lintamande: In the distance, someone laughs at her.
Grand doors creak open. There's more fire. Behind her, they slam shut.
And then she cannot move, cannot speak, can see again, and this room is bigger, and prettier, crystalline windows offering a spectacular view of Dis's spires and glories and molten-lava river. The fire has trailed her into the room, and is spreading out all around her on the floor, like a gown she's wearing, except it's roasting her legs as it does.
Comfortably seated, resplendant, only slightly grotesque, is Kherreonoskelis, Countess of Hell under Zabaniyya under Dispater, who owns the souls of two Project Lawful girls, as a luxury purchase as well as an investment. Whether or not they turn out useful for training devils they'll really be something to show off at parties. She's not much prettier than Abrogail, necessarily, but she's impossible to look away from in a way that Abrogail visibly wouldn't be, even with ten more Splendour: her face triggers some ancient instinct that there's danger there, and not the kind you can take your eyes off of your own will.
"You know," she says, and it sounds like she's speaking in Peranza's own voice, inside her head, "I've always believed it's better for mortals to die young. In your case probably better to have died a bit younger, even. We're going to have so much work to do."
Peranza of Civilization: Peranza has had a few moments to think, between moments of flame, she was trying to have a plan, but it's all she can do right now, to think of the right things in case her mind is being read, to think at all, of incredibly complicated situations that might be dangerous even for devils to know about, tropes does Hell know about tropes is it allowed to know about tropes this is her being properly cautious and trying not to think about tropes but she's having trouble not thinking of things when her legs are being roasted, are there things Hell isn't allowed to know about from Asmodeus she may know those things too, she's a story protagonist according to Keltham, Cayden Cailean has a weird pact with Asmodeus that needs not to be disrupted, somebody or something killed her before Abarco could hurt her too much and that probably signals something important - stop this stop this she can't think like this -
lintamande: "No, see," says her own voice inside her own head, again, "you have the wrong attitude towards all of those questions; the attitude will need correction before we can seriously consider the questions. You wish to escape punishment. You must know that punishment is unescapable. You hope you are important. Your hope must be extinguished. We will revisit those questions, which sound fascinating, just as soon as you have accepted the only truth of Hell: that you will suffer forever and that there is no escape.
It's all right. No one grasps it instantly, even the ones who think they've always known it, and you're not even being unusually slow about it so far."
Peranza of Civilization: Peranza fails to stop herself in time, then, because it's not a kind of thought she's used to suppressing as dangerous.
She thinks then that Civilization is coming.
lintamande: "See, there, that's a good benchmark for whether we're making any progress. Civilization isn't coming."
Once it knows Civilization isn't coming, then perhaps it can tell her what Civilization is. But not sooner. You can set a slave back weeks, that way, letting them think they made you stop hurting them through their own deliberate will.
Peranza of Civilization: She's an ilani and open to truth calculated first and before all other questions, Keltham was careful to teach them all that at the start of their lessons, this time, as a rule for reconstructing themselves if anything broke, to set aside everything else all want all desire even hope and first ask what's really true, Peranza can hear out why Civilization isn't coming but she has to be able to think first and that requires that her legs be not on fire so she can figure out what's really true -
lintamande: No, actually the fire is reliably very persuasive on the question of whether anyone's coming to save you. If it's ineffective the first remedy is more fire, and the second remedy is torture.
Peranza of Civilization: Then Peranza will try to stop thinking and actually focus on the fire on her legs and not-scream about that instead, maybe they'll let her talk if she's boring and it's better than thinking of of don't think of that there's so much she has to protect this innocent devil from tropes and everything Keltham said about things devils might not be allowed to know, the conjunction fallacy ow ow ow her legs hurt so much she should focus on that pain maybe she can even make it sexy Subirachs trained her about that not really but it's something else for her mind to focus on failing about -
lintamande: Devils aren't curious, temperamentally. It is fundamentally not a corrigible emotion: it does not produce predictable obedient behavior. You could say, that the devils in Dis speculated on the Project Lawful girls because they were curious, but you'd be missing something, trying to paint a human process onto an alien mind. The devils in Dis speculated on the Project Lawful girls because they were uncertain, and their uncertainty spanned a range that included great benefit; and then on top of that because they'd invented a new status good, and then on top of that to best their rivals.
There is no thought so fascinating, so bizarre, so unsettling, that a devil would wrestle with the impulse to learn more about it. There are inputs to the question of how long it'll take to get a new slave to agree that Civilization isn't coming; there are inputs that suggest the situation is strange, unusual, outside predicting in ordinary ways. In humans, by now, those inputs would have produced an itching urge to know what's going on, to ask just one question, but devils are not constructed so.
(If they were, perhaps they wouldn't need humans to reinvent the secrets that the higher layers of Hell cannot pass down to them.)
Maybe the slave will take a while, to confess to herself in her own heart that no one is coming for her. They usually do. The process can be sped up, but really, in a sense it's undignified to try that hard.
Peranza of Civilization: Peranza has no idea that she's supposed to update in a few minutes about how Civilization isn't coming for Hell thirty years later. Even in pain, she would know that wasn't how the Law of Probability worked. Peranza is not yet broken enough to stop understanding what Law she has. She endures; this is not an amount of pain that could shatter her especially when she hasn't lost hope.
But Peranza is only human, and has almost no real training in dath ilani disciplines, particularly the disciplines of not thinking thoughts you've decided aren't good for you. Children don't get taught that discipline; they're far more likely to hurt themselves with it for silly melodramatic reasons, than to encounter anything that legitimately requires not being thought about.
Peranza only manages to go three minutes of flame before, in the midst of thinking of all the other things she instructed herself to desperately not think about, the possibility that this entire reality is a dath ilani romance novel as might drive even devils mad, she manages to think of Abrogail Thrune's instructions to her new owner. It only flashes through her mind for a moment before it's frantically shoved down -
lintamande: - oh, huh, that's interesting. And disappointing, really.
The instruction, presumably, will wind its way down other paths eventually, along with the payment, but there's no reason to wait for that, once you know what you're going to conclude.
"You should have said sooner that the Queen wanted to arrange a special reception for you!" she says cheerfully. "Traditionally we move one out of Dis for that. In the deeper layers of Hell there is less occurring that a mortal could comprehend which isn't about suffering, and you won't be taking up valuable real estate when I can't even take you to parties."
And she'll make the fire actually properly painful while she set herself at work on arranging to sell the slave to someone who doesn't yet know this. She'll tell them on sale, of course, so the suffering isn't interrupted.
