Keltham: No. He doesn't owe that to anyone or anything.
Keltham: Okay, he's starting to lose patience with himself here. What is it that he'd supposedly see, if he used an Owl's Wisdom on himself? If he already knows what he's scared of seeing, and is going around gloomy and depressed about it, every scrap of common sense out of dath ilan says to just face it already, sheesh.
Keltham: He could make sulfa drugs, Keltham thinks. Probably. He doesn't really know how, but he has a rough idea what sort of chemical that should be, they have all kinds of reaction-pathway tricks up their sleeves now. That will make more people survive bacterial infections if they can't afford Remove Disease, and their population density will go up until they're more vulnerable to disease and things are brought back into equilibrium, unless he can first master contraception, or maybe roadmaking so that there can be more cities with lower density, which possibly need to be supported by better crops.
It's a big tangle and he knows this, so why is this a sad thought?
Keltham: ...Maybe it's that there's now an untaken option for thinking about it, which is... cast Augury on what happens if he puts on a +2 intelligence headband. Augury isn't perfect, is the problem... but then the probability of disaster isn't that high in the first place, and he could just take the headband off if anything starts to go wrong.
While that option exists, he has not, in fact, thought as hard as possible about how to cut the medicine-sanitation-agriculture-density-contraception tangle. So the thought isn't really quiescent inside him. He just thought it would take a huge self-sacrifice, so then that thought got to linger around making him feel guilty about not making that sacrifice.
...the problem with that is that Augury has a 30-minute time horizon, and if an intelligence headband goes great, he's going to want to go on wearing it, judging by how much everybody on the Project is constantly wearing headbands, now. Going around wearing one of those for the rest of his life is going to alter his personality.
Well, there comes a point, where you decide to either do the thing, or not do the thing, which you do by actually managing to evaluate it with your utilityfunction or your cheap human approximation thereof of 'wanting'. Or, on a meta-level, you decide to either think about the thing more, or not think about the thing more, and either way you're supposed to be able to get over it, at that point.
Keltham: There's the war on Nidal, too...
And this is a depressing thought, why? What does his brain think he's supposed to do about that? Is he possibly just supposed to be depressed because Nidal is awful? Hm?
Keltham: He could make weapons, as his thing to do next. He's got acid in very large quantities, and that will let you make large quantities of some relatively weak and tiny things that go boom.
Keltham: He doesn't want to make weapons. He doesn't want his knowledge to be used to hurt people. He doesn't want that to be his meaning to Golarion.
And he's Evil, so what he wants, should be enough of an answer. That's the whole point of being Keltham instead of a median dath ilani.
Keltham: Yeah, his brain isn't actually buying that at all.
Keltham: The people in Nidal - are hurting.
It matters to them a lot more than any of this matters to Keltham.
Carissa's school instructor got soul-trapped and Keltham has not been asking questions about what happened to him exactly.
And that also matters to Keltham and he cannot, actually, live in denial about that, either, no matter how much it flaming resembles all of the smug, satisfied opinions that people around him politely didn't express, but that he knew they were thinking, about how maybe Keltham would just grow out of it and turn into a median dath ilani one day.
It may not even be the Lawful answer. He'd be destroying a lot of their value for a little of his value, and that's not what he'd have wanted the timeless/updateless decision to be, of people in his position.
Keltham: Cool. Next up, make weapons for Cheliax.
Keltham: ...aaaaand his brain's not buying that one either.
Dear brain: You must, in fact, either make weapons for Cheliax, or not make weapons for Cheliax. To take neither of these options is not, in fact, among your options. So you should decide which of these two things is better, and then do that thing, and then not feel bad about it.
If that argument doesn't sound appealing, is it because there is some additional thought Keltham is supposed to think, to weigh, before deciding? Please exhibit it, brain; or make a gesture in its general direction. Or throw up a tiny note of discordance or something.
Keltham: ...is he actually reluctant to make weapons for Cheliax mainly because his brain still hasn't gone quiescent about the Conspiracy thing?
Keltham: This is not a very consistent attitude to hold, brain! In the sort of Conspiracy world where Cheliax does not already know all of that stuff Keltham knows, where his making weapons would actually matter... Keltham has also been teaching them to refine spellsilver at 10% of the cost.
That is also a bad thing to do if he is secretly captive inside a Conspiracy!
If his dath ilani sensibilities don't instinctively worry about that, the way they worry about crafting weapons, it means his sensibilities are wrong and incoherent about at least one of 'Is it okay to make weapons for Cheliax' and 'Is it okay to mine cheap spellsilver for Cheliax' and he needs to resolve that.
Keltham: Is he, in fact, thinking about the right things at all, here? Maybe if he asked Lrilatha about weapons, she'd say it's unlikely that Cheliax could really benefit much from them, that he should spend his next effort on forging, or roads, or agriculture, instead.
Keltham: Thaaaaat seems unlikely to be the thought that finishes this dilemma.
He has not, for one thing, actually asked about weapons. Except of that paladin, on a much more grand and impractical scale of explosions that seemed safely nonthreatening to his real life.
And for another thing, explosives shouldn't be very hard at this level of chemical expertise, compared to mining spellsilver.
And for another nother thing, back in dath ilan, if he'd come across an internally inconsistent thought like 'It's okay to mine spellsilver for my apparent hosts but not to build weapons for them', he would have considered that as a big deal, and tried to resolve it. He somewhat got out of that habit due to Golarion making him be totally incoherent all of the time. But things are settling down now, he is not having a new terrible epiphany every four hours, and he can afford to maybe start being a little coherent, again.
