Carissa Sevar: "Can't scry into the antimagic field but I can't think why you couldn't position the scry so it can see, in an entirely nonmagical way, the goings-on in the antimagic field? I'm not actually sure that Conspiracy can successfully brief five year olds even if they pick them, five year olds are terrible liars."
Asmodia: "I'd have multiple trained five-year-olds ready to go if I was that sort of person and running the Conspiracy."
She doesn't. And - doesn't actually regret that. One of the real Asmodeans needed to think of that if they wanted it thought of.
Keltham: "Okay. Both of you. Slow down. You're having a lot of fun and that's great and it is helpful evidence, Asmodia was 4/3 as likely to suggest the Detect Magic thing," he's casting it now, "in Ordinary, and I was in fact waiting to see if she would. But also I am running at a much higher cognitive load than usual for processing everything you're saying, and both of you need to slow down and give me 15 seconds here."
Aspexia Rugatonn: Obviously Cheliax has well-trained children of all ages old enough for speech; they're not trained for this specific incident but they are experienced in adopting new personas quickly.
Sevar would need to give any related orders; Aspexia commands not, here.
Carissa Sevar: Sevar predicts at something like 70% to 80% that Keltham's not going to go for it, not suspicious enough for the desire for a bit more information to overrule his dath ilani sensibilities about involving children in things, and that he'll update that they can interfere in some way with antimagic fields, which they can't so it doesn't seem like a dangerous direction for him to be looking in. That said, they should go ahead and brief the kids, it's not that costly.
She waits a patient fifteen seconds and then says, "so demand Cheliax bring you a kid with pox scars and misaligned ears, or not those specific things but visibly identifiable things that occur at about that frequency in the population; they can't have trained that many five year olds."
Asmodia: Asmodia considers the question of whether they've got spells to quickly produce pox scars -
AlterAsmodia says, "Blunder, Sevar. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to point out why."
Keltham: "Okay, seriously, slower than that."
"You're supposed to point it out, Asmodia. I already know what I say here, you saying it doesn't change anything. Carissa, give me a few rounds to analyze what Asmodia says, or nod, or something, before you respond."
Asmodia: "That test is cheap and easy to pass for Ordinary Cheliax. If you look at it from the perspective of a dath ilani possibly inside the Conspiracy who isn't sure exactly what kind of magic exists, wondering if that test means that they've got to find some quick way of adding pox scars to five-year-olds, it forces Keltham to say... Keltham?"
Keltham: "I'm not going to use any children in these tests. It's not particularly likely that whether or not I can do this is going to boil down to my ability to use children in tests. Even if that was more likely, I'm not so Good that I'd have to do that just because it was the right thing for the larger world."
"It's not really a blunder, Asmodia. It doesn't disadvantage Keltham's interests to remind him that he has to say that. I just straight-up hadn't thought of it."
Is Carissa supposed to know that? Yes, but so is Conspiracy!Carissa. It doesn't particularly advantage them to have Carissa blunder and Asmodia point it out? It's not like their goal is to protect kids, on most Conspiracy probability mass.
Carissa Sevar: Every exchange that doesn't leak 2s is a win, since they only have to make it through to tonight.
"Does that also rule out my next idea, which was going to be to send someone to Absalom or Katheer or Corentyn or Quantium and scry them while they go around asking people questions? Because kids'll obviously swarm them begging."
Keltham: "I'll think about it."
Asmodia: "For what it's worth, I don't think I'd have that many trained kids ready to go, unless the world is a thousand times larger than Keltham has been told. I don't think dath ilani rules, or, Keltham's version of those, say he's supposed to hide for the rest of his life because if he leaves and goes to a city, where there'd obviously be kids, the Conspiracy might have an incentive to - I mean - I guess if there just wouldn't be any such thing as beggar kids in the first place except for the elaborate lie the Conspiracy is using where beggars exist - but then the Conspiracy wouldn't necessarily expect Keltham to realize they might be producing beggar children for him, because a dath ilani doesn't easily think that way, and in that case, the beggar children were produced already, to be ready for him, so it doesn't make a difference if he goes ahead and visits - or is saying that the beggars were produced already, bad decision theory -"
"I don't think I really appreciated up until now what it must be like to have that much uncertainty about which world you're inside. I'm trying to figure out what the Conspiracy looks like to Keltham and I'm obviously not allowed to ask him and it's just... a lot of uncertainty, though he's had longer to think and would've maybe narrowed it down more than I have."