Peranza of Civilization: Well, Peranza will actually not-scream then. Would've been nice to be hurting enough not to think earlier, before it was too late. At least she doesn't have to try so hard not to think of things, now.
She still won't break. Yet. She hasn't been in Hell long, there's still any number of factors, sheer Project Lawful weirdness, that might save her -
lintamande: She's still not even being unusually slow about breaking, though she's now being paid less attention.
Peranza of Civilization: It really does hurt, though.
Peranza of Civilization: Future Civilization won't be happy about this. They'll make the devil hurt ten times as much as she gets hurt, even if it's thirty years later that they come for her. Yes that's a threat, since devils are into those.
lintamande: They're really not. Devils are Lawful beings, see. Humans who just invented the concept of not giving in to threats don't tend to take more than a few days at most to realize they do actually give in to threats; it takes a lot of centuries to hammer that out of them.
"You shouldn't feel too bad," the voice inside Peranza's head assures her soothingly. "More than ninety percent of new slaves are still thinking angry defiant things about revenge at this stage; you're not unusually slow at all."
Peranza of Civilization: Then this wretched mockery of an agent will get to think its own angry defiant thoughts for a time, when Civilization comes for it, and Peranza when she is healed will bear it eager witness.
lintamande: The desire to torment your tormentors is a very healthy, very Hellish desire. Some devils are built half on that. Not that this one gets to be a devil, of course, but.
lintamande: Shortly after that, and with some irritation, the Countess Kherreonoskelis departs to receive a messenger. She hasn't released the sale listing, yet, so it can't be about that.
lintamande: Shortly after that, and with considerably more irritation, the Countess Kherreonoskelis returns, and dismisses the fire, and hands her unexpectedly-worthless prize over to the devil assigned to convey her on to her next destination.
Peranza of Civilization: It takes her a time to recover, to start again, after the fire stops.
Akkakarasot: Time does not usually run strangely in Hell, it is a Lawful place not a Chaotic one. Space here, on the other hand, is oftimes tormented and punished until it brokenly submits to the will of its superiors.
They are traveling down a long winding path, down and down the side of a stony mountain glowing in patches with its own heat, suggestive of leading to a lower plane of Hell, rather than from one part of Dis to another. Cage after cage after cage is set into the side of that mountain, along that pathway. Most of the cages do not glow dully red, but even those cages that don't, there is a wavering about them recognizable as heat.
Bad slaves in Dis are sent here, to scream and sob for weeks or months, while angrier things chained in those cages for centuries or millennia do express their wrath and sate their urges. If you were entirely fresh meat to Hell, who'd never seen any part of Hell but Dis, you might think that you were witnessing cruelty indulged rather than moderate correction of a petitioner. You might think that the screaming, begging, coherent-word-using wretches in the cages were what souls look like in Hell when they are broken.
Akkakarasot holds the meat aloft by her hair, in one hand, to let her see.
Peranza of Civilization: "Where are you taking me?"
Akkakarasot: He doesn't answer.
Peranza of Civilization: That observation might have had a different effect on a Peranza who hadn't spent the last weeks immersed in a Conspiracy desperately trying to keep a true dath ilani deluded, being warned over and over by Asmodia of how Keltham might apply the Law of Filtered Evidence.
Would there be a prior possibility, of significant probability, that next Peranza would be taken deeper into Hell as she was promised?
Of course, a pretty large one. But she was previously being hurt and being told that pain is inescapable, that this was an important lesson to her. When she was first cast into the Countess's dwelling, as an important Project Lawful girl, she was dragged through walls of flame. When she couldn't stop herself from thinking of the Queen's instruction, her torment was increased. Since the Countess returned from her brief absence, she hasn't been hurt at all. This does not seem like the way of Hell, this does not feel like Hell's style and signature.
Would there be a prior possibility that they'd try to raise Peranza's hopes only to cast her down?
Think about what this possibility would predict, before you'd seen any particular observations that purportedly result. They could tell her some lie about her rescue, if they wanted to produce that result, Peranza would have believed it and probably without question in her state of desperation and hope. Or if they didn't want to lie, they could escort her through relatively peaceful and well-appointed pathways of Hell, guarded by Resistance, visibly protected.
Telling her nothing, taking her someplace that looks terrifying, while not hurting her, sounds a lot more like they're not allowed to lie and aren't allowed to hurt her and are hoping she makes mistakes on her own.
Peranza of Civilization: Could they cleverly anticipate what Peranza would think, of possible plots, and show her what she would infer was Hell trying to conceal good news from Peranza?
Peranza of Civilization: Peranza might have been more deceived by that thought, if she hadn't been a minor player herself, for so long, in Cheliax's desperately struggling Conspiracy.
Peranza has seen what happened with Asmodia and her headband. Peranza has heard about Keltham's time-travel hypothesis to explain the strangeness there. Peranza has been told even about Keltham's Detected thoughts about how Conspiracy Cheliax wouldn't plot all that weirdness to talk him out of using a headband since they could have just not told him about Fox's Cunning in the first place.
And she grasps on an intuitive level, now, that when the Conspiracy is treating you one way consistently, and then suddenly switches to a totally different policy, the most likely reason is not that they have done something incredibly clever to fool you by anticipating your guesses, it’s that things didn't go according to their plan.
Peranza of Civilization: The devils in Hell might actually be clever.
Peranza of Civilization: ...but her sudden inexplicable death, just as Abarco was about to really get started on her, in Golarion where mortals break more easily - that part of this probable Project Lawful fuckery - from tropes, from Iomedae, from Cayden Cailean, Peranza doesn't even know, she wasn't really hoping didn't really hope until now - that part happened in Cheliax. There were no incredibly clever devils there.
...she died immediately after making her resolution not to break, in fact; a resolution she’d need to hold to, briefly, for her brief time in Hell. A careful timing, and a caring one.
Peranza of Civilization: And Peranza starts laughing.
Peranza of Civilization: In the midst of Hell, in the midst of screams, being carried down a steep winding path through a mountain glowing with heat and pain, being held up by her hair by a terrifying hooded devil -
- gripping enough of her hair that it doesn't even hurt, to be held so, and it's obvious when she looks down that the real reason he's carrying her is that the path below them is strewn with barbed needles, and to protect her from that would give away more than they wish -
- in the midst of Hell, Peranza is laughing.
Akkakarasot: "Believe it if you wish."
Peranza of Civilization: Oh, she is, she is, because on all of the actually reasonable hypotheses for how she'd come to be carried here, that don't sound like a Conspiracy trying desperately to cover its mistakes, he would have hurt her badly the moment she started laughing.
