6.1 - what the truth can destroy

Ferrer Maillol: "No fucking shit she's not safe to have in class even Dominated, she's already done us more damage than we would have guessed possible from her starting point. I think we've got to treat her as - a dangerously clever and alien outsider, like dath ilan managed to rewrite her mind as an attack on us."

Carissa Sevar: "In that case maybe the best thing to do is to send her to Hell and not get an answer to any of our questions. And make the girls stagger their evenings of Owl's Wisdom reflection so Abarco can watch them all during and for a while after. This isn't my call, though, I expect Egorian to have opinions, and even my recommendation to them is going to wait on the Security report.

- do you know of other - cases like this, other kinds of people who've gone insane and decided to betray everything while already soul-sold -"

Ferrer Maillol: "Yeah. Sometimes people - just do. I don't know why, really, but my guess is that whatever part of them understands what's waiting for them in Hell just - gives up, from all the weight their mind is putting on it. The knowledge of the torment awaiting them keeps forcing them to do a job they don't like, and one day that part breaks, they decide reality is too unpleasant and, just deny it, step out of that state of mind to something else. They Teleport out of Cheliax and just don't think about what's waiting for them when their sold soul gets collected, I imagine. I guess. I don't know what's true, and I can't imagine what that feels like from the inside."

"Most of those just hide. A very few of them - give every secret they've got to a temple of Iomedae."

"I don't know why. Maybe they think that Hell can't hurt them any worse than for desertion? We tell them that's not true, that you can always go lower, but -"

"It happens. I don't actually understand it."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think whatever dath ilani technique this was involves denying the truth."

Ferrer Maillol: "I don't trust dath ilan that much. On the Tallandria hypothesis of dath ilan's real origin, their happy citizens could be programmed with ideas specifically designed to make people from Golarion go insane in a useful way, maybe even targeting Asmodeans directly."

"Or Peranza could have snapped in some much more ordinary way, and yes, denied reality, after Keltham's teachings put her under too much stress also in a very ordinary way. We don't know."

Carissa Sevar: "Well, Security will get us our report shortly. - for the record, possibly at this point we should have all the staff here mindread directly by devils."

lintamande: Security brings their report. The version judged almost certainly safe for senior staff to read says that Keltham had introduced a mental technique for ceasing self-deception, and Peranza had gotten stuck on the idea it'd take effect when she used Owl's Wisdom. She did so, and had some kind of total collapse from accumulated strain over how much she was self-deceiving. She tried to mentally retreat into alter-Peranza, which didn't work either, and then while flailing around mentally cast Fox's Cunning and ended up hitting on 'be a dath ilani from Keltham's stories'. Security acknowledges this doesn't sound like a reasonable thing that would reasonably happen but they haven't got anything better. Then, she decided a dath ilani from Keltham's stories would betray the project immediately for Iomedae, and did that.

Carissa Sevar: "That's so - unsatisfying - why are humans so terrible - all right, if there's a way to make it safe I want a Security to talk to her, to see if it's contagious, and for that matter if it's permanent.

And then we kill her." Some instinct wanted to end that sentence with 'I guess', but she stops herself. Obviously then they kill her. That's the obvious thing to do. There's no reasonable case for doing any other thing; she only undermines herself, sounding like she's in doubt.

Ferrer Maillol: "I'm frankly not seeing how to make it safe. Not in a way that doesn't consume Hell's intervention budget or a Miracle diamond."

Carissa Sevar: She's not upset about sending Peranza to Hell, she's genuinely not. But - but she's not going to become a devil there. Hell can't fix her. Abrogail warned them, that all this niceness had a flip side, that if they betrayed the project then they'd hurt, forever, even if that wasn't profitable for their owners, even if it was a waste -

So Peranza shouldn't have done that, should she have. You can't not follow through on a commitment like that once you've made it; if anything, that means people will force your hand more often. Maybe Carissa was too nice, and that's why this happened.

"Right. Then -"

Security: "I have a supposedly extremely urgent delivery of a cookie to the Chosen, along with the message: 'You don't have to order that yourself. He's already here.'"

Carissa Sevar: - who, Asmodeus? is Carissa's first incredibly stupid thought.

Her second thought is to be annoyed that someone thinks she can't handle being a cruel tyrannical Asmodean, which is her entire job here.

"Uh, who's here?"

Gorthoklek: "That entity is one I find to be of increasing concern, especially given that it seems to be evading a direct meeting with myself."

The dusk-skinned, white-eyed, 8-foot-tall armored man probably doesn't look particularly familiar to anyone here. But if you've heard General Gorthoklek talking before, it's very clear whose voice that is.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa will kneel with considerably more terror than she feels at unexpected Abrogail. Unexpected Abrogail happens often enough to practically be expected. Senior devils do not.

Ferrer Maillol: Maillol more falls than kneels. He's got some trauma.

Gorthoklek: "I am well capable of preventing Iomedae from seeing into one of our Lord's temples."

"I cannot interrogate this one or report on her to you. That is outside my limited remit in this place, if it is not a matter of slaying mortals to prevent the spread of a dangerous idea from beyond. But I can protect her interrogation from enemy eyes."

"And slay her after, I suppose, if that Caydenspawn seems to believe you should not do that. It has not visibly betrayed our Lord as yet, and the logic is obvious enough for how that deed might hamper your corruption of Keltham, if you must face him knowing that you yourself slew one of his."

Carissa Sevar: That doesn't sound quite right, as an articulation of why it'd interfere between Carissa and Keltham. It feels like something that'd stand between them even if overall Keltham came around on Evil. She is not going to argue the point with Gorthoklek.

"Can you monitor the interrogator, also, and kill them if that needs doing?" Otherwise I am deeply unsure who to assign that job.

Gorthoklek: "Yes."

"Make no wasteful haste about this matter, but do not dawdle about it either. My time is valuable."

Carissa Sevar: "Right. I think - not Abarco. The idiot Security who fucked this up in the first place, can question her, see if we get any more than we did from the original mindread. And then if he survives that intact, but doesn't learn much, we can send in Abarco."

She does not want to make any motions towards not kneeling but she'll get a message off to this effect.

Peranza of Civilization: Peranza opens her eyes, chained in an Asmodean temple, facing one of the newer and lesser Security set to monitor the likes of herself.

She is not as wise now not as intelligent, but she remembers who she now is -

- remembers what she did, and it's only now, in fact, that the actual thought occurs to her of what she did -

- and all the screaming horror and terror in her gets crushed down in sheer reflex, because that's what she does all the time -

- it's probably what Miyalsvor would do, there must be some perfectly reasonable reason that she made the right decision, she was smart then, it's probably because ilani don't yield to threats so that must be the right way to be -

- what's done is done she has to play this out has to hope because she literally can't get any more fucked -

- but she is an ilani, now, who dares to grasp and use their techniques. The minds around her are lesser ones, they do not know themselves, dare not know themselves as she knows them, the flaws in them. All the more convenient if they're reading her mind, that means they'll know that she speaks true.