Keltham: Right. So.
Keltham: Is he, in fact, inside of a terrible Conspiracy of terrible people doing terrible things, who should never have been given any of his chemistry ideas and definitely shouldn't be given explosives.
Keltham: Take a moment to experience fully how much this feels like an awful stale thought you don't want to have to think again...
Keltham: And set that aside.
Keltham: Okay, so. Now that he's thinking about this clearly, there's obvious things he could do, which he has not done, and that would be a reasonable reason for his brain to fail to go quiescent about this.
One, he could actually try to review all of his evidence and compare the most probable Ordinary and Conspiracy worlds implied by that evidence in hindsight, to that evidence and each other.
Two, he could try to poke and probe at his reality in any number of ways that he has not, in fact, really allocated a special day to do. Except this should actually be Step One because you'd want to do that before assembling all your evidence. Only there's a preliminary Step Zero quickie evidence review that he ought to do before he assembles 'poke and prod' procedures.
Three, depending on results of initial poking and prodding and the evidence review, he could do things like try to do scryed consistency checks on the larger world, even accepting for now that it's dangerous for him to step outside Broom's god's interdiction. He could ask to talk to somebody Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good who's powerful enough to demonstrate, like, their not being fake, somehow he is not sure of how that could work. He could demand a huge assortment of random books from all over the world, now that he can afford those. He could try in other ways to put his vision clearly outside of Cheliax even if he can't put himself outside of Cheliax.
It's not going to resolve any doubts about his having landed in a competent supercivilization that could keep him completely deluded. That’s probably why doing this hasn’t seemed worthwhile to him before now. It's not going to make his fears go away. But it could maybe resolve his doubts about whether making explosives for a weaker putative version of Cheliax seems okay. The Conspiracy that can actually be helped by him, if he makes explosives putatively to help Ordinary with their long grinding war with Nidal, is a narrower concern to investigate.
Even if Lrilatha said Cheliax didn't want any explosives, he obviously ought to do that just about the spellsilver business. Really, arguably, should have done it before, but on arrival he was still disoriented then on a level where that would have been hard... and then he was too busy making spellsilver. Yeah, in retrospect, there was sort of a missing step in the middle, there, had he taken time for meta-thought to order things.
Keltham doesn't feel too terrible about that part, it legitimately took a while for his brain to quiet down and shake itself out to the point where its remaining doubts were this easy to go through and organize, without a hundred other Additional Questions running off in all directions.
Still gonna suck if Carissa, and Yaisa and Asmodia and Meritxell and Ione, all get lost to him over it, after he let himself get attached... okay that problem is mostly Carissa, he'd survive losing the others.
Keltham: Is his brain actually worried about that? On a short-term timescale? This requires that his brain assign significant probability, not only that everyone he's come to have feelings for is a Conspiracy agent, but that Keltham has enough evidence to figure this out, or will be able to find enough evidence as soon as he tries.
Keltham: Well, that sure seems like the sort of thought that could get in the way of a happy relationship. That makes Keltham's correct course of action here very clear.
He's going to announce now that he's taking tomorrow off announce that part tomorrow, it may inconvenience others but he doesn’t want his brain thinking that the Conspiracy successfully deduced what that request meant in context and stayed up all night to prepare. He’s taken days off before, but maybe he’d ask for this one with a facial microexpression that gave it away, or somebody would make an inference from the precise timing of the request. If he’s doing this at all, he’ll do it with a pretense of security mindset, so his brain doesn’t think he could try again better.
He’ll spend some time tonight figuring out what to try, and which spells to request tomorrow at dawn.
Keltham: And then he's going to try to crack the world he's inside, to see if it's just a fragile eggshell, after all.
Keltham: Wrong attitude! And then he's going to try to crack the putatively fragile eggshell of the world he's inside! If the world is real, it'll be able to take it!
That which shouldn't be destroyed by the truth, can't be!
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 89 / Long Night
Carissa Sevar: Avaricia's going to stay out of suspension at least for a month to help with the more sensitive Presidigitable chemical processes. Carissa has some hesitations about this, most of them shaped like 'if you start treating Avaricia as a dath-ilani-rude-person and forget who she actually is, and then she outmaneuvers you and arranges for you to never wake up, you'd deserve it', but it means spellsilver's a lot cheaper and at her Splendour acting normal should be easier. And she's not close enough to Keltham he'll notice subtle personality changes.
Maillol's also going to stay out of suspension at least for a month, possibly for the duration, to manage the logistics of the expanded spellsilver project. She's not worried about that. She is pretty sure that every time Abrogail or the Most High or Gorthoklek steps into their fortress he is deeply grateful deep in his heart that it's Carissa they're here to see.
They're about a week out. They can do it sooner, if anything makes them nervous; they can wait a bit longer, if Keltham's teaching something immediately applicable. People keep coming up with reasons to stall; probably they're all as nervous as she is. More nervous, maybe, because more disposable. But she remains pretty sure it's the right call.
Project Lawful: PL-timestamp: Day 90 / Morning
Jacint Subirachs: You don't get to be a seventh-circle cleric of Asmodeus without the ability to be professional. Including being professional when terrified that you're going to be fired, executed, and not have a good time in Hell; this is practically synonymous with being professional at all, in Cheliax. Project Lawful is probably valuable enough, at this point, to continue anyways, and this, probably isn't Subirachs's fault -
Her report relayed via Security to the Chosen of Asmodeus contains no tone at all, just the facts.
