks to prove our worth to you. I hardly know how I'll find time to train the Most High's successor, when the Most High presents me with a suitable candidate, at this rate. Sevar must scarcely ever get to see her other lover, the Queen, as she plans out the new form of Asmodeanism..."
"I have the strangest sense that I ought to send you out with Pilar Pineda on some sort of life-changing journey? But Pilar's also busy. I'm not sure she's even around, right now, tonight might be her weekly night for sweeping Egorian clear of any new spies."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "- that's not how to impress people if you haven't tortured them at length first. Just so you know."
Asmodia: She was sort of hoping Pilar would suddenly be here, with a cookie and a solution, but apparently not.
"I'm not trying to impress you, Avaricia. Carissa Sevar doesn't, Keltham out of dath ilan doesn't, I rather doubt I can. Just being wry about how you'll never match a fraction of our actual accomplishments."
"But it's not my job to correct you. Only to correct your story."
"My sense is that this story currently ends with Keltham choosing not to hire you, unless you keep up an Abyss of a lead in chemistry."
Asmodia's sense is that Avaricia is a liability to Project Lawful and alter-Avaricia should quit it in disgust before real-Avaricia blows it up, but this need not be said aloud. It is, in fact, not Asmodia's decision.
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "If you have some other specific personality you are authorizing me to have instead, I'm listening."
Asmodia: "I'm a peasant and Sevar's wearing a dress that isn't bespoke enough. Neither of us seem likely to be able to envision a coherent alternate way for nobility to be. Maybe Maillol or Subirachs will have ideas that aren't just 'In fact, inexorable logic has now revealed that alter-Cheliax nobility is as useless as Taldor nobility, given that nobody in alter-Cheliax is threatening them into working.' I'm drawing a blank."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: That's not what she said.
What she said was important for the project and this idiot peasant is too self-righteous to even hear it.
This is such a waste of time and she can't just walk away from it.
"I see. Well, absent authorization to do otherwise, I will as ordered act as I would in alter!Cheliax. It is my sincere and heartfelt hope that this will not continue to be as confusing to you as it was today."
Asmodia: Message: Security, take her away and give Sevar the transcripts when she's got a free moment. Not worth interrupting her, but I do not consider this situation successfully handled by me.
lintamande: Security will do that.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is blissfully ignorant of all this and engrossed in her favorite activity, glibness sword making.
Security: Security will store Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Torso somewhere conveniently nearby, then, and silently and respectfully leave the Chosen a clearly-marked-nonurgent note over a transcript sheaf, to check at her leisure.
Carissa Sevar: Well this sure is some children unproductively sniping at each other.
Carissa Sevar: "Look, when Keltham wanted to get to know Her Infernal Majesty, she arranged a duck pond, where she sat feeding the ducks and looking burdened by her duties, and talked to Keltham for ten minutes and he was very rude and she corrected him gently and wished him good luck. Do you think you're above that?"
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "- no! No one told me to do that! Are you authorizing that deviation from alter-Cheliax?"
Carissa Sevar: "At this point I am somewhat inclined to declare that, yeah, another weird difference between alter!Cheliax and real Cheliax is that for no particular reason you're pleasant to work with. If I declare that what will you do."
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: " - I suppose work out with Meritxell why I call her 'peasant'? Maybe she calls me some mildly derogatory, yet lighthearted, term for the alterCheliax nobility."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa finds herself tremendously tempted to declare that yes, great, that's this situation solved and she can go back to the swords now.
She has a sneaking suspicion that's not the case.
Where's Asmodia gotten to.
Asmodia: Sitting in front of a pile of Taldorian books, one of which she's reading, with the Chelish intelligence officer assigned to Project Lawful standing nearby.
(There isn't time for Asmodia to have read all of the books in the 'has read' pile, but nobody will notice this fact. Probably Carissa Sevar was just working on her glibness swords for a while!)
Carissa Sevar: "Do you want Avaricia off the project?"
Asmodia: "I admit, saying that feels to me like failure, and I don't like failing. But I'm not able to salvage this situation on my own, and if my superiors don't have better ideas, I'm sure not stepping forth to declare I'll take responsibility for keeping her."
Carissa Sevar: "I can just tell her we're authorizing the lie that she's a pleasant person who doesn't behave rudely, but I wasn't sure if you had hesitated to do that because you expect it to cause problems somewhere else."