She didn't believe it, Peranza now realizes, she didn't really believe one single thing she thought, that needed to be true or that she needed to believe in order for her to talk her way out. She was just in the midst of one more giant self-deception, woven entirely out of things that she desperately needed or wanted to believe, that she had to believe in order to persuade the people around her.
The pathway of an ilani really isn't easy, is it. She's not even close to being one. One of their seven-year-olds, instead of one of their six-year-olds, at best.
Peranza of Civilization: Hope and joy and relief are kindled in her now, blazing in her like a newborn star, and their light illuminates everything so differently from suppressed fear sublimated into desperation.
She's not even sure she can count how many incredibly blatantly stupid things she thought under that pressure.
Civilization punish devils?
They never would.
It's not what Civilization is.
There will not be a war on Hell, when the time comes.
There will be a rescue operation on Hell.
Some of the things in cages can sense the alignments of souls, and those lunge forward against their bars, howling with hunger as Peranza of Civilization passes them, for the smell of something as Lawful Good as that is like honey and wine and an angel's roasted liver.
Peranza of Civilization: She doesn't particularly want to live with this hope, if it's false (for that which can be destroyed by the truth should be), and so she starts doing something that should definitely get her shut down if she's not protected.
Besides. To help others is also Civilization's way.
"Hold on!" shouts Peranza, through the winding pathway where the bad souls of Dis are punished. She screams it loudly enough to hurt her throat, it's not like she can damage her throat that way. "Hold on! Hold onto as much of yourselves as you can, for as long as you can! Things in Golarion are changing, and Civilization is coming! In twenty years or two centuries this will end! Look how I say this and am not punished! Hold to hope, for help is on the way!"
Iarwain: Not a single petitioner in reach of her voice believes her.
Even less, the saner things in cages, and a devil or two that they pass along the way. Those look at her with contempt, what would be pity if they had any trace of pity in them.
They all have the same thought, seeing a Lawful Good soul like that in Hell, crying out what she cries: They are witnessing the procession of a Maledicted paladin. Those are sometimes permitted to cry out their last defiant battle cries to Iomedae on their way to be broken, if the dead paladin is too stupid or deluded to realize why it only hurts the listening souls more, how it emphasizes to the victims the patheticness of defiance and the falseness of hope.
Some of the more perceptive things see that her soul is owned, not Maledicted; but there is no curiosity in them about how that came to be.
Even the devil holding Peranza aloft, who sees her thoughts and knows she believes her own words, gives not even a moment's thought to the possibility that anything she is saying might be truth. It's not that he assigns probability zero, it's that he hasn't been told to think about it, and absent any such thought it's an obvious stupidity to deny Asmodeus's victory.
Iarwain: Only one shattered thing alone, in Hell, witnesses Peranza's procession and wonders.
Nethys: Nethys sees all. Not all of him sees everything at once, but He is god of knowledge, some part of Him must see something if it is there to be seen.
This part of Nethys has been watching this part of Hell for all the millennia since Nethys ascended and shattered.
Mad? Of course it is mad, even madder than the rest of Nethys. Nethys was not a particularly kindly person in his mortal life, nor an especially cooperative or coordinating mortal. The rest of Him has for the most part abandoned those parts of Himself that were condemned to gaze upon endless torments.
But the God of Knowledge sees Peranza in Hell, as the God of Knowledge sees all things. And the part of Him that bears this witness, sees in full Peranza's memory of the bizarre events that surrounded her, of a visitor from outside reality, the hints of mysterious 'tropes', that Nethys Himself has intervened about these events in a way that must have taken half His pieces working together -
He is enabled then to see in a direction that is only very rarely connected by strong-enough informational links to this part of Dis. A direction of which other parts of Nethys rarely bother to tell this fragment, as they rarely tell it anything.
He sees the vast beings each individually greater than all the Great Beyond, looking in this direction from outside Time, watching Him, watching the procession of Peranza through Hell. Thousands of Them at the least, and perhaps more, for it is hard to enumerate the numbers of what lives outside of Time and could turn Their gaze to this Golarion-moment from who knows what stretches of metatime. They would not be watching - Nethys instinctively guesses what even He cannot know with near-certainty - They would not be watching in such numbers if They knew how this all would end. But that They are even uncertain -
Nethys: A shattered lost ignored fragment of Nethys knows hope, then, that Hell may be ending after all.
Nethys: One hundred years, the devil Akkakarasot thinks has been given to this Peranza in the Gardens of Erecura; that is how much time there is for rescue to come to her, to Hell.
For one hundred years, then, this fragment of Nethys will withhold His power from the occasional attempts some equally-tormented fellow piece of Himself makes to destroy Pharasma's Creation.
And if in one hundred years that hope fails Him, He will strike out against everything that there is in renewed fury and terrible disappointment.
One hundred years. It's almost no time at all, to Hell.
Peranza of Civilization: It is known to Civilization, and told now also to Peranza, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, conserving momentum. When you leap into the air, you push the planet away from you, some tiny bit, with your feet. When the gravitational force of the planet pulls you back to ground, the gravitational force of yourself on all the rest of the planet pulls it towards you some tiny amount, just enough to balance all of your own momentum change, a tiny tiny acceleration of something much much bigger than you.
More so even than the procession of a Maledicted paladin, this soul does not belong in Hell whatever its sale. It burns not only with defiance and faith and Lawful Goodness, but also hope and relief and joy.
Ever so slightly, the fabric of Hell trembles at Peranza's passing. Even as the dark weight of Hell tries to press in on her soul, her soul presses back.
If all the petitioners in Hell could feel so, all in the same moment, perhaps the fabric of the plane itself would be changed.
It's a futile hope and not a good plan. Very very few petitioners, even among recently lost paladins, are capable of feeling anything like what Peranza is feeling now. Those who've been here a few centuries have been shaped so that they would not want to feel anything so pathetic. And even if neither of those things were true, the petitioners of Hell would not be able to coordinate around one single moment of hope like that...
And Peranza goes on crying out hope, hope, hope through the paths of Hell.
Iomedae: And from across a hundred planes, the fragments of Iomedae pull back from the hearts they guard, the temples they warm, the dangers they watch, the places they look for opportunity and risk and suffering and possibility.
Not all of them; there are some places where they would be missed too badly, or their absence noticed and too much read into them. But for the most part, they pull back like a receding tide, and stream for Heaven, whose greatest defenders pause in their activities, make their excuses, kiss their loved ones goodbye, and go to guard the perimeter of the divine domain of Iomedae, Golarion's youngest goddess, the goddess of defeating Evil.