Spell Gauge shows that Keltham received the following spells upon praying today:
1st: Comprehend Languages, Sanctuary, Protection from Evil, Abadar's Truthtelling x32nd: Owl's Wisdom, Eagle's Splendour, Augury x23rd: Invisibility Purge x2, Summon Monster III
(4th is unknown as always, Subirachs cannot read that high)
An extreme emergency request for 8th-circle support to mindread Keltham has already been sent by Teleport. Burning their scroll of Heightened Detect Thoughts on Keltham can also be done immediately pending Sevar's orders.
Carissa Sevar: This is a very tropey time for him to get suspicious, is the first thing Carissa's brain produces, for some reason.
"Do it. And try to secure a Dominate Monster so we can control whatever he summons, and put - Rabassa and Tura and Abarco on his personal security, if they aren't already, and have someone review last night's activities. And check all the girls to see if anyone tipped him off and if so what they said.
- additionally I - want Her Infernal Majestrix on site. She might think of something I won't, and she can definitely authorize things I can't."
Jacint Subirachs: Subirachs doesn't remind the Chosen that standing orders from the Most High are that Sevar is supposed to fight this game against Keltham by her own will, because tropes probably do not permit the Queen to win if she's in charge. If Sevar wants to request Her Infernal Majestrix standing by while restricting herself in whatever way the Most High has demanded of her, it's her call.
The Security sent as messenger to Egorian has Telepathic Bond up; the new request can be added immediately.
Security: Emergency mindread results:
Keltham is thinking about whether to trust Cheliax with weapons information for the war on Nidal, and plans to spend a day properly trying to pierce Conspiracies specifically in the class of 'the Conspiracy isn't so powerful that they couldn't use my knowledge about spellsilver or weapons'.
He's conducted a preliminary review of some of his evidence, but all his surface thoughts referenced was the point that if the Conspiracy existed, it was improvising very hard during its early days.
He hasn't done a full review of evidence, because he's planning to gather more evidence today.
His next destination is asking Ione for books written in non-Taldane languages. He plans to collect those early, before the hypothetical Conspiracy has a chance to react to his other requests - something about a scry - and his brief surface thoughts about what he was planning to do to the books later didn't make sense to the Security who cast from scroll, something that felt like an inscrutable dath ilani thing you could do to a language - one of his 4th level spells is Tongues -
Carissa Sevar: Well fuck.
Ask Maillol if we're allowed to petrify him while he's attempting to leave. Get some old books written in non-Taldane languages, fudge the dates. Have Ione still asleep, or if she's never slept in up to this point have her in the toilet.
Security: Acknowledged.
Ferrer Maillol: "We can - it feels like, it's on the edges of our orders - unfortunately - we can't try to keep him for the long term if he's trying to leave, if the time has come for him to leave, if it feels like the time has naturally come when he leaves us. We could definitely petrify him for a day, a week, if we don't mind him noticing that. If we think he's otherwise going to leave us for Osirion, it becomes worse to stop him, delay him. I don't know if that instruction is just about Osirion or if it would apply to other destinations too - we cannot lie to him or tell him partial truths in a way that is intended to make him choose a destination other than Osirion - I will continue trying to understand our Lord's commands -"
Ione Sala: Praise Nethys.
Praise Nethys.
Praise Nethys.
Sure, she can be in her library's toilet. It will be useful to have a chance to regain her composure. She hopes Keltham dings them a million factors of 2 for it.
Whatever's going on right now, Ione will play this out diligently and in absolute conformance to Security's instructions. She is very relieved and very confident that whatever they try won't work and is therefore happy to help her hardest.
Carissa Sevar: She thinks they'll lose 3, 4 factors of 2. It's better than losing any once Keltham asks for the books. Old books, that say nothing about infernal Cheliax, the dates changed by a century, and they'll use the trick to make Keltham skip over problematic phrases; that's the best she can think of. It's reasonable for Ione to only know of two or three such books.
She wears the new earrings, just to have a plot point that hasn't happened yet and needs to happen before Keltham leaves.
Asmodia: SHE HAS THIS. There's over one hundred assorted weird books now in a hidden nook of the Fortress library, from which Ione can also borrow books, there should be five old foreign language-books in there and Security has magical text-altering tools to work on the date, they just need literally three minutes and this will be okay.
((She has... not quite totally forgotten about how she doesn't want Cheliax conquering the world per se, but that's just letting her operate at the height of her job, the peak of her game, without being so afraid of losing. Cheliax will not dispose of her, she thinks, if she fights her true best and loses fairly; and if they do, there's always the Gardens.))
Keltham: Ione's not visible in the library. She has been on every previous occasion, at roughly this time of morning.
Keltham assigned likelihoods in advance, this time.
...he hasn't done a full review of evidence but it's really really not good, and possibly indicates mindreading or its equivalent being used on him, he doesn't doesn't doesn't want to lose Carissa, there's a crack in him that makes his voice break slightly, when he calls out "IONE?" just in case -
Ione Sala: "Keltham? In the toilet!"
Keltham: ...part of him is apparently pretty scared here, if he emotionally-updated that fast.
"Weird time-sensitive task! Five books in five different non-Taldane languages from the Ostenso library, can you tell me their titles as soon as you know them, without borrowing them yet?" That gives them less time to run a search while she's in the bathroom.
He didn't consider this exact possibility. Call it 2 bits for mindreading!Conspiracy... not great, but fine if the rest of his day doesn't go like this.
Ione Sala: "Okay this is new! I have a vague sense of what books like that are in the library and roughly what's in them, and I can pick from five different languages, but I can't actually read the titles! You want me to pick five and tell you what they're about?"