Asmodia: "It's inconsistent with her previously shown behavior, we'd need a backstory about how and why she was trolling. I guess that's doable, it may lose us a quarter-two but so does any other recovery I can see, but -"
"We've got two problems here, fitting her into alter-Cheliax, and her lack of subordination."
"The whole thing with the nobility is too large. We don't want Keltham looking at things that are this large and confusing to him, I don't think. By the time he had answers that would satisfy his curiosity, he'd have learned far too much about Golarion and advanced the timelines toward Project failure."
"I'm not having much luck predicting what he'd learn, either. First I asked what Keltham would deduce from the existence of Avaricia, and then I gave up on it and asked what I would deduce myself if I landed in another plane next to an Avaricia, and I'm not making much progress on that either, besides that I clearly wouldn't be in dath ilan or Lastwall."
"My most brilliant idea so far is to try cursing her with reduced Splendour to see if she's a manageable subordinate without all that driving will and persuasiveness. I reviewed the transcript of my earlier interview with her and, you could make a case that she told me what she'd do, but she didn't spell it out and I failed to notice how much we weren't discussing any exact details. I was distracted by her acting like a stereotype, my being certain that was a pose, and my not wanting to admit that I couldn't figure out why she was pretending. Part of me was still scared of her, and she knew that and used it, and I didn't want to admit failure about it by calling her on it. I should have told her that this was a serious occasion and to stop with the games, or gone to Maillol to admit my inability to handle her, then."
Carissa Sevar: "Well, if we don't want Keltham looking closely at the whole concept of nobility -and I agree we probably don't - then maybe there's just no way to have nobility on the project for him to repeatedly get a close look at. Though separately it seems good for you to get some practice at noticing when you're avoiding a problem because it'd be embarrassing to admit you have it.
My current guess is that she knows how to play many different games but not necessarily how to stop playing games."
Asmodia: "I don't think anyone on this Project knows how to not play games at all, besides possibly Keltham, and he does that by not knowing they exist. He's probably got Law for it too, sure, but right now it's by not knowing our games exist."
"The frustrating thing about this is that I can see that Avaricia's deficiency is a Law deficiency. Keltham could teach her to stop with the constant Splendour and then she'd be useful, if Keltham were already on our side. I could teach her to be corrigible, if I was ready to teach the next Most High, which I'm not. She's here too early! She wouldn't be as much of a shock to Keltham if she'd arrived later in our timelines when he was more knowledgeable or more corrupted. I'd maybe be able to handle her if I had more task experience."
"What I want to do is tell Avaricia that she's won, proved that she's superior to Asmodia and won the game and shown that Asmodia can't possibly manage her along with the others, so now she gets to go to Hell and be impressed by the competent devils there. That's not what's best for the Project, probably, but I'm having some difficulty thinking past it."
Carissa Sevar: "Not what''s best for the project because we'll make faster progress on chemistry if we have her? I'm not particularly willing to trade any chemistry progress for strain on the wall. Or not what's best for the project because weird students mysteriously quitting is definitely likelier in Conspiracy?"
Asmodia: "Because it would be a weird coincidence Probability-wise if what was the most fun to think about was also the best strategy for repairing my wall."
"In terms of - things that are, in a way, close to reality, but also things that don't look likely in Conspiracy - suppose she keeps acting like that, she gives her theory of nobility, the rest of us are like 'what the fuck are you talking about, nobles are supposed to be moderately competent people and not such overt assholes on Government projects even if they're assholes, we don't want to work with this person', it's obvious Governance made a mistake by sending her here, Keltham doesn't hire her, none of this is anything a competent Conspiracy would cleverly plan."
"She's created somebody who's plausibly an annoying asshole from alter-Cheliax. Maybe the least nitwit-clever thing we can do is just let that play out in the obvious way where alter-Cheliax doesn't hire her."
Carissa Sevar: "Does she cooperate with that?"
Asmodia: "Ask Security or Maillol, not me. Impersonators and Dominate Person are both things, as are threats of real torture."
"If sending her to Hell is a political problem, why not turn her into a statue for a couple of years until the Project is no longer classified? I don't think Keltham would find it too surprising that her mother could arrange about paying for Security around her, or unusual ways to keep secrets, to explain why she's not at the fortress and not quickly accessible?"