It would be very very close to impossible, to destroy a god in all Their power, in Their own domain, but immortals do not take the close-to-impossible lightly, or if they do they don't grow very old.
Iomedae gathers in almost all of the parts of herself, processes all of the conversations and questions and puzzles and confusions that did not previously merit referral upwards, but which are cheap to reconsider now that She is here. Takes in a packet of information purchased from Abadar and another from Irori and lets the calculations that follow from those ripple out across a thousand trains of thought -
- rises for the first time in nearly a hundred years to the full height of her knowledge and her power and her capacities, and decides what to do.
It does not take her long. For not quite ten minutes, Proelera is too bright to look at, too hot to touch, and would also incidentally give mortals cancer; then the light fades abruptly and the heat more slowly, and splintered into a hundred thousand fragments Iomedae, diminished, gets to work.
Greater Iomedae: They're a very productive ten minutes.
Greater Iomedae: There are entities that do not oppose Asmodeus but that would, in fact, oppose Him, if He were credibly on the brink of taking over the world. Evil gods which like the world some other flavor of Evil; Good gods who would be making worse trades, operating farther from their own areas of strength, if they acted to directly oppose Asmodeus. Mortals have an instinct for this even when no gods guide them, and you see it at the scale of countries, in a place like Avistan: they will set aside their other enmities in the face of a greater threat, compromise on things they hate to compromise on, mobilize resources they'd preferred to have in reserve.
And so it is the case that a drastic strengthening of the position of Asmodeus, and of Cheliax, does not mean that Cheliax conquers all of Golarion, and does not mean that Hell conquers all, nor even does it mean that Iomedae despairs of this universe and joins that fragment of Nethys trying to destroy it. It means that, as a worst-case scenario against which Iomedae can compare Her better options, that She can call a convocation of the gods to re-counterbalance against Asmodeus, to check Him at their own expense. It means that Sarenrae, whose power goes farthest extended to mortals busy in the assistance of one another, donates power to soldiers instead. There'd be fewer miracles, and more funerals. More orphans would starve on the streets, more sick people would die in pain and alone. But the legions of Good could swell to meet Evil's new power.
It means that Erastil, who operates these days almost entirely by rote, to save his power for his works, answering instinctively the prayers of farmers with blighted crops, agrees to instead allow Chelish ones to starve, agree to allow their prayers to go unanswered so their grain cannot feed Chelish armies. Humans care about many, many things, and Good in its many forms answers nearly all of them; but it could trade that away, at need. (Iomedae, Herself, would be trading away much more of that already, for the sake of defeating Evil, even at the unfavorable ratios that the other Good gods could get; but She is not all of human values, and is in fact a segment of them which intends to render itself unnecessary.)
And then there are agreements that could be made with non-Good powers that aren't Asmodeus: to do less to combat Abaddon, in exchange for payments from its powers which could be put to war with Hell. To win Pharasma's cooperation with yet another asymmetric concession like Malediction was an asymmetric concession.
She hates that plan. She'll do it anyway, obviously, unless She has a better plan.
So, the question: what beats that?
Greater Iomedae: And its accompanying question: what the fuck, Cayden Cailean?
When that's still not obvious from more data points She does the expensive thing, to answer it: She severs a sizable chunk of Herself, and sends it to speak to Him.
To return only two answers: should She oppose Cayden Cailean? and should she oppose Project Lawful?, on the assumption that Cayden's explanation for not just telling Her what's going on has to do with other irrevocable commitments He's made, or else with a very narrow path Nethys is attempting to navigate, or else with the desire to avoid Her wrath for His betrayal; and any part of Her that reports to the rest of Her won't see, from him, anything that'd distinguish those, and the credibility of lesser commitments among them has apparently broken down.
So just enough of her to answer that question even if He's acting against Her and trying to deceive that fragment, with no capacity to return anything more than the answer - enormously costly, to lose that much of herself for the duration of the current emergency, but not as costly as either a wrong war against Cailean, or a right war erroneously refrained from.
Cayden Cailean: Cayden Cailean will tell that fragment of Her the entire truth, this time. All of it that He knows. He can do that, if the information won't reach the rest of Her, if Iomedae's strategic decisions implied by that truth can be made under conditions of that information having been provided by Cailean conditional on that information not working against His own interests.
Milani: And though Iomedae won't know it for a time, Milani is also called forth by Cayden Cailean to speak to that fragment of Iomedae, to add what credibility Milani possesses Herself. And to apologize, not for having made any wrong decisions, but for what the right decision had to be. Apologies between gods are often like that, especially between Good and other Good.
Iomedae: (It returns the answer that She'd considered likeliest: this method of negotiation was successful; these recommendations are confident. it is not in Our interests to attempt to destroy Cailean at this time. It is in our interests to attempt to destroy Project Lawful.)
Greater Iomedae: She cannot directly take aim at the interdiction zone in Ostenso. Not to communicate with its inhabitants, not to draw resources off their project, not to force their hand sooner. She'll try to convince Otolmens that this is a stupid policy likelier to wreck the world than save it, of course, but She considers that unlikely to work. It's a very restrictive constraint. She can prepare the forces of Good better for the coming confrontation, She can watch the interdiction zone and pass along any secrets it produces more useful than 'they're doing something highly specific with Prestidigitation', but She cannot reach Keltham, or any of his other actor-slaves, and She cannot take aim even at Cheliax as a whole without legibly exhibiting that the decision is in Her interests absent any considerations of its effects on the interdiction zone, and that She intends no specific ones.
It's a very strong constraint, but it means She's racing through a much smaller search space, exhausting it quickly, seeing right away everything that is worth trying.
Three different demon lords consider themselves to be in control of the Worldwound on the demon side, each of them controlling different aspects of influence from it and considering theirs the true and meaningful kind. Iomedae is strongly averse to negotiating with demon lords, mostly on the very straightforward grounds that they'll inevitably betray you at the first opportunity, and secondly on the more complicated grounds that they aren't gods, and everything would be worse if they were gods, and negotiations as-equals with gods are the sort of things that a clever demon lord can leverage into an ascension.
In acting too aggressively against an enemy, you inevitably create your next enemy, and cause immense mortal suffering into the bargain. And yet, at this moment, Iomedae's forces are largely deployed at the Worldwound; that has to change, to counter Cheliax in war. And the fact that demon lords are not constrained by Otolmens' interdiction regarding the intervention of gods is not something She can intend, but wouldn't inconvenience Her, if anything came of it.