Keltham: "Works!"
Security: Keltham is planning to pick three of the five and ask Ione to summon two others instead of whichever other two she named.
Asmodia: She should have thought of that.
Instructions to Security on book-alteration: We need 7 books, not 5, and produce up to 11 as quickly as you can.
Asmodia: This is literally the most suicidal thing she'll ever do in her life. But it's the end of her game, and she wants to play it to the fullest.
"If the Queen of Cheliax is available and the Most High's instructions permit it, I request her in this loop cautioning me on which clever things Keltham might think of next. I'm not thinking of them fast enough." Asmodia is on Fox's Cunning, besides her +6 Wisdom headband, and Eagle's Splendour without which she would never have dared that request, but that set of stat boosts wasn't enough before and won't be enough now.
Security: Queen's ETA 2 minutes, your request will be relayed.
(...this Security now respects Asmodia a lot more than he did 30 seconds earlier. She's insane, but the kind of insane you don't mess with until they go down in flames of glory or dishonor.)
Keltham: Choose your random numbers now, fresh method and means; if you choose them in advance the mindreading!Conspiracy may know them...
Keltham picks 3 of 5, asks Ione to choose 2 others.
"Ione sorry for the weird request, will owe you a favor or just pay you a cheerful price if you want to name one, but I want you to summon those books immediately and get them to me outside the bathroom regardless of personal inconvenience thereof! Literally as fast as possible! I'll turn away from the door so you've got some privacy on that!"
It's a spontaneous thought. There's no warning.
Asmodia: Do it! Now! We'll alter the borrowed books, somehow, Keltham wasn't planning to use the books until later - use Major Image if you haven't altered dates on front matter, and he looks at that before we get a chance to alter them later -
Ione Sala: She'll obey! Suppressing the huge smile on her face when she shoves the borrowed books out of the bathroom door, just in case Keltham is peeking!
This is going to be so great and she will absolutely do everything she's ordered enthusiastically and with maximum cooperative competence while it all goes down in flames.
Keltham: "Thanks, Ione! Owe you one!"
Keltham will now rip one page apiece out of each of the borrowed library books - overriding the flinch any dath ilani would feel, at doing such a thing, it's been represented to him that changes to Ione-borrowed books don't damage the originals - and cast Comprehend Languages, while he reads those five pages. Afterwards, he'll tuck those five pages into a relatively protected interior jacket-shirt pocket.
Security: Keltham's thoughts indicate that he's doing this to be able to verify that it's the same five pages later, when he casts Tongues and does - something that's going to take him a while - possibly something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other?
Asmodia: She's not seeing it at all, and prays to Pharasma that this means Keltham is checking the reality of something they did not fake.
...she admits fault in having not foreseen this line of possibility, having not tried to produce an extensively Law-trained mathematical-adept Security who could cast their emergency Heightened Detect Thoughts and successfully understand what Keltham was thinking.
Carissa Sevar: - something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other - something that'd be hard to fake -
Baseline is invented but Golarion languages borrow words from each other? No, that's not the right kind of thing. Good places ought to have systematically different languages from fake-Evil from real-Evil? Baseline seems to work like that, with the most important words shorter, but no Golarion language does because none of them were deliberately engineered - what would she even learn, if she suddenly could read Kelish -
Security: Security with Kelish who can cast Share Language from scroll: exists
Carissa Sevar: Now Carissa speaks Kelish. What does that even give her. Can she say 'my insane idiot boyfriend who's going to ruin everything' - yes, she can. What about 'my Queen' - nothing's discernably very different about saying that. What about 'we're all going to die in horrible agony'. The word lengths don't seem particularly different.
She hopes he's just checking if the languages have the right sort of shared language history but somehow she doubts it.
Nethys: The vast Things watching all this from orthogonal angles to ultimate reality are talking so fast among themselves that Nethys is finding it hard to keep up with their nearly incomprehensible Thoughts; they are - possibly speculating on what Keltham could try next to pierce the veil, given what he already knows?
Security: Keltham's clearly visible Security detail requests instructions about how he's supposed to be reacting to this whole business with Ione Sala. He doesn't think his alterSelf is particularly alarmed yet, Keltham is an odd person and this doesn't seem out-of-character for him, but he requests confirmation on that, these are unusual circumstances.
Carissa Sevar: Yep that's correct. After he does another odd thing Security can inquiry as to whether Keltham wants additional, or alternately no, Security while he's running around doing things but not yet.
Keltham: Keltham heads to store his mutilated books in his bedroom.
Security: Keltham's thoughts indicate that he was planning to maybe get a bite of breakfast before his next step, but the bump in mindreading!Conspiracy / alerted!Conspiracy from Ione not being present at her usual place in the library has changed his mind.
He's currently heading to Maillol to make some inconvenient and embarrassing demands. Cheliax is diverting serious national energy to mining spellsilver, and Keltham needs to just get over his sense of embarrassment about asking Cheliax to burn Teleports or scrolls on reassuring him in weird ways.
...he's also trying not to think about specifics, and apparently internal thought control is something dath ilani are trained in. Keltham doesn't think like somebody who has actual training in resisting Detect Thoughts, and is probably going to think of what specifically he's planning in like another minute or two, but he didn't think of it immediately.
Abrogail Thrune II: And she's here, already being updated on the situation by Security.
She can't originate plans, can't suggest plans, she can say things she thinks she sees but that's the limit of what the Most High thinks she's allowed to do without becoming too much of a primary opposed force to Keltham.