Carissa Sevar: "I want to think about it but it seems - plausibly workable, and only requires keeping this up for the rest of the week."
Asmodia: "Separately, I request the ability to call in Korva Tallandria on this, or other Project personnel as they seem like they would have relevant knowledge on future problems. Korva seems like somebody who'd have ideas based on our interview and her thought transcripts. But commanding others' assistance at doing my job is not explicitly within the scope of my current authority, and today I've learned a valuable lesson about the importance of not surprising your superiors and getting explicit authorizations."
Carissa Sevar: " - sure, go ahead."
Asmodia: "That's all I had."
Carissa Sevar: - well, she'll go back to making swords. But more uneasily.
dath ilan: The problem with this entire plan, of course, is that it relies on a non-dath-ilani being able to predict how a dath ilani reacts to anything, at all.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 21 (17) / Morning
Keltham: Keltham's taking this day a bit slower. He's hopefully potentially given the new candidates anything they can do with their time, if they want to play around with known chemical reactions and try to master Prestidigitation chemistry on their own, and they've got math to catch up on too.
Keltham: He'll spend the morning being mean to poor Yaisa...
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 21 (17) / Lunch
Keltham: ...have lunch brought to him privately, so he can eat quietly, and disappoint anybody anticipating or dreading a Keltham-Avaricia encounter...
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 21 (17) / Early Afternoon
Keltham: ...do all the things, wizard practice, scroll practice, reading magical theory books...
They've turned up some alchemy books for him too, by now, and... wow. Just wow.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 21 (17) / Late Afternoon
Keltham: Keepers-only lecture to Meritxell, Pilar, and Asmodia. Small class, less to keep track of, and Keltham's brain isn't totally happy with existing a whole day at a time without giving anything visible back to his Chelish hosts. He'd feel better if he was renting an apartment-module and location-foundation more explicitly; part of his brain still thinks he's a guest in somebody else's house, invited in on the expectation of interesting discussions.
Keltham: He'll lead with a children's fable about different ways to relate to the possibility of being wrong and finding out truths. Being able to notice and choose between the ways you'd relate to the act of realizing mind-shaking truths would probably be one of the keys to avoiding ending up as a failed Keeper, or, Keltham supposes, trying to become a Keeper on purpose.
Keltham: Here's another children's fable about a child who insists that there's an invisible Non-Translating-Fictional-Creature in their closet, but always refuses to bet on any observable that, you might normally think, would tend to go along with there being an Invisible Creature in that closet.
The point of this fable is to learn to distinguish between subjective states of:
- Really actually modeling something as true in an uncomplicated way, and unhesitatingly deriving the valid consequences of that and anticipating them to happen to you as future experiences; eagerly betting on those if you think others don't have even more information.
- Thinking you ought to believe something, for reasons that include deliberative arguments for why the thing is true; while other parts of you have some wordless other model in which the thing isn't true, the corresponding observables shouldn't actually be anticipated to happen to you, any bets like that will lose money and any promised rewards won't really be delivered to you.
This will create a kind of internal tension that shouldn't be too hard to learn to categorize over and learn perceptual reflexes about, if you can spot it on a couple of previous occasions... actually that seems like something that should be heavily Wisdom-loaded? If somebody thinks they've caught themselves doing this, or is wondering if they're doing this, they should quickly ask for an Owl's Wisdom so that they can see the internal feelings sharply and learn to recognize them on future occasions.
- Endorsing a verbal statement for social or other reasons that give you a non-accuracy-maximized payoff structure for the outward verbal behavior, such as, for example, your friends saying things and you wanting to smile and agree with them.
If you fail at some other mental exercises kids are taught, there'll probably be an internal pressure to believe the verbal statement: that's a very short route to smiling and agreeing that doesn't create painful internal dilemmas about violating the rules against lying, and your brain knows that. Don't rely on being able to notice how the actual-belief pressures are running into contradictory evidence or counterarguments; you want to catch this at the introspective stage of noticing the pressure-to-endorse at all, and just switch off that pressure. Not believe the opposite, reversed stupidity isn't intelligence after all, but switching off the pressure.
To sum up, the idea is roughly that you want to explicitly categorize and notice the subjective difference between:
- What you ought to believe, which is also usually the feeling of a verbal argument supporting something;- What your brain is actually modeling and anticipating happening to you;- What you think you'll be rewarded for believing, especially socially.