There are other demon lords also worth reaching out to. What price would Abraxas, demon lord of forbidden lore, demand for teaching Lastwall the spellsilver refining techniques of ancient Azlant? It'll be terrible, of course, but at this scale She can measure precisely how terrible, and contemplate what the forbidden knowledge of ancient Azlant would have to be to make it worth it, and then derive what the forbidden knowledge of ancient Azlant must in fact have been, and then authorize it.
Greater Iomedae: Why do demon lords always want things like 'one of your unwilling paladins, to be slowly consumed alive by locusts'. Even if Iomedae was Chaotic Evil She'd be more ambitious than that.
Greater Iomedae: Next up: talking to Zon-Kuthon.
Zon-Kuthon: Zon-Kuthon can no longer think more than fragmentary thoughts, even gathered into one place like this. Four pessimally-chosen network-nodes within Him are destroyed by treachery. Internal energy-messages, sent out by continuing reflex, fail to be caught at their destinations, and every time it happens one more tiny bit of Him is gone. Zon-Kuthon is dying, slowly, on an exponential decay. That decay has a bound; a little after He is too weak for His fragments to reflexively grant even first-circle spells and orisons, they will disperse.
Zon-Kuthon is not turning back into Dou-Bral. His assassin tried Her best, but He's not. That happy ending was rather less probable than not, from the beginning, even if worth trying for.
Greater Iomedae: That was not expected; strongly unexpected, even. A thousand implications stream away from it in all directions. One could almost see the whole truth just from that, if one were big enough, and thought fast enough.
But the most urgent implication is this: He should not die alone. His sister will want to be with Him.
And then She'll owe Iomedae a very large favor, which She intends to cash in immediately.
Shelyn: I don't suppose it can wait ten minutes.
Greater Iomedae: Not really.
I do wish it'd gone otherwise, and I'm sorry.
Shelyn: You wish it'd gone otherwise because then we'd have a Chaotic Good god in our back pocket.
Greater Iomedae: Yes. I didn't love Him, and will not grieve Him. Anyway, the favor I need is for most of Cheliax's units at the Worldwound post nearest Nerosyan to be amenable to defection when we show up to offer it.
Shelyn: You can't force redemption on people; all you can ever do is offer it.
Greater Iomedae: It looks from here like you can offer it in a particularly compelling manner with very high acceptance rates at a much higher cost. I anticipate the objection that it's more intrinsic to your nature, less costly for you, and more consistent with your values to not craft irresistible redemptions, but you owe me a favor, I need that fort, and Cheliax needs to believe I have a Project-derived superweapon for turning Chelish people Good.
Shelyn: I understand.
Greater Iomedae: Next up, She's going to tell Nidal that Zon-Kuthon is dying and they'd better launch an offensive against Cheliax before their strength further diminishes.
Curse of Laughter: Snack Service said Nidal recently noticed they lost eighth-circle spells and that they were going to launch an offensive soon! Snack Service didn't say the two facts were connected!
Snack Service would never lie to the Asmodeans, but still, Asmodeans, they're into that sort of fun, right?
Iomedae: By the time Peranza reaches Hell the fragments of Iomedae's attention have struck out to work the plans that She formed before diminishing, and answer the questions that remained to her at the height of her focus, and observe the pieces that will either move in her favor, or not.
It's a heroic effort, but it's one that is expected to produce a world worse than the one Keltham landed on; if it were otherwise, She'd have done all these things long ago.
Iomedae: In a gentler world, where there was less of a premium on Her resources, Iomedae would look in on the girl who cried out to her, whose body is now a statue and whose soul is now in Hell, and maybe try to let her know, while she still remembers her name, that it mattered; but Iomedae has never lived in a gentler world, and does not look, or offer a bid for the information, or devote more than a flicker of computation to grief.
Cayden Cailean: Once Peranza is in the Gardens of Erecura, Cayden Cailean will gift Iomedae a fragment of observation (passed on from the luckier fragment of Nethys who watches over that place) showing Peranza robed now in white, her feet in an endlessly flowing stream, speaking of lesser mysteries with other souls in the Garden; bright and happy and shining Lawful Good.
This information must not be used in a way which disadvantages Asmodeus, such as to suggest to any of His other victims that a similar safety might be on offer to them if they defected.
Iomedae: And that, combined with the rest, would have been enough to see the whole thing, but it is not safe for Iomedae to focus Herself so intently again; decades were lost on work of great importance to Her in even the short time She did it.
She nods, and passes upwards a flicker of confusion about why intervene here and not in the hundreds of other similar people this happens to every day and the flicker of confusion goes unresolved, for long enough.
Pilar : Pilar hears, later that Long Night, that Peranza suffered some kind of major mental break, details locked behind the infohazard containment conditions for that section of the Project, and is now a statue pending there being actual Chelish ilani to talk with her.
She knows immediately that her earlier adventure must have been to talk Abarco (he's the one who took her cookie, looking not particularly happy about it) out of doing something severe to Peranza in the hopes of gathering more information from her. Which, yes, Keltham would not have been happy about, even if turned to Evil, obviously.
Pilar is not quite able to stop herself from thinking that this is the result of her first, brief attempt to be spiteful -
Curse of Laughter: Pilar. It's okay.
What happened to Peranza would've happened to her eventually, even if Pilar hadn't made the suggestion she did. It would've happened to Peranza even if Snack Service had never come to Pilar.
It wouldn't benefit Asmodeus for other people on the Project to hear this part, it'd move them from a state of mind more useful to Him to a less useful state of mind, but -
Peranza will be all right.
Pilar : Pilar doesn't care about that.
Pilar : Pilar shouldn't care about that.
Curse of Laughter: Only Pilar can be the judge of that. Snack Service was telling her so that the matter didn't actually come between Pilar and Asmodeus. Snack Service has been thoroughly instructed by Pilar not to care about Pilar, after all.
Abrogail Thrune II: "Why is my life like this."
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Your life? That's obvious. The real question is, why is my life like this?"
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 63
Keltham: "Oh."
???: "I'm sorry - I could try, I guess, to stay on the Project and - but I don't think I'd be much good, to anyone, like this - not worth anyone's investment -"
Keltham: Ignasi of House Manric, eighth-circle wizard of Cheliax, borrowed from the Nidal front lines to Detect Keltham's thoughts, is going to leave the Fortress considerably more impressed with the 'Chosen of Asmodeus' than was Manohar.
Keltham's thoughts show not even a flicker of suspicion, of 'Peranza'. It doesn't even occur to Keltham to think about Glimpse of Beyond, and how he doesn't have it prepared today. The Chosen's lie seems to have been perfectly fitted to this otherworlder; from Keltham's thoughts it seems that this is something that happens often in dath ilan, even in the matter specifically of greater mastery of Law being something that sometimes produces a collapse of self-deceptions inside somebody about how much they enjoy being alive, and them not being able to live with themselves after that, and going into 'cryosuspension' early. Keltham feels bad about not seeing it coming as a possibility, though even if he had, there's not much he could or should have done about it.