That doesn't sound like a very winnable game for Cheliax, and while they're probably going to lose, here, Queen Abrogail II of Cheliax can try to make it a little more dramatically satisfying if Carissa Sevar wins this, a little more of a fallen-flat buildup if she loses.
There's only one obvious correct next move in this game, then. She should've seen it before now, but there are some thoughts painful enough that even to her they do not come easily to mind.
It's a risk to her throne itself, and you don't want to take too many of those over the course of your entire career as a Queen. You could say, the length of your career is delimited by how many risks like these you take.
Abrogail Thrune II is not, actually, a coward.
It's going to hurt like the flames of deeper Hell.
She's not, actually, weak.
"Aspexia. If I do something that risks my life and throne, in pure service to Asmodeus and Cheliax, in this moment, will you protect me and my reign even with your own life, until this emergency is done and the risk to me is over?"
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Yes."
Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail Thrune II storms into the breakfast hall of Project Lawful.
Carissa Sevar: - okay turns out Carissa does still feel terrified out of her bones around Abrogail, if Abrogail's in the mood to be scary.
She does not kneel until she gets confirmation that Keltham's definitely not headed this direction, which thankfully doesn't take very long because her legs are threatening to override this decision and give out.
lintamande: A perfectly normal distribution of students are in the breakfast room. They also kneel.
Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia arrives only a moment after.
Abrogail Thrune II: "Carissa. Win this trial and become a Para-duchess this very night, later Duchess of southwestern Nidal after we conquer that land."
"Aspexia can give any orders in this Fortress and in this emergency that I might have myself, I do not know how useful I will be, after this."
"May Asmodeus witness your day of glory even if He cannot help you in it."
She pulls off Carissa's +4 headband with her left hand, and with her right hand, takes the Crown of Infernal Majesty from her own head and places it on Carissa Sevar's.
She does not collapse. Abrogail was not weak before she took the throne.
What's left of Abrogail turns without another word and leaves the hall, escorted by Aspexia. She is being a distraction, and cannot be much of an actual help for a while and maybe not at all.
Carissa Sevar: - oh.
Oh.
She's not using this to the best of its potential, she can feel that now, it's the kind of mind that you need to grow new habits for, she can see farther and she can direct her mind better and she's using only the barest fraction of that, if she sets herself only to being Carissa faster.
Well, she can't just use her miraculously enhanced mind to think 'oh' over and over, that's a waste of it, and she also should not use it to be concerned for Abrogail, Abrogail eventually reading her thought-transcripts will be annoyed with her. Instead she needs to use it to outthink Keltham and stop everything from being lost.
- how good at spellcraft do you have to be to make one of these.
Not the time.
What's he going to ask Maillol for?
The obvious things are things that are not too inconvenient for alter!Cheliax to get, but are deeply inconvenient for true!Cheliax, like the books. What else is in that category - people to talk to. That whole category of request she feels confident they can handle, actually, with glibness pins and impersonators.
People to do a Sending to. Sending takes ten minutes but that's all building the spell, picking the destination doesn't have to be done until the end. They blocked Sending into and out of the fortress, they told him that they'd done so and they should probably tell him also that many important people do the same thing to avoid random unsolicited Sendings, even though they'll lose a 2 for that.
Financial and tax records - they'll just have to send him real records and pray it takes him longer than one day to figure them out. They can petrify him once he sleeps.
Books about theology and Asmodeanism. They have worked up some fakes specifically on that topic; he might ask for them in other languages, though, or ask for ones with specific traits that'd exist in the real world but that they wouldn't happen to have included in their manufactured ones.
- oh, there's an idea for what he might've been doing with the books he destroyed, not a sure thing but a thing she'd do in his situation - there'd be math, for without memorizing or even reading a whole text being able to be sure if it was changed around on you so long as the person changing it around didn't know what you'd be checking. Something like 'counting all the Es' except faster.
An antimagic field, into which he can demand everyone step after having verified its properties as an antimagic field. Has Keltham run across the concept of antimagic fields? She doesn't know.
A walking tour of Ostenso where he can accost random citizens with questions. They have the capacity to handle that, she thinks, between telepathically giving people cues and Dominating them.
Something he can scry - some place in Hell he can scry, maybe - they could just give him parts of Axis instead -
Verification of the Nidal war, she is setting that whole category aside because they're not lying about the Nidal war. Verification of Zon-Kuthon-related topics, same.
Aspexia Rugatonn: "Are you, at any point, going to bother to cast the obvious enhancement spells on yourself for at least +4 boosts, or have Security here do so?"
Abrogail Thrune II: You could almost think Abrogail's voice was strong, if you had many fewer ranks in reading-skills than does Aspexia Rugatonn.
"It is genuinely amazing how little sense of drama you have, Aspexia."
lintamande: "Sevar," says Elias Abarco, "turn off the Crown of Infernal Majesty's spell resistance and immunity to mind-affecting magic."
Carissa Sevar: "Try harder to avoid sounding like you're giving me orders, Abarco," says Carissa, but does that, because he's obviously right. There is absolutely no chance that anyone will let her have the Crown of Infernal Majesty during this operation while not even mindreading her to make sure she's not secretly trying to help Keltham win.
It's an effortless mental action. She wants a headband like this. She never wants to take it off though obviously she'll do so the second the crisis is over.
Is there also a mental action to make it look like her normal headband - yes.
Carissa will burn in the fires of Hell for as many centuries as it takes to become capable of forging magic items like these.