You want to notice when the first two get out of alignment and start producing standard symptoms of internal disalignments along those fault lines. As for that awful third thing, of course, you want to notice the feeling and destroy/switch-off that pressure inside yourself; leaving only an observation about some bad incentive structure that needs to be repaired if it can be, and ignored if it can't be.
This is all standard stuff for dath ilani children and doesn't turn them into Keepers. Does it sound like something that's liable to cause people to fracture in weird ways if you teach it to somebody from Golarion and they already grew up as adults not knowing it?
Asmodia: Obviously YES but if she SAYS THAT then Keltham will ask for an EXAMPLE and if she says NO then Keltham will TEACH THIS TO EVERYONE TOMORROW.
lintamande: "I think my mother doesn't love me," says Meritxell aloud, a little wonderingly. "Um, that might - I don't actually know - that that's an example - because, because it's not like it'd be better to figure out when you're five -"
Keltham: "Okay, if you figured that out in the first minutes of having this in your head, but not earlier, I can see how there might possibly be a problem."
"...I'm also not seeing how to progress past the nine-year-old level of Lawfulness without people acquiring the ability to make internal distinctions on this level, either."
Pilar : "Do we actually have any other ideas besides just dropping it on everyone, seeing if they can handle it, and if they can't handle it, they can go to Hell."
Keltham: "I try to teach people a bunch of other stuff first, and hope that makes it better rather than worse."
Asmodia: "Is that how you expect it to work?"
Keltham: "Not particularly."
"...we could run a very small conditional prediction market about the results of the two approaches, is what my brain keeps suggesting, but I don't - actually expect that to help us very much, there's just too few of us."
Pilar : "I'm up for being taught literally all of this stuff immediately, and seeing if that turns me into a Keeper, or at least, someone who can figure out exactly how dangerous it all is and how to handle this whole situation."
Keltham: "You're that confident it can't hurt you?"
Pilar : "Yes, and if not, I'm confident I'll survive, and if not, I'm fine going to Hell."
"Is there any path forwards that doesn't involve somebody taking that risk, at some point? Because I'm the obvious person to do it."
Keltham: "I think the alternative is supposed to be taking all of the risks more slowly so that we can take fewer of those risks at one time, and learn from experience on some of them before taking on some of the others. There's a difference between acknowledging that we have to take those risks eventually, and saying that we're certain the best path is for you to take all of them at once."
Pilar : "Premature caution is expensive, slow, and not fun. How about if you make a very sincere effort to break me and we see if that does literally anything?"
Asmodia: Pilar, are you sure this is how alter-Pilar -
Pilar : He had me stabbed in the thigh yesterday and then healed it right away and didn't do anything else so YES.
Keltham: "I think I'm just going to give up on a certain internal struggle and, since your literal sanity is at stake here, double-check to make very sure that you mean the version of that where I'm telling you everything that I'm scared will break people from Golarion."
Pilar : She's only even pretending to be pretending to be in denial about anything! And she's still annoyed by this boy insisting on spelling everything out! There's a reason it's called subtext!
"Tell me everything that you're scared will break people from Golarion."
Keltham: "I'll... consider it. Not the sort of decision I'd want to make instantly."
"Meritxell, I'd try saying this by Message, but apparently then Asmodia just sees where the Message is going anyways, and my further actions would make your answer deducible anyways. You want to continue the lesson, or go off and mull things and see what else shakes loose? Details by Message if you want those private."
lintamande: "I'm fine," Meritxell says curtly. " - actually I'm not fine but I don't want to miss out on the rest of the lesson."
Keltham: "The alternative isn't you missing out on the lesson, it's that we break and resume another day and you don't miss anything -"
"You know, never mind, I shouldn't even have asked you, these things would be expected to have latent effects, not just immediate effects, and it's stupid not to give those another day to develop and observe before piling anything else on."
Pilar : "You're insulting Meritxell here."
Keltham: "Overruled, sticking to my theme. This isn't just a challenge to your ability to learn Law without getting hurt, it's an experiment where I'm figuring out how to teach Law. When you're experimenting it is sometimes considered wise to apply one experimental manipulation at a time so you can distinguish their effects."
"In my current state of uncertainty, that seems wiser than the equal and opposite advice, which is to start by testing all of your interventions simultaneously to see if any of them do anything."