She looks at the Security before her and reasons in a flash, because there's no time and maybe no safety in reasoning in more detail than that; she guesses, from the absence of terrorizing in his demeanor that would be present if this one was here to terrorize her and hadn't recently screwed up, that this one is the one who screwed up. It's not a certainty, but an ilani thinks in probabilities even when they're not thinking in numbers -

"You're probably due for quite a lot of punishment, for letting me do that," Peranza says out loud. "You do not, in fact, need to let them hurt you. It is not in fact the correct decision for you, to tolerate that. Asmodeus is not something that any human being should ever serve, you have your own will, your own wants, and Civilization can make you a better offer. You, anyone who's listening. Come with me, take me and Keltham from this place, and after a long life filled with beauty and all the humanity that was denied you, you can be a statue for a time. Until Civilization in this world has brought Hell to heel, as it will do. As I know, because I dare to think, now, and use the Law your superiors are too scared to use, because they know they can't handle the truth."

"Feel free to truthspell me about any of that, or read my mind."

lintamande: " - is that really what you thought?" he says. "That you'd escape, that Keltham will leave, that you'll never have to go to Hell? Because - you know, honestly, I am going to be embarrassed on your behalf, putting that in the report of why you defected. It's very, very delusional. It can be fixed in everyone else by just telling them - truthfully - that they're not going to escape, and Keltham's not going to turn on the Project, not on his precious riches and his precious girls he can hurt and his precious sense that he picked the right side to hand the keys to world domination."

Peranza of Civilization: She openly laughs. No Bluff, it's real.

"If that was true, they'd just tell him now. False, and know that you will not be able to deceive an ilani."

"Or if you actually believe that, read my mind or truthspell me so you know how honest I am in fact being, see that I know, when I say that Keltham will turn on the Project the moment he learns. Giving up his sense that he picked the right side? He won't even hesitate. He taught us that in his class, were you not there that day? The art of just saying oops and getting it over with?"

"Isn't it wonderful? There's an incredibly powerful new form of thought that no Asmodean can wield and remain Asmodean. It's just false that it's in our best interest to serve a horrible god and go to Hell and get tortured. It's just false that we don't have any better options. Everyone in Lastwall and in Osirion will be able to learn it with no problems."

"Cheliax is doomed. Keltham himself couldn't hand them the keys to world domination if he tried, and he is trying, not knowing that it's impossible; because, it turns out, this is what happens when somebody actually does grasp those keys."

"You are not on the winning side."

"But you could be."

"Or hurt me, and my Civilization will come for you even in Hell, to avenge me. Think on that, if you yield to threats. And if you don't, then what are you even doing here? Be more afraid of rising Civilization than falling Hell, or throw aside all your fears and join us; it's the right decision either way."

lintamande: "No one else who Keltham's put through his extra special Keeper training seems to be having any trouble. Just you. Why'd you see it when they didn't?"

Peranza of Civilization: She smiles again. "Somebody had to be first, that's all."

lintamande: "I don't buy it. I'm not interested in learning all the dath ilan stuff, I've been tuning half of it out, but I've picked up some things and I don't buy that you think you defected to the winning side. Should I put it in a dath ilani kind of way? Some Peranzas are stuck in a world where Iomedae's a poser, and her countries are at their limits holding onto the Worldwound and could spare no one for a war with Cheliax even if they thought it was as urgent as that, and could spare only a few units if they thought it was more important than that. And where Abadar is down to negotiate with us so Osirion won't stand in our way, or where they try and we flatten them. Cheliax is making spellsilver much much cheaper than anyone else, as you kindly tried to tell Iomedae, though it doesn't look like it worked. The headband assembly line is, what, a few weeks from working, and then Sevar can do the same thing for items with military applications.

And those are the things I happen to know about from following the reject whores who signed up for special Keeper training; I don't think they're all the real Project has going.

Some Peranzas - most Peranzas, I'd argue, but let's go with 'some Peranzas' - live in a world where Hell's going to win, and they're going to spend the rest of eternity paying for that one try at letting Good know what's coming. And you have no idea how Cheliax and Osirion stack up militarily, or how many soldiers Iomedae commands, or whether the secret thing that made the war with Nidal go so fast for us will be replicated, so there's no way you sized up some facts you knew and decided you were on the winning side.

I don't know why you did it, but that's not why."

Peranza of Civilization: "You've got one deceived ilani showing you a few simple tricks they teach to nine-year-olds. Because he hasn't figured out the lie, yet, as he inevitably will once he has enough evidence. He may get it the morning I don't show up for class."

"Osirion and Lastwall will have thousands of ilani."

"You weren't around back when Keltham showed us the results. They have a Radiance device that can lift things into space with light alone, that could burn clear through any castle in Golarion in seconds from ten miles away, and that wasn't even a weapon to them."

"Cheliax won't have that. Keltham himself doesn't know how to make it. That takes thousands of ilani working together, to deduce and then build, and that's something Cheliax can never, ever have."

"There will not be a war with Cheliax. There will be a rescue operation on Cheliax."

lintamande: "Again, you did not think through any of that before you decided to try to get Iomedae's attention, and you do not know a bunch of facts that are relevant to whether it's true, like, can we just crush them both tomorrow before they get the chance to benefit from any of that. So what were you actually thinking."

Peranza of Civilization: "Why are you acting like you need me to say it in order for you to know? If you don't have Detect Thoughts prepped, can I politely suggest that you go requisition a scroll or a staff of it? I'm sure Stores has some, and this will go better if you know I'm being honest."

lintamande: "No one's taking suggestions of any kind from the crazy bitch who was the only person on Project Lawful who couldn't take it.

You know why this happened to you, right? It's because after Pilar had her breakdown about how to reconcile Asmodeanism and being dath ilani her big revelation was that she'd been too unwilling to be cruel, so she told Sevar that the rest of you should be put through this.

I kinda figure, some'll break like you, some'll break like her."

Peranza of Civilization: What an interesting thing for 'cruelty' to suggest. Was Snack Service possibly involved? Thanks for that valuable information.

Peranza doesn't say that part out loud. If this annoying idiot insists on not reading her mind, he can just get to not hear about it, then.

"So it takes slightly more Law to finish breaking someone who literally came back from Elysium. Who now doesn't dare to go on learning, until Keltham has tried to teach some more disposable subjects, in the hopes that one of those somehow won't break, so Pilar Pineda, pet of Aspexia Rugatonn, can learn from them how she can be an ilani safely."

"It's not even slightly going to work. I know, now. But I suppose you'll have to rely on Sense Motive to believe me about that, if you don't have Detect Thoughts or a truthspell."

lintamande: "Have you got any arguments for why it isn't going to work that aren't appeals to military information you don't have."