Keltham: "Maillol. I'm sorry, and apologize for how unannounced this is all going to be. But with the nation of Cheliax investing a significant fraction of domestic product into scaling up the Project, I think the point has come where it's silly for me to not ask for some things that are expensive and inconvenient and will enable higher Project output from myself."
"Most of those are non-urgent and can be negotiated sensibly and with due notice. The reason for this abrupt set of requests is that I have been kind of stuck in this Fortress. I now want to take a set of measures whose point is to test whether Cheliax has been truthful with me about conditions outside it, and the less time hypothetical Conspiracy Cheliax has to prepare for those, the better. If I ask you for something impossible, that I didn't expect to be impossible, I obviously cannot alter reality to make it be possible for you, but please be creative about thinking of other ways to do it; it costs Ordinary Cheliax its probability when that happens and I didn't expect it to."
"My highest priority request is for as many possible daily newspapers, preferably including newspapers from previous days, in the same language this page is written in," Keltham holds aloft a random page from his shirt, "in whatever country that is, and at least three theology books from that country mentioning multiple gods but at least the gods Asmodeus, Nethys, Cayden Cailean, Zon-Kuthon, Iomedae, Irori, Norgorber, Calistria, and Aroden, and at least five fictional novels preferably from five different genres, bonus if there's a lot of descriptions of interesting magic in them. I imagine, but am willing to hear otherwise, that this is something you can get done in an hour on an emergency basis. Happy to hear a cost estimate, which I think I am okay at this point charging to the Project; this is something the Project needs to do in order to gain access to additional knowledge of mine. Oh, I also need a scroll of Comprehend Languages, preferably divine version, brought back, if at all possible." The schedule disruption of now worrying about mindreading has also affected Keltham's planning in other ways; this was supposed to be combined with the Tongues project.
Asmodia: Shit. She had rapidly updateable approved Chelish newspapers from the "previous week" ready to go, dates and weather reports quickly modifiable -
Somehow it didn't occur to Asmodia that Keltham could just go demand newspapers in a different language from a different country.
Asmodia hopes Keltham picked a language that Cheliax can actually get to, in some country with newspapers; Keltham's not going to be certain that's possible, but he's going to update against them, fairly or not, otherwise.
lintamande: The sheet of paper is in Tien.
Carissa Sevar: That's actually good; Tian Xia is far enough away that their newspapers, if they've even invented newspapers, won't say anything about Cheliax, and the Church of Asmodeus doesn't to Carissa's knowledge even have a presence there. It'd be worse if it were Kelish or Varisian or something.
Maillol should do as he'd do in alter!Cheliax, here.
Ferrer Maillol: "I think that's a language from the continent of Tian Xia, I've got no idea which language from Tian Xia. That's two Greater Teleports if true, assuming we can find somebody who knows where that is, and a major city in it. Doesn't take much detail for a Greater Teleport, but you need some. I don't know if I can promise that whichever country that is will have newspapers, even if they've got printing. They're definitely not going to pay attention to all the same gods, Norgorber for example is a god who ascended on this continent and He's going to be of much less interest in Tian Xia."
Keltham: "Then let's run the trial and I'll take the results whatever they are. That's the way of finding reality whatever reality is."
Ferrer Maillol: "Cheliax can afford a couple of Greater Teleports even with a war on, but Keltham, it's not trivial. That's probably a resupply delay to a Worldwound station, and yes they're going to have one day's safety margin on that, but still. Not saying not to do this, but I'd be worried if you had - more than one further request like this, with zero notice, for today? I mean it can be done, I'm not saying it's impossible to the nation of Cheliax, but you'd be burning pretty noticeable amounts of political capital. That's also a regular Teleport to Egorian, to transmit the request there, and if we don't burn Teleport scrolls, as really are expensive and for emergencies, we've only got so many Teleports ourselves - I guess everything can be done but it starts to really cost at some point."
Keltham: "Yeah, I get that, but I do need to run this check before I start doing more stuff like spellsilver, into which your nation is investing a noticeable fraction of domestic product, and anybody who gets in the way needs to be told that. I think I'd expect the Queen or Lrilatha to have common sense on the matter if somebody's being an obstacle about it."
...there's a tinge of power, of pride, about doing this, ordering a country to obey him and crushing all objection to it, and Keltham's dath ilan sensibilities try to shut that down before he even has a chance to think about why he should. Keltham tells the shutdown to please go on hold, along with those emotions, he'll think about all that part later.
Ferrer Maillol: "Acknowledged," Ferrer Maillol says respectfully, obediently; for he too heard that note, and it may not be too late to corrupt Keltham even now.
"Let me get a sheet of paper, I'll need to write down the details, which you might need to repeat. If possible please give me a priority on which items are most important, whether it's better to get more of something in 2 hours than to get everything back in 1 hour."
Keltham: Fair enough. He can do that.
Carissa Sevar: Right, then, it's a good thing the war is going well because she actually wants to send out several different teams to the Tien-speaking parts of Tian Xia to find different written materials to present Keltham with so they have a variety to choose from and can quickly scan them and eliminate the problematic ones. And she wants a guess from someone in Egorian what would've happened if Keltham had made this request in alter!Cheliax where he's still very important but there's no conspiracy, whether there'd be pushback, what it'd look like, who'd get sent.
Keltham: And as soon he's done he's going to say bye and then suddenly turn and run for the breakfast hall at top speed, because if there's a Conspiracy, it was learning as it went during the early days. In which case, if the Conspiracy is still keeping up, they've perhaps now appointed more Law-competent executives as Keltham trained those for them. Carissa and Asmodia may be coincidentally absent from the breakfast hall due to having been emergency-summoned to a command center somewhere.
lintamande: "Incoming, sir," Abarco says.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar wouldn't miss breakfast this morning for the world, no sir!