The only flicker of suspicion, in Keltham, is about how it seems almost like a fear drawn specifically from his own thoughts. He rejects it after a moment's consideration; if the hypothetical Conspiracy could read his mind and get that degree of information about dath ilan, why do they need him for anything, and also there's no clear prior reason whatsoever why the hypothetical Conspiracy would need to yank Peranza in particular off the Project, that Keltham knows about. 'Base rates', Keltham thinks; this happens often in Civilization, and it should happen even more often in Golarion where people's lives are less happy.
It hardly seems like there's anything for Ignasi to do here at all. The Chosen's plan appears to be playing out perfectly. Though of course, given the catastrophic delicacy and importance of Project Lawful, it's understandable that they did call him in, just in case, for a major event like this one.
Keltham: "People in Civilization do sometimes take a week, or a year, to think about it first. Talk with family or friends or sometimes a Keeper. I mean, that - that assumes the existence of Quiet Cities, or just that you have enough savings to take time off like that - and that you've got drugs to try, or cognitherapists to speak to - and you don't owe your own existence in this place to anyone - but, I'm just saying, people in Civilization, would usually do that."
???: "Cheliax, Golarion, isn't really set up to have an option like that, for people. I'm very sure I'm not going to change my mind. But, I guess I do have the money, to take a week off, somewhere that isn't here, but still where Security can see me."
"I'm so sorry for - for wasting all the effort you invested in me, for, for - everything, really."
Keltham: "I'm sorry too. Sometimes it happens that - people's self-deception that they're happy, makes them less sad, enough to continue. They don't dwell on the negative emotions they're not letting themselves see. It's - one of the famous examples of arguably infohazardous information, that if you delude yourself into thinking you're very happy and not sad at all, you can still be happier than the sadness you're not letting yourself see, and then when you stop self-deceiving about that, you don't want to keep going. I mean it's not a fun way to be and you wouldn't want to have kids, if that was the heritage you were giving them, but sometimes people like that, if they're given a chance to continue on, can improve or put themselves together before they realize -"
"I'm sorry."
???: "Don't be. I volunteered. I got paid."
"I wouldn't actually have wanted my past self to go on like I was, even not knowing. I wasn't - actually happy."
Keltham: Keltham doesn't cry, doesn't even let himself be too overtly sad at her, because that is not polite and somebody in her situation does not need to be doing emotional labor about his own emotions.
Of course if you're Chelish you don't need Detect Thoughts to read him anyways.
"Goodbye, Peranza. See you in Hell, maybe."
???: "Please don't go looking for me there, for a while. I'll tell the devils if I get into shape to talk to anyone, but I don't want to be - thinking about that, trying for that, I just want to rest for a time first."
Keltham: "Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean - to imply anything like that."
"Goodbye, Peranza, period."
???: "Goodbye, Keltham."
She leaves without another word.
Keltham: He watches her go, and then gets back to his work.
It happens, needing to say goodbye to somebody for a time. Not, usually, when you're this young, but it happens.
???: "How much do I need to pay to buy my own tiny sword of glibness to keep."
Carissa Sevar: "Your soul," says Carissa, entirely seriously, and reaches out her hand to take it back.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 63 / Long Night
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has learned lots of dath ilani techniques for shaping herself better. She has learned how to notice her mental flinches, so she can hammer them out of existence; she has learned how to catch herself having an unAsmodean impulse, and punish it near-instantaneously so as to train the habit out of her mind at the very start. She has gotten absolutely nowhere on teaching this to anyone else, but that's all right; you perfect yourself first, and then see if anyone else can be salvaged.
She sort of wanted to get torturing the Security who fucked up the Peranza situation nearly to death over with quickly, but on examination that was an unAsmodean impulse, less about her valuable time than about still relating to torture as something distasteful. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, but sometimes it's healthy to do exactly the opposite of what feels natural, to teach yourself that it still works out fine.
So when she needed to go to sleep last night, she did not tell him that it was over, and now she will be resuming.
This is a skill, after all, and if she wants to be a Power in Hell she needs to be as good at it as she is at spellcraft, and if people insist on volunteering to help teach her, well, she'll use their sacrifice to learn.
Snack Service hasn't objected to this, for some reason. Uncharitably, Carissa figures that Cayden Cailean only cares about pretty girls who cry out to Iomedae and not about prematurely-balding men who cry out to nothing in particular.
Jacint Subirachs: Subirachs is very very relieved about the report she'll be able to pass on to the Most High, about this. It places Subirachs's own eternal fate, to say nothing of her status in Cheliax, in less worrying doubt.
It would be better if the Chosen were enjoying this more. But even if she's not, so long as the Chosen is not feeling much active distaste, not feeling like she's forcing herself to do this, if she's just getting used to it, that's also progress. Sevar can maybe try again later to find her own particular enjoyments in this activity, if any, once she's over the general shock.
Carissa Sevar: She wants to be like Abrogail, wants to understand people well enough that when she takes them apart she can put them together stronger. But you can't let the gulf between where you're at and where you want to be get in the way of getting better from your current starting point. Sure, look for clever shortcuts, but if there aren't any, then get started on the work.
She's not feeling miserable. She's actually doing a lot less feeling things lately, which has worked out great. And she must master this and will master it, and will enjoy it once she's good at it.
She doesn't kill him. There aren't that many Security-cleared wizards, and she just put all that effort into training him. And besides, it makes the whole thing better, the look on someone's face when they learn that they're not, in fact, going to die.
Yet.
She leaves the torture chambers in time to get some spellcraft practice in unless Subirachs wants her, which she reluctantly trots off to find out.
Jacint Subirachs: Sevar should exhibit her work to the rest of the Project, at some point? That's a lot of the point here. Torturing him in a way that makes him better is hard, when the punishment has to be this severe; it's a lot easier to make other Security better with it, and the other Project personnel. That's the greater part of the reward of this activity, which Sevar shouldn't neglect to collect for herself.
Carissa Sevar: - she sort of assumed word would just get around, since there's been Security stationed? Is she supposed to do a guided tour? At the Worldwound you could hear the screaming and that was pretty much all the information you needed.
Jacint Subirachs: Word has also gotten around the Project that Carissa Sevar is secretly the daughter of Infrexus.