Peranza of Civilization: "This would in fact be easier to explain if you'd tried to pick up the material on ilanism while it was being taught."

"You're coming at this from the wrong angle. You have no idea what an ilani can deduce. That thing Keltham does, that you should've been warned about by Asmodia, where you say something that sounds ordinary and innocent to you, and Keltham makes some far-reaching deduction using Laws you don't understand?"

"Not only can I do it too, now, but I realized that I'd been doing a lot of it already. Asmodeans just train themselves not to know they're doing it, which is how I was able to know what I knew right away, without taking a lot of extra time to think."

"For example. Among the military information you think I don't have - I'd ask how you think you even know what information I have, but you'd have to be an ilani to realize why 'how do I even know that' is an important question - is a conversation between Sevar and the Queen of Cheliax, back when the Queen and the Most High were taking tea with the rest of us, a couple of days after Keltham made his hiring decisions. Asmodia asked if she could have female wizard students from outside Cheliax to examine, kidnapped ones. Sevar mentioned that Felandriel Morgethai's university was the reason we don't own Andoran, and that the Magesterium in Absalom is the reason nobody's ever conquered it."

"You aren't allowed to think about what that implies about the relative military strength of Cheliax."

"Or rather, you're not allowed to think of it in words. A part of yourself that you can't see, but an ilani can, reads ahead to what the results would be if you did think about it, and it warns off the part of yourself exposed to Detect Thoughts from thinking anything that sounds disloyal. But that part of you has to know what you would deduce to warn you off from that."

"If I say, now, that all the students at Morgethai's university and Absalom's Magesterium will have a far easier time of picking up everything Keltham's trying to teach, because they're not afraid of seeing truths like that, some part of you is flinching right now. And for that part of yourself to know to flinch, it must already know what you'd deduce if you let yourself look."

"That's why I was able to know immediately what the real truth of the matter was, as soon as I stopped not looking there. My mind had already calculated it."

"And now that I've said that much to you, you will, inevitably, start to see it yourself at some point, which is why they picked a disposable low-ranking Security officer for this interview instead of putting Abarco on it. You're definitely going to need to flee Cheliax at some point. That part is inevitable. Part of you already knows that, which is why you can feel yourself flinching away from thinking of it right now."

lintamande: "You're making a pretty compelling case that if your 'deductions' are true and not just 'making random assumptions and declaring them dath ilani' we'd better kill Keltham as soon as we have to let him go, which I assume the people in charge of that have already thought about. I don't buy that you calculated the real and inevitable truth instead of just leaping to some random convenient conclusions, though. But I believe you believe you did, which is disappointing. I'll have to report that you really just delusionally convinced yourself everyone is as weak as you, Cheliax is doomed, Keltham'll build an ilani Civilization spanning all our neighbors and we'll for some reason not be able to do anything about that including letting the demons eat them like will totally happen if we redeploy our forces, and...

....actually, that's insufficient? Even if all that happens, you'll be in Hell being tortured forever. Is it that much of a consolation prize to imagine the side you switched to at the last minute conquered the country you betrayed?"

Peranza of Civilization: "It's hard for me to figure out how much of this apparent illogic is due to you actually believing it, or due to you thinking that somebody else might be watching. If anybody is watching, they're also disposable and thinking or rather not-thinking the same things you are right now, and both of you should Cooperate with each other on that multiagent cooperation-defection dilemma."

"If you actually believe that, then let's start to play the game ilani do. Tell me your probability that I can point out an enormous gaping flaw in your logic about killing Keltham, large enough that even you won't put up much of a fight about it once I say it. Ten percent? Ninety percent? Do you already know you're wrong?"

lintamande: "I already know you're going to declare I'm wrong and any ilani would see it, but your reasoning is going to be a mishmash of random shit that you declare is all secretly related. It's a very powerful style of thinking, and also it's basically nonsense."

Peranza of Civilization: "Give me a probability that I'm just right and you don't have a good rejoinder, as will be acknowledged by your changing the subject."

lintamande: "Zero."

Peranza of Civilization: "Then you'd bet at odds of infinity to nothing against me? All right, let's form a compact then; if in your own judgment you don't have a good rejoinder, you must do your best to help us escape together. If in my own true judgment you win the argument, I'll tell you what you need to know. I so swear if you do."

lintamande: "You know why I actually don't think everyone's going to fall apart? Because you have to take the ilani shit - a specific kind of seriously. Not just 'hey, this is a useful way of coming up with ideas' or 'this is a useful way of checking ideas you came up with', but 'this is the ONLY TRUTH and any reasoning that makes sense from an ilani angle is infallible and I should follow it right off a cliff'. Maybe some particularly worthless teenage girls who've never tried to do real things in the real world fall apart on contact with that, but I think anyone who has actually tried to get anything done will go 'no, thanks, I appreciate the new set of ideas, I will use them alongside all my existing ideas and not follow them off any cliffs'.

So no. Swearing to things on the basis of an argument about them is obviously following ilanism off the insanest possible cliff and is something that you'd have to be incredibly worthless to be vulnerable to."

Peranza of Civilization: "Only if there exists some tiny probability that you're wrong, so zero probability is bullshit, and the part of you that's afraid to compact knows that what another part said in words is bullshit."

"You think you have your own special brand of thought, unLawful but whose power is on par with that of the Law that Cheliax is so desperate to obtain? Go build that giant Radiance not-weapon. You think you can just not take it seriously? Go tell Pilar that, she'll be very relieved that the answer was so simple and she can resume her lessons."

"They obviously haven't told you the truth about why Cheliax is playing so gently with Keltham, why they're not just hurting him into obedience instead of plying him with the Queen's own bedmate, why they're not Suggesting him or using Geas or Scribe's Binding or a hundred other tricks. I expect you know nothing at all about the real forces behind this, the 'tropes', the reason why Cayden Cailean is giving out snacks and Cheliax is apparently fine with that, why there's a random halfling hanging around."

"You are a disposable Security guard, sent here to die, to get information out of me while knowing nothing yourself, and the reason you're not allowed to read my mind is that they know you'd see that in there."

lintamande: "Yeah, I know nothing about any of that. I don't need to know anything about any of that. You also know nothing about several dozen other things that are like that which didn't happen to come to your attention. That's kind of how it goes."

Peranza of Civilization: "It begins to seem to me that my own best interest is to allow you to fail at this interview, so they have to send in somebody I'd find more useful to persuade. You, I now expect, have been placed within some surrounding prison of your own; you're not thinking about what I'm saying because you think there's nothing you can do about it even if you want to."