Keltham: "Thinking about complicated meta, pause."
Is Asmodia trying to prompt him into thinking about his current Conspiracy forecasts for mindreading purposes? Probably not? The mindreading Conspiracy knows he's wary about that possibility, that the reason why he doesn't know what the Detect Intelligence spell does the same way he knows the effects of Detect Wisdom/Anxieties and Detect Splendour/Desires, is that the third member of the trio is declarative beliefs or something, and they blocked his god from giving that one somehow - something like Spell Immunity that excludes a single spell from clerics?
Of course if Keltham reasons too much about how the mindreading Conspiracy should know better, they know he's reasoning like that, and are more likely to do it, so there's probably a self-referential equilibrium around... call it 1.1x for Conspiracy over Ordinary.
Asmodia: Oh, fuck him! AlterAsmodia legitimately hasn't thought about Keltham thinking he might be getting mindread, she was told to start thinking about this like a minute ago! AlterAsmodia actually just said that!
Keltham: "Very minor blunder Asmodia, I'm worried about the world where they've got mindreading magic being used on me, so please don't say things that sound like they could be prompting me to think about info the Conspiracy wants to know."
Asmodia: "Oh. Sorry."
"It wouldn't surprise me if magic like that existed in Ordinary somewhere, it'd just be above my access level probably by a lot, so, very good point."
Carissa Sevar: "Lead hat - oh, if not for the brain damage. But remember that emanation divination spells, which mindreading would be if it exists, are blocked by a thin sheet of lead or an inch of iron. Wearing a helmet an inch thick sounds miserable...I think if I was worried about mindreading I'd put Lady Avaricia in charge of checking if other metals on our elements table have the divination-blocking effects of lead."
Keltham: "Okay, I'm going to put on hold figuring out how weird it is that the alleged simple solution risks brain damage, what with my having only the Conspiracy's word inside the Conspiracy worlds that it's even a solution, though I guess that blocking emanations was previously listed among problematic uses of Element-82 -"
"Everybody just pause. I am going to finish eating, then go to Maillol's office with you to ask about a thing, we can have the freeform suggestion session later. Right now, doing the things that I thought of before the Conspiracy can react to them, is the priority, anything you suggest is something the Conspiracy has had unlimited time to prepare for."
Keltham's thoughts show that he's been reminded to ask for a scroll of whatever Carissa used to determine his Intelligence right after he arrived in Golarion.
Carissa Sevar: They have a lie prepared for that! The spell Carissa used is second-circle, here it is, it just detects Intelligence. he's welcome to try it.
(None of Carissa, Maillol, Asmodia, or Security are at any real risk of failing their will saves against a scroll-cast Detect Thoughts.)
Maillol will, at need, send Carissa and Asmodia out and then tell Keltham flatly that yes, there's a third-circle spell that corresponds to Detect Anxieties and Detect Desires which does Detect Intentions, it's illegal, the second-circle spell he just used was invented by wizards as a way to get the useful Intelligence-detecting ability without the illegal components.
Keltham: Keltham will eat, trying to maintain his continuing momentum and enthusiasm about what is, in fact, an attempt to destroy his new reality. His mind will show a lot of repetitions of 'If the Conspiracy is real, I want to know the Conspiracy is real, if the Conspiracy is not real, I desire to know it is not real' and 'In worlds where this is actually a Conspiracy and Carissa never loved me it is better to know earlier rather than later' and the like.
He's trying not to think much about his plans for the Ostenso trip in the unlikely event that's allowed. His mind briefly thinks something about Ostenso Academy and then deliberately thinks about how he's trying to throw out some false thoughts to confuse the Conspiracy and sometimes thinks this thought after both the accidental thoughts and the deliberate ones, and then he successfully refocuses his attention on the food and how much he doesn't want to lose Carissa.
His thoughts will also briefly cover how he's not even thinking, honestly hasn't thought about it, about whether making a hard try that ends up finding no Conspiracy would be enough info for him to think about kids. He is not that absolutely confident that tropes don't exist.
Carissa Sevar: Probably the Ostenso trip is a bad idea but in addition to the three bits it also buys them several hours. Carissa is torn.