Carissa Sevar: - actually, with higher Wisdom, she notices that Keltham hasn't seen her genuine and delighted smile in weeks, as she's struggled with the enormity of what they're taking on (and also been dreading the petrification.) (and also been bothered about Peranza.) An error, but not one she can correct now by smiling extra.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar is eating breakfast, lost in thought.
Keltham: Okay good. 0.8:0.6 for Ordinary.
"Surprise change of schedule while I run a serious test of Conspiracy versus Ordinary."
"Carissa, Asmodia, unless you have a really really drastic reason not to, I'd like you to finish eating quickly and then accompany me for the rest of the trial, which is probably a lot of the day."
"I want you to accompany me while I'm doing this and try to make the hypothetical Conspiracy's life as difficult as possible."
That'll make it more difficult for them to operate as commanders, hopefully. Or rather, if they try to run the Conspiracy on the side, it'll show up in their Ordinary personas being less clever and creative than they should be.
Asmodia: "Oh, now this sounds like a fun day," alterAsmodia says immediately, aided by glibness pin.
Good move, Keltham, as measured by the volume of her own internal screaming.
Carissa Sevar: "This hypothetical Conspiracy that presumably we're in? I'd stick us gagged in an antimagic field, honestly," says Carissa without missing a beat. "Security can cast it."
Asmodia: "That only works if Keltham could cast antimagic field himself, or tell the difference between a real and a fake one somehow, or be sure that we weren't modifying the spell description he saw to leave out an at-will target exclusion... I guess it'd be worth some fraction of a 'bit' but also he has to watch us the rest of the day and we can't just accompany him while he does whatever?"
Carissa Sevar: Carissa loves her glibness swords so. "Antimagic moves with the caster! And you can't do an at-will target exclusion on an emanation, even with Selective Spell, but I admit that if Keltham doesn't happen to recall having read that already he sure shouldn't take my word for it now."
Asmodia: "Knocks out my headband. Which Keltham should immediately test again in case it was only +6 Wisdom the first time."
Keltham: "Would've if you hadn't suggested it." Now he doesn't have to burn an Augury on that, which is helpful.
And Conspiracy!Asmodia may be that much more tempted to suggest tests she in fact wants him to avoid, if she hasn't read through that gambit. (Though the conditional policy was real; Keltham does not lie.)
Ione Sala: While this exchange was occurring, Ione has noted that alterIone wants to know why she's not in this group, and has requested orders.
(She's just filling her own plate; alterIone clearly saw something interesting was going on with Keltham's request, and made haste to breakfast to see if any socially known interesting things had happened.)
Carissa Sevar: She may ask.
Ione Sala: "Why am I not in this group?"
Keltham: "Among other reasons, if there's actually a Conspiracy you're their specialist in pointing out misleading flaws that are good enough to fool even me as fun discussion topics. Plus there's only so much room in that conversation." Plus also, if the Conspiracy is being improvised then something was off about Ione's initial confession. Ione is at the top of his list for being the most likely to be a real innocent in danger / somehow not truly part of the Conspiracy. Keltham is not going to endanger her if so - a case could be made that he should do it for the good of this world, but Keltham is at least more Evil than that.
Ione Sala: "I'm flattered... I think?"
"Asmodia, that's your cue to explain why that's just what somebody in the Conspiracy would say."
Keltham: "Ione, I'm actually taking this pretty seriously. It's not, quite, as funny for me as it is for all of you."
Ione Sala: "Sorry."
Carissa Sevar: - with the request for fantasy books about magic, he's looking for indications mindreading exists and is relatively well-known. That's a lose condition. Pick your fantasy books with that in mind, or edit them.
Keltham: "Anyways, I'm going to go eat some compact high-energy foods quickly and then be off about the next adventure, possibly, so I request that you eat with due nondangerous alacrity. It's better to give the Conspiracy less time to prepare, if possible, now that they know what I'm doing."
He's thinking that next up is to request a sudden Ostenso excursion, which he mostly expects to be denied for valid Security reasons considering what happened last time he went outside the Forbiddance, but is worth 3 bits to Ordinary if they can do it. Failing that he's going to... this thought is successfully shut down.
Carissa Sevar: She was already 'almost done eating', by the food on her plate, and of course in reality has a Ring of Sustenance. She grabs the mostly finished plate and follows him. "Keltham it's - reasonable, that you're doing this, even if there aren't many worlds with Conspiracies it's worth there being fewer of them, and at least to my sensibilities you aren't being obnoxious about being very sure."
Carissa Sevar: Ostenso expedition: allow it. Or, Security should complain and be appalled, but Snack Service if it can be persuaded to cooperate should say it'll be safe and Maillol should let Keltham overrule Security. Three bits would be precious here. They can go into the city in advance and - have the Neutral clerics on hire for the Nidal war channel a fuckton of positive energy, that's the obvious difference between a city in Cheliax and a city somewhere else, people shouldn't have injuries - and Dominate everyone Keltham actually tries to speak to.
Curse of Laughter: Chaotic Good, Asmodeus, and Broom's god are not all fully aligned on this one. The Asmodeans are on their own.
Keltham: "Thanks for trying to reassure that part of me, Carissa, though I'm a bit cognitively distracted about properly emotionally engaging with much of anything right now."