"Thing is, disposable people like that? They're obviously disposable, to everyone except themselves. Even to themselves, they just can't think it. And it's not in my own interest to talk to someone if the whole plan is to kill them before my own words can have any effect. I suppose I could start figuring out what I'd want you to report, if nobody's going to read my mind to check on it."

lintamande: "I am sure someone's reading your mind, because whether reading your mind is dangerous and whether talking to you is dangerous are separate questions worth checking separately. I do think we're about done here, though. Maybe they'll kill me, once I head out and report that you're just sad and pretending you know things you don't; I kind of bet not, because they don't have an infinite supply of Security, but we'll see."

Peranza of Civilization: "They'll hurt you less before you die if you don't say anything that stupid, that you couldn't even possibly know, while reporting that you failed to find the answers to any of their questions."

"Let's see who's up next." And if she can work her way up to somebody with the power to actually get her out.

lintamande: "Almost certainly what's up is that we hurt you very, very badly, and that part we let Iomedae watch. I'll check, though, just in case there's anything else to ask while you still have the ability to string together sentences."

He steps out.

Peranza of Civilization: She has in fact been trying not to think about that.

lintamande: "Well?" says Elias Abarco.

"I don't think she's dangerous to you but she thinks she is, to the point of saying she should play along until she gets someone in there who has the power to decide to defect with her. - do you want a more detailed summary -"

"Yes."

"Other countries can become ilani and Chelish people can't, we're doomed, she's on the winning side, it's all obvious once you're ilani enough to see all the hidden patterns, we're disposable, Cheliax is going to kill us just for hearing her so we have nothing to lose. I do think it'd work better on anyone who's been trying to adopt the ilani mode of thinking, she's pretty good at arguing within it."

"You're scared Cheliax is going to kill you just for hearing her."

"I mean, yeah, no kidding. She's wrong about all the other bullshit."

"Go write it up and sit until I come out."

"Yes, sir."

lintamande: "I hear you were hoping to see me," Elias Abarco says brightly to Peranza. "Or, 'someone who could defect if you persuaded them', and I'm going to consider myself qualified. Of course, I'm not actually here to talk, but you can make noises with your mouth if you want. That's how I'll tell if I've hurt you enough yet."

Peranza of Civilization: "Are you authorized to read my mind? And if not, is there some other reason why anyone would trust anything I'd say under torture?"

lintamande: "I'm authorized to read your mind but I'm going to do it by having someone else make a transcript and read it out to me, simplifies my report after the fact. And it means I can tune them out and just enjoy myself without worrying I'll compromise the accuracy of my summary. You're very pretty, you know that? If I were Sevar I'd have tried to break the ugly ones first, less wasteful."

Peranza of Civilization: "Are we just playing the game where you're straight-up lying to me? Seems like quite the waste of time. You're not incompetent enough to have priorities like that, and if there's nobody giving you continuous updates on whether I'm lying, it means there's nobody reading my mind."

lintamande: "Tsk tsk, and here I thought you wanted to be ilani. Any level of competence can go with any given priorities."

torture

He surveys her thoughtfully and then calls a knife to his hand and starts cutting from her jawline to her forehead, across her eye. "See, that's a little better already. You know how in Hell there are just those seething balls of tortured flesh? I've always wondered if you can get that effect in Golarion, if you're willing to throw enough healing at it, but I've never had occasion to find out."

Peranza of Civilization: Peranza grew up in Cheliax, and has good-enough pain tolerance to make it through Ostenso academy without being one of the very brightest students, and then Subirachs trained her in case Keltham wanted to use her. This isn't a level of pain that would break her.

torture

Losing sight in one eye is unnerving, the prospect of being blind is unnerving; but that's the obvious thing for a torturer to do, right, it doesn't cost them anything, it's not even evidence about whether you're about to lose the other eye, which they won't do because then they can't show you things to scare you.

But she's invented an ilani theory of being tortured over the last few minutes. It says that your reaction to any torture should be the same as your reaction to the most severe possible torture, so that you're not giving the adversary any probabilistic evidence about how much something hurts or whether they need to torture you any harder or whether anything you're saying is true.

So Peranza is screaming like her soul is being ripped out of her, and sobbing something about how Asmodia has secret superpowers, Asmodia made her do it.

lintamande: That's genuinely pretty baffling until he gets the update from the mindreader about what she's doing.

....okay he's pretty sure this is not in fact ilanism this is some weird cope that exists entirely inside Peranza's head, built out of scraps, to face what the rest of eternity is going to be like. In which case there's not much left to do here aside from make sure she doesn't get tortured less because she figured out a way to make it less useful. He can do weird made-up-on-the-spot torture-related game theory too.

Peranza of Civilization: She's made her point and can go back to it as required if he starts getting any more serious. For now, back to trying to take apart his mind. "Do you actually have - ow - questions, Abarco? It's possible I'd just answer if you asked."

lintamande: "What specific mental technique caused you to have a breakdown and switch sides and do you think you'd have had the breakdown with or without that."

Peranza of Civilization: "You had somebody reading my mind while that happened, and if you want more details you're going to need to give me an Owl's Wisdom and a Fox's Cunning so I'm able to think those thoughts again in any more detail." She doesn't say out loud that they'd need somebody reading her mind while they did that, to trust the answers; Abarco can deduce that on his own and her saying that gives away slightly more of what she's planning. Though, mostly, her plan is just to have the more powerful Peranza rip apart whatever mind is looking at her.

lintamande: "Yeah, not happening. Who do you think is likeliest to break next."

Peranza of Civilization: "Yeah, then you're not knowing. Sevar." She's lying, it's Gregoria, obviously, she's the one getting dangerous-ilanism exposure. Her mind briefly considers Tonia, though, and that gives her another idea -

lintamande: He gets that update, decides not to comment on it. "If Sevar breaks what would do it."

Peranza of Civilization: "Being the smartest person on this project, having the most advanced mastery of Law, and starting to figure out the actual reality surrounding her."

"It really is that fucking simple, Abarco."

(Truth.)

lintamande: "That's not an answer. Which aspect of the actual reality surrounding her would bother Sevar if she admitted it."

Peranza of Civilization: "You want the long fucking list or the really long fucking list? The Church, Cheliax, and Asmodeus pulled an un-Lawful trick on her by threatening her, contrary to how the actual Law works, into ever, ever doing a single thing for them that she didn't make up for by killing city guardsmen in their sleep. She's going to end up in Hell getting tortured until she no longer remembers her own name and that's not, in fact, in her own best interests. Everything the Church said about Asmodeus's inevitable victory is an obvious pack of lies in view of the actual strategic situation in Golarion where neither He nor Cheliax are anything remotely like all-powerful. On some level you already know the actual reality I'm talking about; it's everything you've calculated in the back of your mind would be disloyal if you ended up thinking it. If you want to know what will break Sevar, all you need to do is look at all those thoughts."

lintamande: Slice. "I think you're overestimating me. I don't actually maintain an up-to-date list of heresies to not think about, you'll have to spell them all out. I did figure, a couple years ago, that Asmodeus's inevitable victory might well come in a million years and not help me personally much, but now I'm thinking it's going to be sooner, what with how Cheliax is weeks or months from having an insurmountable military advantage over every other country on Golarion. Pretty exciting, being personally present for the great arc of history, but if it turns out I'm wrong and it's a million years from now after all, so it goes, at least I had a lot of fun along the way."