- Korva's manning the Wall, can she work up a list of divergences between Ostenso and a similar city in Taldor and her best projection of alter-Ostenso.
When Keltham tests Detect Intelligence Carissa's needs to reflect her expected +4 and not her current +6. She could have herself dealt two points of Intelligence damage (temporarily) or swap the headbands out (this is painful to think about).
Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia is utterly confident of her ability to bestow a curse that precise, if none of the other clerics here have the spell prepped and are confident of their own skill.
Asmodia: Asmodia can feel a tiny note of terror in herself about the Ostenso trip. Why.
It's huge, chaotic, hard to plan. That, obviously, from Keltham's perspective, is the point - but it doesn't account for why he'd think Conspiracy was eight times less likely to -
If Ordinary probably won't go for it, maybe Keltham assigns 40% to that, so then he'd have to assign 5% to Conspiracy -
Asmodia is an idiot. Either Keltham planted that thought for them to find, or he actually is that confident that this is an incredibly terrible idea for the Conspiracy for reasons the real Conspiracy hasn't seen.
Carissa Sevar: .... Ostenso trip tomorrow. That's the solution. Keltham doesn't have any reason to think tomorrow's lots better for the Conspiracy than today, and there are obvious reasons even Ordinary would want to wait a day, so Security can have their spells prepared and additional Security made available. And that gives them an entire year to figure out why the trip is so dangerous and if necessary to completely rebuild Ostenso.
Asmodia: Can alterCheliax really not secure a spontaneous version of that trip right away, if Keltham is calling in nation-level favors on it, if it's possible to do it 'tomorrow'?
Carissa Sevar: There might literally not be any high level wizards or clerics with the requisite spells to make it safe, since they prepare their spells in the morning and already did so; it's not like Greater Teleport which you have other reasons to prepare. You'd probably want Teleport Trap to stop people teleporting in, which is seventh circle wizard and not prepared routinely, and plausibly Shield of Law or something which is cleric 8th.
- actually, Carissa is delegating, to the Most High and whoever is the most senior wizard now on site, thinking of the spells that their alter-selves would use to make an Ostenso expedition safe.
Aspexia Rugatonn: Acknowledged.
Keltham: Done with breakfast! Off to Maillol's! He really wishes that mindreading!Conspiracy hadn't picked up this much relative probability mass, it's going to make the whole day harder and less fun.
He deserves a cookie about that, really.
Pilar : "Here. I'm not actually comfortable with not knowing what Snack Service is doing using my body, so if possible and if it doesn't cost Ordinary anything, I request that sometime after this is over I get told what went down just now."
Keltham: Keltham is already quickly biting the cookie, verifying the taste. Apple-flavored, great.
"Snack Service says that the decision theory of this is too complicated for it to be telling me much, which is mostly what I expected."
So, on the one hand, that's better than Snack Service not being able to do that, which would've favored Conspiracy a lot - Snack Service is pretty high on the list of apparent-things they'd be faking. But it again means that, in the Conspiracy worlds, it's narrowing down even more strongly on the mindreading Conspiracy and on them being relatively better at mindreading. What with 'Snack Service' having apparently just read a thought, and one he was trying to hide.
Off to Maillol's office.
Keltham: "Sudden trip to Ostenso. I'm not going to ask whether it's possible, because it's obviously possible in principle, I'm asking you what ends up being the minimum cost and minimum risk."
Ferrer Maillol: "I'm not going to hide it, Keltham, I was wondering if you were going to ask that and I have literally had nightmares about you asking that. Cheliax is still fighting the war that started when you went on one quick, tiny, almost certainly completely safe excursion three steps outside of our Forbiddance. Don't get me wrong, it's a good war, a great war, the best, really, glad it started, but we are still in the middle of that one and I was sort of hoping to finish it up before you started the next one."
He's not lying.
Keltham: "Ferrer."
Ferrer Maillol: "The main risk here is that this Project is cursed by Pharasma with respect to what happens whenever anything like this goes down. I don't know how I protect you from that. Intuitively, the way things go around you, it feels like literally nothing we can do is going to make there be a, in ilani-style numbers, less than ten percent probability, of Rovagug cultists or a Kuthite cell planted in Ostenso to get you or something completely unexpected going wrong."