Asmodia: Pilar, back off. You know Meritxell's lying, Keltham doesn't.
Pilar : "Fair. Apologies." It seems like the right Kelthamism for the circumstance.
Keltham: Lesson suspended for the day - for reasons of experimental distinctions, not because he thinks Meritxell couldn't handle more.
Meritxell has first claim on his evening, if she expects it to be useful to her to be around a dath ilani while any further thoughts are playing out? It's the same offer he'd make to Carissa, whom Keltham does not particularly think of as weak, under similar circumstances.
lintamande: That's very sweet of him. She ...kind of wants to get drunk and have sex without talking about anything at all, is he up for that?
Keltham: Uh, sure. He hasn't witnessed this 'drunk' thing and is kinda curious.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 21 (17) / Evening
lintamande: Meritxell hopes that her SACRIFICES FOR THE PROJECT are APPRECIATED and appropriately REWARDED.
She's going to get drunk but much less drunk than she appears to be getting, and then cry on Keltham and tell him that he's smart and pretty and nice and it's tragic how he won't hurt her just because she's not into it.
Keltham: He'll awkwardly hug her, awkwardly have sex with her, and wonder why in the flaming violet blazes anybody would voluntarily take this mind-affecting drug.
lintamande: "I deserve a medal or something."
Carissa Sevar: "Yes, yes, good job. You should actually go sober up."
lintamande: "'m not drunk. - I mean, yes, sir."
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 22 (18)
Keltham: ACID DAY!
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: The Lady Avaricia, since her superiors hate her and are trying to kill her, will reluctantly be impressive on acid day. Keltham might have been unimpressed with the alchemy books because of their habit of venturing bizarre claims with no evidence to back them and bizarre theories with no sense of what tests would approve or disprove them, but she's used to that and has spent a while thinking through which of their claims make more sense in light of Keltham's 'chemistry', and how they're best translated into chemistry terms.
She wouldn't want to dominate the class, though, if anyone else has sketched out likely chemical structures of various alchemical compounds based on what the standard introductory textbooks say about their characteristics. No? Well, probably that's because they were instead working out why there are such differences in the reported boiling temperatures of various alchemical mixtures, in light of what Keltham's taught about chemistry? Also no? Maybe some of them want to improve her speculative work on which Golarion-substances are which elements?
Keltham: Keltham seems appropriately impressed with Lady Avaricia's work! If he's upset or even, in fact, noticing Avaricia being incredibly dismissive and condescending towards everyone else here including him, it doesn't show! At all!
Much progress on acid synthesis is made today! Not to the point where they can complete a full production cycle on using sulfuric acid to make twice as much more sulfuric acid! But they're not going to be able to do that until Keltham can improvise something with linear reaction to temperature, that doesn't break down at relatively higher temperatures, calibrate it off one of those incredibly scary and dangerous 'mercury thermometers' that was sent to him, and figure out what temperature is... converting units to obvious landmarks... higher than the melting point of water by 450% of the difference between the melting point of water and the boiling point of water.
Maybe there's something he can do with the thermal expansion of a metal, instead of the expansion of liquid mercury... that requires him to have something to use as a measuring stick, though, and the measuring stick needs to not also be expanding... well, he could use the difference in expansion between different metals, maybe, you could hope for that to be linear... but you'd need a pretty fine-grained view of the differences, going from melting-water to boiling-water will only expand a metal by on the order of 0.1%, if he's got figures roughly right, and using another metal as the reference point would diminish that even further...
Does Lady Avaricia have any ideas for that? Also any ideas for identifying element-23?
If they had a way to measure the target temperature and element-23 - and possibly some way to distill Element-8 'oxygen', though maybe regular air works for that, Keltham isn't sure, or regular air works if you purify it - though all the spells Keltham has read about so far seem unfortunately aimed towards producing a sphere of air, clear of say burning sulfur, and not so much purifying air that you can then use to burn sulfur - but maybe you can pump air out of the purified sphere and it stays pure - or maybe a sufficiently extreme cold spell or Ice-elemental spell would let them liquify air and distill out the oxygen - then they could maybe even complete a full production cycle on sulfuric acid / 'oil of vitriol'! If all goes well, they'll even be able to produce the more expensive high-purity high-concentration 'distilled oil of vitriol' that people usually buy from Hell or the City of Brass!