Peranza of Civilization: "Doesn't sound like much of a trope to me. You've been here since the beginning, Abarco, you know how weird the shit around Project Lawful actually gets, and you know nothing that normal is going to happen out from here."

lintamande: "We're not in a story. In real life, the side that's richer and has better gear wins, and takes their enemies to pieces." Which he'll get started on, if she doesn't have anything else interesting to say.

Peranza of Civilization: "This - is starting to be - not fun for me - and remember what happened - when Tonia was facing - a punishment a lot less severe - than turning her into - a quivering ball? Or sending her - to Hell? This is - the wrong move, Abarco - just turn me into a statue - and don't risk Cayden Cailean's cooperation - with the Project."

lintamande: "I'm doing you a favor, kid. When I get bored you're going straight to Hell, and I promise you, you'll wish you were back here for as long as you can keep on wishing things."

Peranza of Civilization: "Even if - the tropes let you do that - you aren't likely to do well from it, Abarco - were you there - the day when Keltham said - that the ones being held prisoner here - and taught Law - were the story's real protagonists - do you really want to get - what villains get - for doing things like this -"

lintamande: "There's no story. There never was. There's just the real world, and in the real world it's better not to betray your country and your god. I think I'm done with you making annoying noises, now."

torture

And he goes to reposition her, so he can cut out her tongue without risking her choking to death on her blood.

Peranza of Civilization: Peranza is, in fact, starting to not have fun here, and to feel scared, and miserable, as Abarco is good at.

torture

The sharp pain of cuts, one after another, lingering pains accumulating from wounds already dealt, the stabbing agony where one eye used to be, you can take them individually but they're distractions each time and it consumes your attention, your will, to ignore them.

The part with him getting ready to cut out her tongue is - is he actually not trying to get information from her, she doesn't understand, why not, don't they need to know -

Maybe they actually are reading her mind.

The prospect of being helpless to talk, helpless to say anything, is frightening in a way that strikes at her narrative, the thin shred of, maybe not even hope, but of having something to do, that she's been clinging to.

The thought occurs to her, then, that it might not take that much more torture before the new Peranza dissolves the way the other ones did, when there's no way out, no thoughts left -

And then -

Peranza of Civilization: She decides not to break.

There isn't a reason for it, she just decides not to.

It's something that Keltham told them about early on in their special lessons, the idea that, even if you end up in a place where your internal model predicts that you ought to break, you also have the option of deciding not to.

Pilar : Pilar Pineda, entirely unknowing about a lot of things, knocks at the door of the temple torture room, irregardless of the several Security posted outside the temple to warn most Project personnel away.

"Pineda here," she calls loudly through the temple door, as Snack Service is instructing her. "I've got a message from my oracular curse for a high-ranking military officer who's visiting us? It says Zon-Kuthon's clerics found out two days ago that they've lost their eighth-circle spells. Nidal is likely though not certain to start planning a major assault including the Black Triune, starting within two to three weeks, and if so they are likely but not certain to initially target the Kintargo wedge of Cheliax's army."

"Also somebody standing near the visiting officer is about to make a serious blunder with respect to good future relations between Keltham and Cheliax, which will not serve Asmodeus's interests on net, and my curse is offering to just directly tell him whatever they wanted to find out that way."

"If either of them want to talk to my curse about it, they can talk in a language that isn't Taldane or Infernal. It says I'm not cleared to enter this room or overhear either conversation myself."

"Also at least one of them needs to take this cookie, it retroactively doesn't work without a cookie being involved."

Gorthoklek: Gorthoklek does react fast enough to throw up a Silence around Peranza before Pilar's hand even touches the door.

It's still incredibly disturbing that he did not spot Pilar there until then.

An oracle's curse should not have this much power. That was evident in several ways and earlier, but even so. There's having anomalously high power, and then there's having enough power to obscure yourself from a pit fiend. Even now he cannot measure the exact formidability of what lies beyond the temple door, and that is not something which should be true at all.

lintamande: - Abarco Sleeps Peranza, not anywhere near as fast as the Silence but fast enough she shouldn't detect his hesitating in his work on her, and kneels, and thinks his assessment of the situation in case it is of use to Gorthoklek.

Peranza thought that Cayden Cailean might intervene for her. Threatened that Cheliax shouldn't hurt her lest it break their collaboration with Cailean. It seems entirely plausible that this is the whole of Cailean's plan, what He was purchasing with everything else; that the girls would believe, correctly or at least with justification, that Cailean would intervene on their behalf, that they'd recklessly betray Cheliax on that assumption, remembering Tonia finding herself outside the fortress, believing that could be them.

The greatest threat to the project at this time, in his view, is defection. If they can hold onto the girls, they can win everything; if they can't, it will all come crashing down. It does not seem worth it to him to make any concession that makes it easier for the girls to believe Cailean would help them. In fact, if Pilar returns to the fortress un-cursed, and everyone learns that the Project at last broke with Cayden Cailean over whether Peranza should be tortured to death, that seems good for Asmodeus, so good for Asmodeus that it's hard to imagine some benefit of not torturing Peranza beats it. (Though the break with Cailean would be hard to conceal from Keltham; Abarco's not aware of the current state of the contingencies for that.)

Gorthoklek: Gorthoklek likewise replies by Telepathy. "Speak your thoughts to this curse, then, in some tongue Pineda would not know. Let us see how it debates you."

This situation is beyond anomalous and Gorthoklek is unsure of the effects of engaging this Cayden-made thing even in verbal combat. There is something symbolic, and perhaps a warning, in how it stays beyond a threshold separating itself from him.

The information on Nidal is a clear offering, a verifiable one, but it does not seem to be an offering made from a position of weakness. It announces capabilities previously unseen, and disturbing in their implications, alongside the valuable military information.

lintamande: - all right, Abarco will stand up and go to the door and speak, in less-than-fluent Kelish (he learned it to read Nexian books, not to speak with powerful entities).

"The traitor anticipated your arrival here. Warned us not to hurt her, lest that invite you to break with Asmodeus. That is a great harm you have done the project, and very profoundly against Asmodeus's interests. Defection is a substantial risk to the project, and any indication that you'll protect defectors from the fate they would face weakens Asmodeus. I think it's likely you're lying, and likely that Asmodeus is best served if we tell you to go away and permit Our church the handling of our traitor."

Curse of Laughter: Snack Service will respond in the same language, as Pilar permits it to speak.