He's still not lying. AlterMaillol says it too.
Keltham: "Is this a tropes-based prediction? Because I'd mostly lost probability on those."
Ferrer Maillol: "It's a PROJECT MANAGER prediction."
Keltham: "That is in fact about what I figured Ordinary was thinking, with respect to how I ended up tightly contained to a small location."
"Now talk to me about actual costs and how you'd do it if you had no other choice." Again that flash of power, of pride, that his dath ilani instincts automatically try to crush down.
Ferrer Maillol: "Even if we trust the interdiction to keep out most of the gods, it's not impossible that multiple countries have localized something-interesting down to the Ostenso region. The fact that Nidal invaded a site somewhere around here, to kick off the war and the god-war, that's something news has spread on even if not about Project Lawful specifically."
"There's dangerous things in the world that aren't gods, Keltham, that Broom's god isn't keeping out. Subirachs isn't here to fight them off, she's here to die after hopefully longer than half a minute so reinforcements have time to get here. If there's any shapechanged ancient dragons who decided to pass one of their endless years in Ostenso, just waiting to see if the cause of the god-war happened to pass by their tea-shop - I mean, there are ancient dragons with whom that'd be fine, but a lot with whom it wouldn't be."
"Just trying to protect you against a kidnapping cell planted by a Taldor duchy but one that has the ability to call in reinforcements to grab you - takes 8th-circle Shield of Law on you, ideally 8th-circle Mind Blank on you, if you can give us a wide area that's something like 160-foot by 160-foot ten minutes in advance we can put a Teleport Trap on the region and if we can't then I'd like to know how we're supposed to defend against somebody calling in a nation-level strike force that shows up standing next to you - I can run this past more experienced officers in Egorian but I mostly expect that our 8th-circle casters literally do not have those spells prepared today and yes I realize that doing it tomorrow gives everybody in Ostenso time to rehearse a story."
Keltham: "What's the Queen do when she wants to travel?"
Ferrer Maillol: "First of all, Abrogail Thrune is an 8th-circle sorcerer herself and literally one of the five most powerful casters in Cheliax, second, she mostly stays in her well-protected palace, third, when she leaves her palace she teleports directly to somewhere else that's very protected, fourth, if she was violating those rules, she wouldn't do it on less than a day's notice."
Asmodia: "Conspiracy Asmodia already has everybody in Ostenso prepped with a story. She's insulted that you think giving her an extra day of prep time is going to make a difference to her."
Carissa Sevar: "I actually don't think she does? Ostenso is a port city, there are ships arriving from all over the world, there's no way Conspiracy is stopping them all at the docks to brief them. Unless Conspiracy rules the whole world, I guess, or at least the whole Inner Sea."
Asmodia: "You underestimate Conspiracy Asmodia... okay maybe not really, maybe not for that one."
"I don't know, I'd need a minute to think about how I'd handle that and Conspiracy Asmodia has literally had weeks."
"Is she any better at the ships thing if Keltham visits Ostenso tomorrow instead of in one hour?"
Carissa Sevar: "Hmmm. I guess she knows which ships are coming in and can try to spend the next day briefing or mind-controlling them all? It'd have to be mind-control, actually, unless the Conspiracy controls the whole Inner Sea. But that's still thousands of people, and Taldane and Qadiran merchant ships have their own ship wizards and it'd be an enormous provocation to use illegal mind-control spells on their nationals, they might declare war about it....I think it narrows you down to 'Conspiracy controls the Inner Sea' or 'Conspiracy immersively controls your sensory inputs' or 'Ordinary'. ....maybe with a day you could kick everyone out, close the port to foreign nationals on some plausible excuse and get some fake foreign nationals in their place.
I would need to see the port to guess if that'd work which means Keltham has to assume it would. You couldn't fool anyone who knows any things about ships but Keltham doesn't."
Ferrer Maillol: "Assuming I'm reading this interplay correctly, am I allowed to ask why Keltham thinks that Asmodia is running the Conspiracy?"
Asmodia: "No."
Keltham: "Why does Conspiracy Asmodia think Keltham thinks Asmodia is running the Conspiracy? Answer that one relatively quickly."