Sevar has made a point of being merciful under carefully defined conditions of mercy, broader than usual. It needs to be known, not just rumored, that Sevar personally tortured this fool, that the Chosen's patience is in fact limited. It needs to be explicit under what conditions her tolerance was exhausted, and that it didn't consist of this man, say, spurning her sexual advances. Subirachs doesn't need to have heard that rumor to know it exists, spontaneously materialized into Golarion by whatever ethereal entities produce them from nothingness.
Carissa Sevar: It is really no wonder that Asmodeus hates humans so much.
Fine. Everyone can gather around, then, and she'll explain.
Carissa Sevar: This is a hard job. It is a dangerous job. Expectations are high. Carissa expects high performance, and she has tried very hard to ensure that it's rewarded, and ensure that mistakes which look like mistakes on the way to high performance are not punished.
However, if you are responsible for monitoring a girl in the middle of a mental breakdown, and you don't think of telling any of your superiors that she's in the middle of a mental breakdown because they're intimidating, and then she starts trying to do something incomprehensible and dangerous with her mind and you take fully two rounds to figure out what to do about that, and then Gorthoklek needs to be called in, then she'll in fact be irritated enough to practice torturing people on you for a couple consecutive nights.
Is that confusing? You will not be tortured for asking questions, asking questions is not very similar to failing at monitoring a girl having a mental breakdown for a very long time in a fashion that requires emergency intervention from Egorian.
Security: Mindreading results: They're very confused about what could go sufficiently wrong with a second-circle teenager that a pit fiend gets called in to handle it. Nobody in fact has any questions that they're refusing to ask for reasons that strike the Security as Sevar-disapproved. Many people are thinking 'What the fuck actually happened', but correctly inferring that this is probably dangerous information, and if they were meant to know it they'd have already been told.
A lot of the people in this room, especially the men, are experiencing significantly greater respect for Sevar and the Project's stated priorities, now that they know the price of exhausting her patience and that she's not simply weak.
Carissa Sevar: Good. That's good. She should really have been paying attention to what they thought of her already, that's an important variable. Another way this incident was her fault.
Ione Sala: Ione Sala looks at the broken wreck of a Security and keeps her expression neutral. She's - not sure how she ought to be feeling, her model of herself doesn't say. She hates Security, right? And she ought to feel reassured, about Peranza, by this. Even if nothing is being said about what happened to Peranza, and even if Gorthoklek got called in for some reason, Sevar personally wrecking the Security who failed does not particularly seem like the act of somebody who didn't really care about Peranza. Nor is Sevar the type to torture an innocent Security in order to fool people about whether she cared about Peranza, that's just silly.
...Ione doesn't know how she feels, but she sure isn't asking any questions.
She hopes Peranza will be okay, eventually. Maybe she'll ask Sevar afterwards if the Special Girls are cleared to know what really happened to Peranza. But she definitely isn't interrupting now.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa would like this project at this time to be very focused on getting spellsilver cheap enough to be a substantial competitive advantage for Cheliax, ideally without the help of anyone, second-ideally without the help of anyone but Avaricia. If that happens, she may seriously recommend to Egorian that they all join Peranza in being petrified for a whole year, so the project cannot fall apart before Cheliax is in possession of a decisive military advantage. That is, at this point, the only way they could even possibly lose, so better to cut it off at the pass.
She'd like Security to be monitoring for thoughts about whether anyone isn't sure they want to win.
Security: Ione Sala definitely doesn't want Cheliax to win, and is placing her faith in Nethys to stop that, but with tinges of visible effort. Likewise in her efforts to convince herself that she would never betray Lord Nethys over that, who has charge of her soul and could shatter her with a touch.
Alexandre Esquerra would be terrifically disappointed if Cheliax won while he was statued and before he could build armors to slay Cheliax's enemies himself, but this is not, in Security's judgment, a significant loyalty issue.
...several Project personnel are confused about what Sevar's plan even means, like, they just straight-up failed to understand what the plan was about or why they'd be turned into statues or how that gives Cheliax a military advantage. They are afraid to ask.
Carissa Sevar: Sure, okay, she'll talk slower.
"Several people are confused, but didn't ask questions. It would have been appreciated if you asked questions.
We are close to having a process for making spellsilver very cheaply. This is a decisive military advantage. If Cheliax has that, and no one else does, then eventually we will conquer them. A thousand very well-equipped high level magic users with arbitrary resources to throw at the problem can topple any government in the world. Once that happens, the only way Cheliax loses is if someone who knows the secret defects, or if Keltham leaves and goes to Osirion and we can't conquer Osirion fast enough.
So, once we arrive at that point, the gains to Cheliax from the project proceeding normally are still substantial, but the downside is very high; we have enough of an advantage to win, and are only playing to not-lose. I don't like playing to not-lose. One solution is to petrify Keltham for a year. But the reason we haven't considered that before is that we'll change, from not being around him, and he'll be suspicious. So to do that safely, we spend that time in stasis as well. We wake up with Cheliax already having the resources to conquer Osirion on an hour's notice, and we proceed from there."
It's a gamble, telling them this. But Peranza sincerely thought Cheliax was going to lose, and so it seems important, to give people a concrete, testable description of how they'll know Cheliax is on track to win.
Ione Sala: Ione tries, and fails, to prevent herself from thinking where Security can hear it, that if tropes govern all of this or Nethys has a plan, that predicts Keltham leaves before the Project can get spellsilver manufacture to that level no no that's silly right the dath ilani romance novel would probably let Cheliax get that far in order to raise plot tension.
Security: ...this thought is duly reported to the Chosen.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa thinks that, actually, she's not a character in a story, and whether Keltham leaves depends on her competence not the next plot beat.
But noted.
Asmodia: Asmodia has not been consulted about this plan. Apparently Sevar came up with it just while talking to Maillol and Subirachs and Abarco or whoever.
Asmodia feels a bit insulted about that, in fact. Isn't she practically Sevar's second-in-command? Isn't it her job to check over clever ideas like these for consistency? Have any of those apparently more-important-than-her people been checking over every scrap of information that Keltham interacts with?
(Maillol, the actual second, would recognize this feeling immediately; it's the feeling of not being far enough into the Inner Ring.)
Asmodia will decide when and whether to later bring up the issue that apparently none of those other important people saw, when they were making this plan without consulting her. She can always claim to have thought of it later.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 64
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 65
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 66-70
Keltham: After a lecture or two on the ways of creativity inside a box - the easiest and most straightforward sort of creativity that there is, which is at least worth trying in a lot of cases -
The Project - not Keltham, the Project - invents the bimetallic thermometer!