Carissa Sevar: Other things to look out for, while scouting Ostenso for a potential Keltham-visit: prices need to be checked against the Wall's table of known price inconsistencies between Cheliax and alter-Cheliax. Those newspapers Asmodia works so hard on keeping up to date should be for sale, and some people should have them. Everyone's going to be terrified, but this can be achieved in alter-Cheliax too if Security insists on accompanying Keltham in full visible terrifying force, which they should, if they do this at all.
Carissa Sevar: "I imagine it is easier not to try to live in the world where I am yours and the world where I betrayed you and lied all along at the same time, and I don't need emotional attention. but it's convenient for all the Carissae in not-Conspiracy worlds that the Conspiracy Carissae are willing to go in with them on reassuring Keltham that the non-Conspiracy Carissae don't mind this and think he's doing well."
Keltham: "Iiiiii did not understand that actually. It sounds like Conspiracy is optimizing for Ordinary?"
Carissa Sevar: " - the only angle from which I've been able to wrap my head around this since you first talked about worlds was imagining when I'm cooperating with the Carissae in other worlds and when I'm not. When I suggest that you anti-magic field us, I'm not cooperating with Conspiracy Carissae, because that fucks up their strategy immensely. - you should conceivably also do it to get yourself out from under any mind control affecting you.
But I do want to cooperate with all the Kelthams, right, even the ones in Conspiracies. I want those ones to also know that Ordinary Carissa thinks they're doing the right thing, and that they aren't going to lose her by being paranoid and difficult. - if anything I guess that's more important for the Kelthams in Conspiracies to know, in case it helps them keep pushing. Now, in a sense the Ordinary Carissae cannot communicate at all with the Conspiracy Kelthams, they don't exist in any of the same worlds, but helpfully, the Conspiracy Carissae will say that line too, because they're trying to pass for Ordinary, at which point I can take comfort in knowing all the Kelthams have been told to push on."
Carissa Sevar: Asmodia, what's your estimate of Keltham's update from Snack Service not saying Ostenso's safe.
Keltham: "Ah. K. That makes sense." He's having trouble following this while trying to do his Conspiracy reasoning; if she's saying all that while also running the Conspiracy, he's genuinely impressed... no that's affection talking, it's obviously going to be easier for her to generate those thoughts internally than for him to follow along her communication of them.
Time for Keltham to consume food quickly!
Asmodia: Asmodia thinks - probably less than 1 bit - Snack Service has been pretty clear about volunteering help, but not often responding to requests for it -
If she was Keltham she'd ask Snack Service about a Conspiracy straight out and do it by thinking thoughts at it. Which - possibly plays into the mindreading thing - but Snack Service has too many other abilities, it may not make sense to Keltham if Snack Service can't read his mind about that, she has to review everything Keltham has seen Snack Service do but she's not at her Wall - has Keltham communicated with Snack Service in code before -
AlterAsmodia is not trying to think of any of this! She is thinking of ways to destroy the Conspiracy! Keltham could ask her at any moment what she's thinking about!
Curse of Laughter: Keltham hasn't communicated with Snack Service like that before.
And yes, Keltham is planning to request a cookie for dessert using an unspoken code that he came up with the previous night, request it very suddenly, and not think about that at all, if he can help it. Snack Service will if allowed truthfully give Keltham the coded cookie for 'I can't answer that for complicated decision-theoretical reasons', which is mostly what Keltham expects in Ordinary and in Mindreading Conspiracy and less expects in Nonmindreading Conspiracy.
Carissa Sevar: - the question of whether they're still cooperating with Snack Service at this point Carissa is going to kick to the Most High though if she has to make a snap judgment it'd be 'yes keep cooperating' (and if she has to make a snap judgment on petrifying Keltham it'll be 'not if Maillol thinks it's a blurry border of his orders', but the Most High should make that call too.)
Aspexia Rugatonn: "You have command here, Sevar. My own estimate is under 10% that Snack Service betrays us now. You may know better than I, and if you do, Gorthoklek is perhaps the only one who could prevent Cheliax from having a bad day about it. I will call him, do you so command."
Asmodia: "Oh, right. Keltham, you should be running Detect Magic pretty frequently this whole day. Conspiracy obviously has ways of fooling it, I mean, I expect so does Ordinary upper Security secretly, but it might make the Conspiracy's lives harder in all sorts of little ways."
Carissa Sevar: - Carissa feels like Snack Service is not going to betray them by suddenly attacking everybody, that's not at all what the tropes say would happen here.
...how sure is she that tropes are real. A week ago she was pretty sure they weren't, but now, at the last minute, Keltham has a last doubt - and Abrogail and the Most High are clearly reasoning as if the tropes are obviously real, and have more information than Carissa does -
(Her newfound Intelligence wants to go chasing down all the implications of the Most High and Abrogail disagreeing with her about how likely tropes are to be real, starting with whether someone is pregnant by Keltham and ending with whether she's a secret cleric somehow. Her newfound Wisdom notes that she's already trying to simultaneously run two Carissae and should probably not add having epiphanies of no immediate relevance to the to-do list, and that this is one of the ways intelligence enhancement is not obviously good in slaves, if your starting point is as squishy as a human. Thankfully the Wisdom actually gives her the skill to set those trains of thought aside neatly, flagged for later, not forgotten.)
"You could have some five-year-olds brought in to talk to you, in an antimagic field so no one could feed them lines, not that I think feeding five-year-olds lines even works very well but the Conspiracy might have mind control that'd make it work."
Asmodia: "Conspiracy can probably do that if they get to pick the five-year-old and brief them, it'd have to be via scry into a city somewhere that Keltham could pick one - does scry work through antimagic field?"