"Actually, the traitor wasn't thinking anything like that at the time! The report the Security gave you was missing a lot but the basic outline is right. The traitor didn't think at all about what she was getting herself into by calling out to that god! She was just doing what one of the characters from one of Keltham's stories would do. You put her in a situation where Security was reading her mind and ready to act against her. So she needed something she could do at the speed of thought, and she knew she had to do that as soon as she thought of it. Her mind didn't have time to think about the consequences at all, let alone how to get out of those! She hasn't admitted that part to herself because it makes her look reckless instead of courageous, but it's what happened. The traitor thought of Snack Service afterwards as an argument she could use against Abarco, alongside other arguments like tropes, future Civilization, and if you'd let her keep going she'd have thought of more things. Afterwards, not before."

"Whether Keltham comes over to your side at the end, or leaves for elsewhere, he'll be incredibly upset with Sevar and Cheliax afterwards if a Chelish officer under Sevar's command severely tortured the traitor! He considers her something of his because she's working for him, even if they didn't flirt very much."

lintamande: " - when I'm done, we're going to send her to Hell. You object to that too?"

Curse of Laughter: "Pilar's curse sure does! It'd be better for relations with Keltham if you statued her out of respect for his interests and his pride. However, Pilar's curse knows it won't win that argument. It's not ideal if what Sevar says afterwards is that the senior devil showed up and took the decision and execution out of her hands, but it's definitely better than the event with you torturing her while working for Sevar. Pilar's curse notes that should have been obvious at the point where Pilar's curse stopped Sevar from giving the death order in the first place."

Gorthoklek: Indeed, it would not win that argument. If it is truly correct to refrain from shattering this Peranza, Cayden Cailean may plainly communicate the reasons so to Asmodeus, who reigns supreme in Hell and may intervene there as He wills; there is not even the faintest need to trust this curse's word in that matter.

lintamande: "So it's fine if she's killed slowly and painfully, and understood that she'll suffer more once she's dead, but not fine if any of that's done by anyone who answers to Sevar?"

Curse of Laughter: "It's all injurious to Asmodeus's interests! It's least injurious if she gets turned into a statue out of respect for Keltham's pride, or with her judgment on hold until Keltham can negotiate about her. Things that all independently add to the degree of harm to Asmodeus's interests include torturing her severely, letting the other girls on the Project actually know what happened to their friend, and sending her to Hell. Pilar in particular shouldn't be allowed to know exactly what happened until a while later, it would come between her and Asmodeus if she found out now."

lintamande: Elias Abarco is fairly disgusted with anyone whose relationship with Asmodeus would be damaged by the realization His faithful torture traitors. I mean, really. Of course they torture traitors. Taldor's traitors don't die quickly!

"The interrogation was still going productively, in the sense that I was learning things about how the traitor thinks and how she broke. When you interrupted, she was thinking about how this version of herself might be destroyed like the others, and then about how she could decide not to break, if she didn't want to. - which would've been false, everyone who thinks that is wrong eventually. I am interested in learning what I would have learned from continuing the interrogation."

Curse of Laughter: "Snack Service can't see an exact detailed future like that! If Snack Service had that kind of unshattered prophecy it could've told you exactly when and where Nidal would strike. Snack Service can answer questions about what happened with the traitor in the past, or about how she worked inside."

lintamande: "Fine. At what point did the traitor become aware that she was not going to be an Asmodean once she learned dath ilani techniques."

Curse of Laughter: "Deep down, the traitor became aware of that gradually, the first hints being what Keltham was saying to everyone in class that most of them were afraid to answer back about. Her awareness became stronger around the time Sevar told everyone they'd be safe even if they became heretics, so long as they didn't betray the Project. The traitor didn't believe Sevar about that deep down, because of the way that Cheliax had treated her all her life until then, and because it was forbidden to disbelieve Sevar so the traitor couldn't really think about whether anything Sevar was saying was true. Sevar knew that was a problem, but to solve that problem she'd have needed to teach the traitor ilani techniques that Sevar was grasping intuitively but didn't know how to teach herself."

"She was terrified. She didn't want to become a heretic and die a horrible death and go to Hell and suffer more."

"She was always terrified the whole time. She never believed she had any of the ways out that Sevar tried to promise her. Her last thoughts as her old self were about how, even if they promised her Abaddon in exchange for her work, they'd just lie to Sevar about that, because they wouldn't cheat the Count of Hell who'd paid so much for her."

"So the part of her that kept trying to find a way out, broke, and everything Cheliax taught her about how to think, broke, and what was left was how Keltham taught her how to think."

lintamande: Sevar's an idiot and has no business managing this project. Abarco doesn't say that, obviously, and would prefer not to have thought it; it's still insubordination unless you've been specifically asked for a failure analysis which he hasn't been yet.

"Why did this happen today instead of a week ago or a week from now."

Curse of Laughter: "Keltham had lectured her a few days earlier on techniques for looking at the things inside yourself that you're not seeing. He used a technique that dath ilani use on children, and told her to expect that, any time she tried to look away, she'd notice herself looking away."

"Then he told everyone that if somehow they'd managed not to process all that, they should expect that they'd suddenly find themselves unable to stop themselves from seeing it during their next Owl's Wisdom."

"He thought he was mostly joking. The traitor didn't pick up on that."

"She didn't let herself think about it loudly enough for any Detect Thoughts to pick up how she knew she was going to die, or her thoughts about how even if she begged Sevar to spare her, Sevar would make her do it, because Sevar would want to know how she broke."

lintamande: "Is anyone else in that state right now?"

Curse of Laughter: "If Pilar's curse was allowed to help you that way, Pilar's curse would have told the traitor that she really could trust Sevar. Pilar's curse wanted to do that, all this time she was hurting so."

lintamande: Chaos is so bad at getting its job done that even its curses have wants, apparently. "Why aren't you allowed to do that? It would have served Asmodeus."

Curse of Laughter: "This entire situation is way more complicated than you think it is."

lintamande: Do Abarco's superiors (it's just Gorthoklek, really, but he has some difficulty in addressing his thoughts directly to Gorthoklek) have any further questions.

Gorthoklek: He has many additional questions. One does not however carry a pit fiend's grandeur by speaking an itemized list of your questions to Caydenspawn, not unless you are sure that it will answer you and respectfully. His pride would demand a rejoinder to any lèse-majesté, and that eventuality might not serve his Lord's interests.

Even if he won.

One exchange, however, is not beneath him.

The words that he speaks then are in Celestial. "I'll have your oath from you, Caydenspawn, to be recorded in the Library of Oaths in Stygia, that this change you'd make in events is indeed in the interests of my Lord, Asmodeus; on pain of the damnation of whatever it is that you are; and as will besmirch Cayden Cailean's own honor and incur His debt to Asmodeus."