'Lady Avaricia' is her most preferred form of address, check? The name on her nametag is complicated.
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: One doesn't usually leave other names off a first introduction or a 'nametag', as that'd be denying information to the sort of person who knows how to interpret it, but it's fine to call her something shorter, such as Lady Avaricia.
Mercury thermometers can measure up to three, maybe four, times the difference between the melting point and the boiling point of water. She's not herself worried about their dangerousness but he could do all manipulations remotely with unseen servants if he is. She thinks people've tried almost everything that's cheaper to get than mercury and it's actually just much better; there's not a lot of likelihood they're going to trying at random invent something better in that temperature range, and if she were going outside it she'd probably try mercury admixtures.
The first thing she'd try to find element-23 would be to ask an alchemist supplier for false-spellsilvers that are acid resistant - is she right that element-23 is acid-resistant, it looks like it ought to be.
Keltham: If they can figure out element-31, element-49, and element-50, then mixing those in proportions of 68.5% element-31, 21.5% element-49, and 10% element-50 will create a famous weird alloy that melts at slightly under the melting point of water and... probably goes higher than mercury before it vaporizes? And is relatively not toxic, though you still wouldn't want to, like, drink a glass of that? That's what Civilization uses when it wants metal that's liquid at room temperature. If anybody knows about a light metal with a very low melting point, that's possibly element-31...
...like, probably not doable, but Keltham thought it was worth mentioning. If they knew about element-31 they could use it in thermometers directly, for that matter, unless Keltham is missing some reason why that would work with mercury but not gallium.
The problem with identifying element-23 isn't going to be finding candidates, it's going to be figuring out which candidate is right. Keltham can't really think of any easy element-23 tests. He doesn't have the melting point memorized, or the density, and he's drawing a blank on any other famous chemical reactions that involve vanadium. It should be relatively light but it's not the lightest metal. He's not even sure offhand if it's acid-resistant, the stage of the process where it's used doesn't involve a completed acid.
If Keltham can Prestidigitate calcium or some other nearby metal into behaving like vanadium by directly manipulating the similarity of its outer electromagnetic shell, and build a spectroscope, they could maybe burn the fake vanadium to see how it looks under a spectroscope, and burn real relatively-light metals under a spectroscope, and figure out which real metal looks like fake vanadium. Possibly.
Have they got something that breaks up light into component frequencies, or 'colors' as they'd have it here, along a linear spectrum that runs from red to blue within its visible part?
lintamande: - you can do that with most crystals.
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "I have diamond earrings in my room which you may borrow, assuming I'll either get them back intact or be given compensation to replace them."
Keltham: All right. The tech behind a spectroscope seems relatively simple. Next on the plan is building a spectroscope, seeing how it plays with Prestidigitated and natural materials as they get burned within a flame of standardized temperature - they should see about getting a 'bound fire elemental' for that possibly, it seems like the sort of heat output that might be possibly more standardized than burning wood or candles - and then seeing if Keltham can Prestidigitate calcium ash or a different metal into burning the color spectrum that element-23 should burn, given its orbitals, and that'll give them a reference point for looking through fake spellsilvers.
Is there any sort of magic for magnifying things enormously, like Keltham might use to zoom in on a less than 0.1% divergence in the thermal expansion of two different metals?
lintamande: There's not magic for that which anyone here knows of.
Keltham: Consider that general research field marked as important.
Among the general facts that Civilization knows is that there is a LOT you can do with sufficiently finely applied forces.
If there were some way to make people ten times larger, wizards ten times smaller, and then look inside of people's bodies, for example, you could probably use just a Mage Hand to apply permanent reversible male contraception, eg via tying a little bow-tie knot in the channel that conducts sperm to semen.
Oh, uh, in case nobody's mentioned it to the new candidates, very cheap contraception that can be afforded and used even by very stupid people is one of the standing requests from Chelish Governance. Without that, increasing agricultural yields relative to reference farmland, or improving anti-plague measures relative to a reference urban density, might only get you larger or denser populations until they get hungry again or sick again.
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: - that's actually clever. She approves.
Keltham: All right, this was a long day but it feels at least to him like they are on an exciting journey of discovery that hopefully soon reaches something saleable.
Thanks Lady Avaricia, if she was trying to impress him, she succeeded.
Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "If I were trying to impress you I'd be glad to hear that, I guess."