If that's actually Conspiracy Asmodia, asking this question will force Conspiracy Asmodia to think what Ordinary Asmodia thinks Conspiracy Asmodia thinks Keltham thinks about Asmodia, which should exceed the three-level limit on her brainware-supported recursion ability and force her to either answer very slowly or give Conspiracy Asmodia's real answer.
Asmodia: "The Manohar thing was fake and somehow I got enhanced with the ability to master Law on the level where I'd need that to oppose a dath ilani as a Conspirator."
Keltham: ...sort of hard to evaluate. It feels like the sort of very obvious answer somebody might give under heavy cognitive load... call it 1.3x for Conspiracy over Ordinary, even given into account that he asked Asmodia to answer quickly and she did.
Asmodia: She's always feared losing her game like this, to dozens of little cuts where she can't realistically do better, if Keltham ever started really opposing them and using all his Law to distinguish them. Fuck her life, if only Keltham had asked Sevar to pass that test, but there was no time to pass the question to Sevar even if Sevar could've answered it better.
Asmodia: "Okay, wrongthought, that's why Ordinary Asmodia namely me instantaneously thinks Keltham thinks Asmodia would be running the Conspiracy if it existed. I don't think I have a good model in my head of what Conspiracy Asmodia knows about Keltham that I don't, what with my, you know, not knowing those things?"
Keltham: They're not very distinct for Ordinary Asmodia, no, but Conspiracy Asmodia has to keep track of the difference and that reduces the quality of her fast answer.
"It'd be nice to send somebody to Ostenso to scry on the place, if I accept that a visit today just isn't safe, but I'm just not seeing how to get around the level of illusion spells that could be applied both there and here. Conspiracy obviously has illusion spells I can't detect with Detect Magic given their ability to evade truthspells... is there any solution there that only uses Law of magic that I already know and ideally can directly verify?"
Scries would be almost as good as in-person presence for purposes of forcing the Conspiracy to rapidly burn a limited spell supply, which is one of their constraints that's most likely to be real, on controlling a giant freely-navigable high-entropy gameboard. That the Conspiracy faked a god-war and mortal-war to have an excuse to keep him in an isolated place, and never sent Keltham on any guided tours that would increase his trust level and reduce his suspicion about being isolated, implies that they are very unconfident of their ability to present him with a faked Ostenso.
Carissa Sevar: " - 'do it all day' is the obvious thing? Sustained concentration is very costly, and Conspiracy didn't plan spells this morning with you trying this in mind. And make people show you things that would be hard to illusion well, like all the dock laborers in Ostenso, or the central market, or the temples, where there's a lot of stuff going on and you'd need a very good visual in order to fake it at all. I have all kinds of clever ideas around using necromancy to possess a person who's going to Ostenso, or binding a familiar and using spells to look through their eyes, but none of that's magic you're already familiar with -
High Priest, could we convince Her Majesty to visit Ostenso, with Keltham under a bunch of heavy duty antiscrying and nondetection among her entourage? That happens sometimes, so it's not by itself likely to trigger attacks by any dragons or fae or hibernating liches or whatever, and you don't have to double up the security between Her Majesty visiting and Keltham visiting, and even if people are hanging around in Ostenso desperately trying to learn about Project Lawful, which I'm sure they are, they won't learn much from a royal visit since again those happen sometimes. It'd mean Keltham couldn't go around confronting random people, which is too bad because that'd be very good at differentiating Conspiracy and not, but he could at least - see that Ostenso exists and is at the right tech level and wealth level and has thousands of people around who look like the Ostenso wizarding students do -"
Ferrer Maillol: "Sure we could. Tomorrow. If we ask for it today without anybody getting a chance to prep appropriate spells, the Queen will justifiably worry about whether we are trying to assassinate her."
"No, wrongthought, as people are saying around here. The Queen will worry it's an assassination plan but could just truthspell the daylight out of everyone, particularly Keltham, about where that request came from... if she's sufficiently sure nobody managed to tag him with subtler mind-control about that..."
"It still strikes me as a bad idea! Now you're talking about exposing the Queen to whatever disaster happens around Keltham, and nobody having a chance to prep spells to defend her! This is the sort of terrible idea that gets into history books!"
Carissa Sevar: "I'm fine with tomorrow! I think we ought to let Keltham see Ostenso but I don't actually think it's that much less evidence tomorrow compared to today. - though we could at least ask Egorian in case she happens to have her staff have the spells prepared for a safe excursion all the time anyway during wartime or something."