Curse of Laughter: "Pilar's curse has never lied to anyone ever actually! Including by any clever tricks where it looks like it was Pilar's curse who said something but it wasn't really, except when Chelish people lie about that to Keltham. Pilar's curse swears that on pain of damnation of whatever it is that it is, sure write that down in the Stygian Library, yes on Cayden Cailean's honor to Asmodeus too."

Gorthoklek: "Do not expect to hear any news of this traitor in the afterlife," Gorthoklek warns Elias Abarco. If His Lord does choose to intervene in the matter, what comes of it must not be an information to Golarion, for that is an intervention; thus, Gorthoklek establishes an unconditional blackout now.

Without saying anything more, he snaps Peranza's neck with one fist, and then turns to depart by a route that will not take him past the Caydenspawn. He has urgent business now upon the Nidal warfront.

Curse of Laughter: "Hey! Somebody still needs to take this cookie and you don't want Pilar seeing her friend's corpse or anything!"

Carissa Sevar: "Two challenges. One is getting the impersonator past True Seeing and the other is what to tell everyone else. I'm worried at some point we could get a cascade, if enough people have self-deception linked to what other people are doing."

Ferrer Maillol: "We've got an impersonator on Keltham flesh-shaped to where he'll pass True Seeing, in case we want to try something on Osirion. We've got an impersonator like that ready for Ione Sala, who seemed most likely to be a problem. Peranza, unfortunately no, but I set that in progress when this all broke and was told three days to get it done on an emergency basis."

"We gamble that Keltham doesn't request Glimpse of Truth - no, bring in an eighth-circle to read his mind about whether he does. 'Peranza' leaves the fortress immediately after she quits. If Keltham asks for her to be brought back on some next day, or for her to not leave until the next day when he can check, we can statue Keltham that night, if the impersonator isn't ready."

Carissa Sevar: One ready to go for me? she doesn't ask. There probably is. "Should be acceptable. Keltham and Peranza weren't close, and she's been unhappy for a while; I expect he won't be very suspicious."

Ferrer Maillol: "Did he know she was unhappy? He's not great at reading Chelish faces."

Jacint Subirachs: "Keltham did make some gestures towards Peranza; but I judged that Peranza would have had some trouble enjoying it to his satisfaction, in her state. Alter-Peranza told Keltham that she was attracted to him, but too stressed by her work difficulties to be a properly enthusiastic bedmate, but that she'd probably have fun if he simply pinned her against a wall and took her at some point, and she might be up for more later. He was welcome to take her in any way that didn't make her responsible for anything. That was Peranza's choice of half-truth, not mine, and I was pleased by it at the time."

"I did not understand what was meant by a cascade about self-deceptions, Chosen."

Carissa Sevar: "So, say that I'm the junior Security monitoring Peranza, and she says to me, 'pick my side and escape'. I know that Abarco's watching me and he's not this easy to sway, and I don't know that Gorthoklek's present also but I know that this project is important to Church and Crown, that there might be someone very important onsite. I don't defect. I experience this as not even being tempted to defect, because all those calculations are internal, subconscious. But say that I know the other Security monitoring me, and I know he's having doubts too, and I know that sixty percent of Security have defected so far, and now I'm thinking to myself - how many of the people between me and freedom are loyal Asmodeans, and how many are waiting to see which way the wind blows?

- I assumed this was why I wasn't allowed to escape during the exercises, even though they were just exercises. Because something in the back of a mortal mind calculates if they're free or not, and it's not good for their Asmodeanism, being uncertain."

Jacint Subirachs: "Indeed. I think I see now."

"It's not much of a permanent solution, only a patch for this one case, but we can tell lies, Chosen. No Security has broken as yet, that much is true, even when placed into Peranza's direct influence, this they now know. As for the others, tell them all that Peranza had a major break in her personality under secret 'infohazardous' circumstances tied to Keltham's special teachings, and is now a statue pending her being less of an unknown hazard to more mature ilani later. They have no need to know Peranza tried to rebel, let alone succeeded some tiny bit."

Carissa Sevar: "If I'd done that in truth I'd have the statue somewhere they could see it so they'd know I wasn't lying."

Ferrer Maillol: "Had Gentle Repose cast on the corpse, in case we ended up wanting to do anything clever with it. You can heal a corpse, if you request the right spells for it. We'll get those spells in the morning, statue her uninjured corpse, done."

(Maillol is trying very very hard to be competent today. It was originally his suggestion to Sevar to get more disposable Securities.)

Carissa Sevar: " - good. Then let's do that. Tell everyone that Peranza hit on something infohazardous, and has been statued for now, pending a mature dath ilani who isn't Keltham and who she can therefore talk to openly about it. Have fake-Peranza tell Keltham....

....probably just that she thought about it and doesn't like being alive and doesn't want to keep doing it, honestly. Dath ilani seem to - decide that a lot, that they'd rather be frozen. And with how we've set up Hell, it will analogize to being frozen, for him, and he won't be inclined to insist she stick around a day for True Seeing."

It fits perfectly but she doesn't actually like it at all. - that's a problem for later, once the immediate emergency has passed.

Jacint Subirachs: "And the fate of the Security who failed you so? I am told that you were wroth with him, and that is at least a little progress. Is it by any chance a lot of progress?"

Carissa Sevar: Was she angry at him, or was she mostly angry at herself - actually, that seems like the kind of question one seeks theological counsel on. "I notice that - the main impulse towards anger, in me, comes from the sense I would have done better because I'm not incompetent, and the main impulse towards temperance comes from - the error really being my own, deep down. I assigned disposable Security; they behaved like every soldier whose superiors don't care if they live or die.

I know I need to work on the wrath. He is an idiot, and I can probably see my way to punishing him for it, instead of assigning it off on someone else, and it'll probably be good for me.

But -- where I'm actively trying, these days, to uproot squeamishness, I don't want to uproot my sense that the incompetence of all my subordinates is actually my own fault. I'm using that to make less stupid decisions next time. I wonder if there's a - more Asmodean style, for that instinct to take, because I think as I just stated it it's probably heretical but it doesn't have to be, obviously you have a more functional hierarchy if everyone in it isn't dodging blame all the time -"

Jacint Subirachs: "The incompetence of all your subordinates is actually not your own fault, Chosen! You have no doubt made mistakes in handling him, and your own superiors may hold you accountable for those, Hell will certainly judge you for it in time. But if you've done reasonably well for a mortal, what remains is his fault. Or should I be judged for all your mistakes, now, and you yourself held blameless and unpunished for them?"

Ferrer Maillol: "I'll second that I don't think the way tyranny works is that all my mistakes are your fault, all your mistakes are Subirachs's fault, all Subirachs's mistakes are Rugatonn's fault, and so on until everything is Asmodeus's fault and He gets punished by Himself for that while the rest of us go to Hell to drink tea."