Keltham: Keltham will avoid suggesting in the future that she might be trying to impress him.
Good night, everybody!
Ione Sala: "Sevar, Asmodia, Pilar, can we have a moment?"
Carissa Sevar: Sure can.
Ione Sala: "We're doomed."
"She's a trope."
Carissa Sevar: " - is she? I think she's just an obnoxious person who inconveniently had a more well-rounded education than the rest of us."
Ione Sala: "She's a dath ilani 'eroLARP' trope, and Keltham has already recognized her and is dealing with her however dath ilani tropes say he's supposed to."
"She's next going to turn out to have a sexual fetish that conveniently matches up with him and will be touched by a god."
Carissa Sevar: "Well I guess at least you're making predictions. He did seem to be -
- not confused."
Asmodia: "That's really not good. We have to - figure out some way to undo the evidence that presents for tropes, make Keltham think she's not really whatever trope she is -"
"Except even that - that itself would be too suspicious - after I told Keltham I wasn't really an asexual. If, oh, it turns out on another look, Avaricia is not really whatever she is - that's way too much of a trend -"
"This really isn't good."
Ione Sala: "I DON'T WANT HER IN THE HAREM EITHER."
Carissa Sevar: "Dies in an acid explosion? Too easy to just resurrect her. Quits in a huff? There's still that..."
Asmodia: "Her quitting would look pretty uncharacteristic for tropes... or a competent Conspiracy... but not for Conspiracy trying to hide tropes, what with that being exactly who we are."
"Ione, are you sure."
Ione Sala: "Can you think of some other reason why the incredibly Lawful Good society of dath ilan, with nothing like nobility, would have a recognizable concept for extremely arrogant, condescending, rude, dismissive people like that?"
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 23 (19) / Morning
Keltham: Okay this time Keltham remembers to request Glimpse of Beyond during prayer, and to send out early messages to Carissa, Meritxell, and Yaisa requesting them to prepare Alter Self during their morning spell prep and see him immediately thereafter. (Yaisa didn't particularly remind Keltham after he forgot to keep their appointment last time, but maybe the switcharound is for the better Security-wise.)
lintamande: They do so and show up at approximately all the same time. "Doesn't Keltham have several additional girlfriends?" Yaisa wonders aloud.
Keltham: "Am I missing anybody in particular obviously on this list?"
That would be a pretty worrisome fact if so.
lintamande: "...Asmodia? Ione?"
Keltham: "Do you have reason to believe I've fucked either of those people?"
lintamande: "....just that you vanish to your cuddleroom with them in the evenings frequently."
Keltham: "I've been on... a date with Ione that didn't go to the cuddleroom, and I think I've gone to bed with Asmodia twice? Like actual bedroom bed, not cuddleroom bed. Do you have reason to believe this isn't the case, and if so do you remember which night it was?"
lintamande: " - just what Paxti said. She - might've said 'bedroom', because they're...the same thing."
Carissa Sevar: "I doubt they'd mind doing an Alter Self too even though you definitely haven't been mind-controlled to forget you fucked them."
Keltham: "Neither of them have signed that contract! For obvious reasons! I guess I could ask anyways, but -"
"Carissa, on your own view of reality, how confused am I supposed to be right now?"
Carissa Sevar: " - I am not surprised that the rumor mill among the bored girls who got removed from the project mixed up dates and cuddleroom sessions, so it's not very confusing to me? Rumor mills are just like that; they're not following you and Ione around on a date to find out where it ends. I feel like if there were a Conspiracy here probably they would have told Yaisa not to say the Conspiracy out loud to you for no reason. But that said I suspect that both Asmodia and Ione would be willing for a fairly trivial amount of money to do an Alter Self if it gives you peace of mind."
Keltham: "Okay, you know, let's just get this Self-Altering done. And then I'll track down Paxti and see what she thinks happened. Just to make sure that nobody is accidentally sliding between nearly-neighboring parallel universes, because that is very an 'eroLARP' trope."
Carissa Sevar: Why is her life like this. Or rather why is dath ilani fiction, which her life needs to be not mistakeable for, like this.
lintamande: They all cast Alter Self and turn into boys! To Glimpse of Beyond/Glimpse of Truth they still look like their normal selves! They all turn back as the spell wears off (you can stop it early but then you risk Keltham worrying about whether the duration matters).