By methodology of getting together a dozen kinds of substance that change in various ways with respect to a temperature, over the requisite range, and trying to combine every way they can change relative to each other to form any kind of indicator that can be read.
Sibilla, tier-2, is the one who simply welds a few thin strips of different metals together, applies heat, and watches them bend slightly, as the outer metal expands more than the inner metal.
Within an hour they've got a wound-up spiral coil of platinum-gold-silver. You can apply heat in the range of most chemical-reaction steps, and watch that spiral wind or unwind a little bit per turn through many turns, to rotate and move a dial on a temperature setting they're going to calibrate.
The alchemist's vampire-bat familiar is no longer a bottleneck on several key processes! This takes the Project significantly closer not just to perfecting but to scaling its cheaper-spellsilver-manufacture methods. And beyond spellsilver refining, a whole new world of precise temperature-dependent chemical processes has opened before them! Not just for the Project, but for every alchemist who doesn't have a vampire-bat familiar!
It doesn't promote Sibilla to tier-1 immediately, but it puts her on Keltham's unspoken watch list for it; and if Sibilla doesn't get that promotion outright, she'll sure get a heck of a bonus.
And not just that, bimetal thermometers are one more thing the Project can sell! For revenue! Besides sulfuric acid! And they should maybe properly look into metal refining, too, now that they have a way to measure forge temperatures -
Yes, yes, Keltham realizes that spellsilver is more profitable and the critical step on scaling intelligence headbands and they should master that part first.
Curse of Laughter: Party time?
Keltham: Sure!
Curse of Laughter: CAKE FOR EVERYONE!
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 71-77
Keltham: Down to three-quarters the cost of traditional spellsilver production if any two of Keltham, Avaricia, Carissa, and Shilira are overseeing the entire process! You also need either an alchemist or Avaricia but it doesn't have to be an alchemist with a temperature-reading vampire-bat familiar! Total Project spellsilver production at 1.7 pounds! Avaricia and Asmodia have started to train a crew of older third-circle wizards from Cheliax, now that it's clearer exactly what kind of Prestidigitation needs to be done, and how much math it helps to know, and they've got spectroscopes and illusionary optical microscopes and a standard incremental series of chemical reaction pathways to practice on!
They're clearly going to be able to do the thing! The only reason it's not time to massively scale yet is that the process is literally improving by the day!
Carissa Sevar: It's the best news in all of human history.
Carissa is not in denial about having squishy slime bits that are sad, rather than happy. If you're in denial about your squishy slime bits then you can't hammer them out of existence.
She focuses on her headband assembly line. This isn't going to be something that couldn't have been done centuries ago; it's just going to be something that wasn't worth doing centuries ago. No society before Asmodean Cheliax has had large numbers of decently-trained third-circle wizards whose time is not actually intensely competed-for, and very few people with abundant spellsilver riches would bother spending it on hyper-specific expensive magic items that can only be used for mass production of a single item, because they wouldn't have had a buyer.
But with spellsilver cheap, it works. She has it down for +2 headbands, and should be able to figure out +4 headbands very soon.
Asmodia: She's been having a lot of mixed feelings about things, but even if this puts Cheliax on greater alert against Keltham escaping, Asmodia doesn't think she can delay reporting any longer and still look remotely competent.
Asmodia has been thinking about how to package up the Project for stasis, since they're getting closer to the spellsilver production target. Asmodia admits fault for not thinking of this earlier - especially since it's her responsibility to think of this sort of thing, as the consistency-checker who actually reads everything Keltham sees, all of the documents he's exposed to.
Like Cheliax's contract with the Project.
Keltham wrote in some pretty tight provisions about all of Cheliax's Project-knowledge-derived industry having gratuities payable to the Project.
If the Project shuts down for a year while Cheliax produces a massive amount of spellsilver, even for its own internal use rather than being resold, the contract says an internal price with the Project needs to be negotiated, and the resulting revenue has to accrue to the Project, and revenue has to be reported to Keltham, he clearly did think about the possibility that Cheliax would do a bunch of stuff and theoretically transfer money to the Project but then not tell him about it, and Keltham has the right to examine related accounting and production books.
If they run the stasis plan, that's basically planning for the Conspiracy to blow up when the next revenue report is due. Maybe that's deemed worth it, for the one-year headstart on Cheliax's enemies, but -
Carissa Sevar: " - doing the stasis plan is going to be an enormous logistical headache along every possible dimension, but I think that one might be manageable. Lrilatha wrote the contract and we had in mind that Keltham might get stasised for extended periods, I think they have some workarounds in mind. You should talk to Maillol about it."
Asmodia: ...She'll do that then.
Ferrer Maillol: Yeah, Maillol was wondering when or if Asmodia would point that out. She's been a favorite of his, but he was starting to doubt her competence there.
If it gets to that point, Cheliax is going to present a putative plan where Cheliax withdraws wizards and resources from a lot of other things, like school academies, and makes a truly massive push to scale up spellsilver production and do a lot of mining and catch up on part of the demand backlog and maybe not die during the war with Nidal. It will be clearly said to Keltham that this is not sustainable.
The books can't be false, but the Queen can pass an act legally creating a separate calendar for Project-related companies which runs thirteen times slower for the duration of that year, making all the dates showing massive production over the next month be legally correct.
Asmodia needs to keep in mind that her superiors are not, in fact, complete incompetents. Lrilatha and Abrogail Thrune put some cleverness into this.
Asmodia: "Acknowledged."
"Sir, I'd be lying if I claimed to be confident that Keltham is going to buy this, this did not happen in alterCheliax at all, sir."
Ferrer Maillol: "Kid, that is sometimes worth doing occasionally. Like when it buys a massive nation-scale military and political advantage and makes it less threatening for us to fail for the entire rest of the Project."
"You're offended that you weren't consulted about this." It's not a question.
Asmodia: "I admit fault -"
Ferrer Maillol: "Don't. I wasn't trying to correct that impulse. You see there's an Inner Ring. You see you're not part of it. You want in."
"That's good, Asmodia. You can get in. It's just going to take you a while longer before you're ready to sit down at the table with myself and Sevar and Abrogail Thrune. You can be in the room where it happens. You may be a little older than this when you're seated, but there's a place there for you if you prove yourself worthy."
"The only reason I'd be concerned is if, say, you noticed this problem earlier, and kept it to yourself because you had dreams of thinking up a solution and presenting it to your less competent superiors on a platinum platter, so that we'd know to consult you next time."
"That would be a problem, Asmodia."
Asmodia: "I - sir, I obviously tried to think of a solution myself, before I came complaining here - but that was today -"