Carissa Sevar: - it's sort of appealing, ideologically. She sets that thought aside. What theory does that instinct identify with, which doesn't imply Asmodeus is at fault for their mistakes. "Ideally everyone on my Project would be extensions of my own will and intelligence, and then anything I failed to achieve through you would be entirely a failure of my own will and intelligence, and ideally we would all be extensions of Asmodeus's will and then there wouldn't be mistakes, because of how He's Asmodeus."

Ferrer Maillol: "That sounds to me an awful lot like ceasing to exist, personally. Devils are still individuals, they don't have free will but they have their own will. I think I'd say of that god that It wouldn't be Asmodeus and I couldn't be Its priest, because what It wanted of me was not my service, not my obedience, but my puppetry. I'll give my soul to be the slave who commands other slaves, but not to be the golem operating golems."

Carissa Sevar: You get to have such interesting conversations about religion once the stakes get high enough.

" - there's something there. I don't know exactly what it is but I think it's part of the answer to the mistake I was making. If I look at someone and I see only how obvious and predictable their errors were, how they followed straightforwardly from their weaknesses and inadequacies, how they could have been ameliorated and weren't - then I see everything but their will, I see about them only the things that could externally have shaped them differently.

There could be a god of that. He might be as tired of us as Asmodeus, but He'd fix it differently. His Cheliax would run on more Dominate Person and less torture, because you can't motivate people until they learn to walk, you just have to pick them up and put them where they're supposed to go.

And it's not a favor to someone, to regard them that way. It's not just not Asmodean, it's worse than Asmodean; that Cheliax and that Carissa would be weaker."

Ferrer Maillol: "I wonder if that’s where pride fits in with our Lord's other domains, that it’s what lets His slaves own their own mistakes and be punished for them… I have not in truth understood the point of pride to Him, and if I can make any progress on that myself from overhearing you, it will be a favorable sign of your theological correctness."

"Meanwhile and as regards tyranny, there is the question of what policy will produce better results among future subordinates. I do not think the Security monitoring Peranza was taking his work fucking seriously. Left to my own devices, I'd make a serious example of this one, and expect that this would in fact get higher performance from the others. He was a fourth-circle wizard with a natural Intelligence of 16 and somebody like that can in fact produce better results than this if they are properly terrified of failing."

"It would not surprise me if the low number of people being tortured on this Project, contributed to a sense in him that this Project was not a vital matter to his own, personal skin. Most people are like that."

Carissa Sevar: "It would in truth be very concerning if being lenient hadn't caused problems like that eventually. All right, I'm persuaded. - do the rest of the Security need to know what he was punished for in order for his punishment to motivate them? Are they getting the same story as the girls are?"

Ferrer Maillol: "I see arguments both ways. If we tell them about how Peranza called out to the Bitch-Goddess and was allowed to pray to her for two whole rounds, they understand better exactly how much they've got to be ready to act instead of acting surprised, they've got a better idea of how much damage somebody can do if they just ignore all the consequences. Cost, we've planted the false idea in them that this is a reasonable thing to do if you convert to ilanism, maybe they even think falsely that Peranza knew something they don't."

"Other side of things... if Project Lawful's Security gets told the same story as the Project Lawful girls*, that sounds like they only hear about how the Security didn't immediately page Abarco when Peranza started disintegrating in front of him. That's not the same level of incompetence, if we don't invent some other blunder to go with it. Punishing it very severely leaves an open mystery about why we're doing that, if there's some further fuckup we're not talking about, or if Peranza was somebody's pet."

"My estimate is that this has an only slight, but noticeable, diminished positive effect in terms of everyone taking things seriously. Having your subordinates scared of exactly the right things is a luxury; having them scared is a necessity."

He'd have to think hard about that one if it was his own decision, and he's glad it isn't. One of the nice things that Asmodeans get, your superiors actually are responsible for the orders you just follow.

(*) Although Keltham's been trying to push back against it by his own example, the collective noun 'girls' to indicate all his researchers, including the likes of Alexandre Esquerra, seems to be increasingly enshrined in the Chelish language.

Carissa Sevar: " - let's not tell them. A Security defecting seems like more of a loss condition than Security being confused and overreacting. And if he'd been on a hair-trigger and stopped Peranza right at the start of her breakdown that might, all told, have worked out better."

Ferrer Maillol: "I agree in terms of how it played out. But stopping Peranza's breakdown would've been legitimately not in the spirit of the orders I passed to him. I'd understood that our goal was gathering data about who breaks and why, not protecting the girls."

"Punishing obedience actually does have terrible effects on morale. Around half the cases I've seen of torture making things worse are when someone gets tortured for doing what they thought was the obedient thing, without their exact failure having been made clear to them, if there even was one."

Carissa Sevar: " - understood. Going forward, you can communicate to them that between allowing a potentially out-of-bounds girl to act and think for longer and collecting more data, they should act, but I won't hold that against this one, just the not calling Abarco over as soon as the situation was clearly unusual and the not acting faster when she started praying.

- what're the other half of cases of torture making things worse."

Ferrer Maillol: "Varies widely? First thing that comes to mind is straight-up incompetent torturers who mix their work and personal lives, but that's probably because of bad experiences back when I was a second-circle running a small town temple."

Carissa Sevar: She feels like she's grasping for something and not quite finding it, but - maybe that's enough progress for today. "All right. Let's get that statue up and tell everyone what happened."

Peranza of Civilization: Peranza knows instinctively, even before she opens her eyes, that this feeling of being half-drowned and finished spitting out water indicates that she's dead. Did somebody - did Iomedae kill her before Abarco could really hurt her, snatch away her soul to safety -

Peranza opens her eyes.

lintamande: A writhing, screaming, terrified face blinks back at her from the glossy stone floor.

It's a pretty room, if you set aside the faces. The walls are made of leaping flame and the ceiling of bone, creating the impression of jagged teeth where they meet; there's a spire, and an enormous gleaming forge, and some worktables, and some distant screaming.

A towering devil has paused halfway through one of the flaming doorways at the surprise of her appearance.

Peranza of Civilization: She decides not to break.

All right time to talk her way out of Hell.

"Peranza, Project Lawful girl, my mind is full of what may be classified information. Direct me to someone who'd be familiar with the special situation in Project Lawful, that's of Cheliax in Golarion."

lintamande: A lot of people decide not to break. Sometimes they keep it up for a couple of hours, even. It's approximately the least threatening thing someone can be thinking, when they arrive in Hell.

Project Lawful is however something that devils have learned some caution around. He stops reading her mind.

The world goes dark and Peranza is shoved through some walls of flame, and down some hallways, and through some more walls of flame.

Peranza of Civilization: She'll scream some about that. The flames of Hell hurt quite a lot actually, and spending her effort on resisting screaming doesn't seem like the best use of herself.