Keltham: "Is there such a thing as an all-day scry? I think I remember seeing 2 minutes per caster circle?"
Carissa Sevar: "Greater Scrying, two hours per caster circle, seventh circle but I bet Cheliax does have someone who prepared it today because it's a pretty essential military operations spell."
Ferrer Maillol: "Those spells will in fact be needed for essential military operations but there will certainly be a Greater Scrying scroll or item available for military emergencies. It'll run about 2000gp."
Keltham: Keltham winces and then ruthlessly crushes the qualm. "Well, don't rush off to replace it because spellsilvered ink is going to get a lot cheaper over the next month."
"Talk to me about how Greater Scry works, is there any obvious way for me to talk through it, can it follow around a viewpoint character even if they do a Teleport, how does that all work?"
Carissa Sevar: "Scrying follows a person up to a fairly fast speed of travel but can't Teleport with them; if you wanted to have someone go look at Ostenso I'd suggest they just ride there from here on a horse while you watch on a scry. Detect Magic and Message work through a Greater Scry so you could talk to them and also see if they were casting any spells or if any magic was operating around them, though I assume the Conspiracy can fake that."
Keltham: "We can't have somebody teleport to Ostenso and then scry them?" He obviously wouldn't pick Ostenso, there's no reason to stay inside the Otolmens-protected zone if he's not traveling there... well, now the mindreading!Conspiracy knows that too. Internal sigh. Okay he's not going to think explicitly about likelihoods on Ordinary and Conspiracy claiming that scry doesn't work on targets who Teleported somewhere far away. You're supposed to do it in advance, sure, but you're also not supposed to let them read your mind about it by doing it in advance.
Carissa Sevar: "Sure, you could do that, though then you don't know where they really are."
Asmodia: "He has only our word that a Greater Scry can't follow through a Teleport and covering up that with an illusion of somebody horseback riding does not sound hard."
Carissa Sevar: " - it obviously can't follow through a teleport because the tricky part of the scaffold is the scrying sensor you're projecting which behaves as a physical object at some distance from the target on the other end, if you wanted it to follow through a teleport you'd need the sensor to be physically continuous with the subject. - sorry Keltham, I don't expect you to believe that, I'm just going to find the day very unpleasant if I have to treat all magic as an ineffable black box we can only learn about by asking questions of hostile entities."
Keltham: "That's one of the actual reasons why Asmodia was augmented to run the Conspiracy once they found out about Law of Probability. Asmodia is good specifically at perspective-taking-on-ignorance and model-checking."
"Sustaining a Major Image for an extended period - I mean, it was mentally taxing, but that spell has a long range, so I don't see how I prevent somebody from staying out of range of any detection means I have, and just modifying what the scry shows. I'd be trying to find an inconsistency in whatever they were showing me, and while I do know some things they wouldn't, I'm still very ignorant of Golarion..."
And he can't think in advance of what those inconsistencies might be, because he's up against mindreaders.
Still, the more time they have to prepare, the worse.
He can't visit Ostenso today: 3:1 for Conspiracy... no, they claimed he'd be able to visit it tomorrow. That's more like 2:1, or even 1.5:1, depending on how vast and complicated the place actually looks tomorrow...
Of course that's assuming the real plan isn't for them to prep spells tomorrow for bringing out the high-amperage batteries on mind control, which is expensive enough that they didn't want to do it before now when they could always do it later and only if required.
He should keep an eye out for other signs that they want to delay him only until tomorrow morning.
"Is it possible for me to decide a target at the last minute, and then somebody Teleports there and the Greater Scry spell finishes focusing on them once they're there?"
Asmodia: (Asmodia wants to say something about how Conspiracy Asmodia should be sent there, where she can't secretly run her game against Keltham too; it would give alterAsmodia a chance to also say she might really be rationalizing the whole thing and really wanted to go look at exotic places. But Asmodia is not sure alterAsmodia truly has the same thought, and by now alterAsmodia is probably taking this pretty seriously.)
Carissa Sevar: "That works fine. - uh, if I have a thought that you will learn more from if you think of it rather than me suggesting it, but that would require the High Priest doing something in advance so it does work out if you do think of it, would you prefer I pass him a note, or just say it, or do nothing?"
Keltham: "Because if I think of it, it was more narrowly determined than if you suggested it to me? Sure, pass him a note."
Carissa Sevar: "Yes, that's right."
And she writes out 'the person you send off to Teleport should be Worldwound-cleared and have live clearances for the Nidal front in case he orders them to either of those places' and hands the note to Maillol.
Asmodia: "Should I look at that so I don't say it to Keltham? Nothing obvious is coming to my own mind for what could be written there."
Carissa Sevar: "I think sure, if you want."
Asmodia: She will.
"Oh. Huh. Interesting implied hypothesis about what Keltham would be thinking. This is a good idea, Keltham, you should try harder than I did to have a good idea. Let me know if I should not have said it that way and I'll update."
Keltham: "Nah, telling me to have a good idea is allowed by 'securitymindset'."
"All right, next episode, get somebody in to get ready to Teleport, and somebody to run Greater Scry on them. I also want a regular scry, to be done after another Teleport, it may not last as long but it'll give me a backup option." He's trying not to evaluate either of his options there. "Maillol, ETA on that? Also, same trip, I request a scroll of whatever Carissa used to detect my Intelligence as 18 at the Worldwound."
Ferrer Maillol: "If you're willing to pay for them, I can send a messenger immediately and they can teleport back with the scrolls in five to ten minutes. If you want Cheliax to pay for them, an argument happens first and creates a delay, the system is not set up for me to suddenly requisition a Greater Scry scroll on a nonemergency basis, and declaring an emergency here would go politically odd."
Keltham: "You okay with 75% Project budget, 25% my personal account to show I take it seriously, 4000gp spending cap?"
Ferrer Maillol: "Works. I'm only dying inside a little."
Keltham: "Make it so. Oh, and please also make sure that recording is set up around me, and that transcripts will be available to me later today, so I can review events afterwards." They can try to edit those, obviously, but it'd be a risky game for them.
Ferrer Maillol: "Before that. Sevar, Asmodia, out of this room for one minute. I've got a question for Keltham... above their paper classification level which nobody has really gotten around to raising but never mind."
Keltham: "Okay, I'll affirm that," questions of whether that was more likely in Conspiracy, to give them a chance to perform some action out of his vision, on hold pending what Maillol says.
Carissa Sevar: Out they'll go.
Asmodia: Prediction, Keltham runs out in the middle of Maillol talking to check on whether we're still there and doing anything suspicious.
Ferrer Maillol: "There's an obvious theory about why you're asking for a scroll of Detect Intelligence. I'll get you one, it shouldn't be hard to find."
"The spell Sevar cast is second-circle, not third-circle, and is one of a class of spells useful for detecting things that might be trying to hide from you -"
Keltham: "Hold that thought."
Asmodia: "I feel obliged to note that I did in fact predict your suddenly running over to check on us, though only after I left the room and had a second to think, and so did Conspiracy Asmodia."
"I'm predicting you doing it a second time too, though less so now that it's pretty clear the Conspiracy is prepared."
Keltham: Still 1.05x favoring Ordinary. They shouldn't get caught that easily, but then Conspiracy isn't perfect, on the surviving probability mass for it.
"Thanks for being frank, whichever Asmodia."
Asmodia: "I've been trying to figure out how she feels about you emotionally and I genuinely have no idea."
Carissa Sevar: "Iiiii know exactly how hypothetical Conspiracy Carissa feels about you but maybe that's something to tell you after you're done with all this."
Keltham: "Neither of you necessarily have Conspiracy emotional makeup that is anything remotely like your actual - never mind, Maillol is in the middle of saying something."
Keltham: Dash back.
Ferrer Maillol: "The spell I'd guess you're actually thinking of is third-circle Detect Intentions and classified. Detect Intelligence is the second-circle wizard imitation version that just detects minds nearby and reads off their Intelligence level."
Keltham: "Can I have a scroll of -"
Ferrer Maillol: "Not without a more serious political fight. I admit I don't understand why it would be important for you to verify that it exists now that I've told you about it. Or are you thinking of ordering Sevar to fail her Will Save about it?"
Keltham: "Some versions of the Conspiracy are trying to make me believe they have mindreading capabilities when in fact they don't."
Ferrer Maillol: "I have one Security on staff who's authorized to use that and keeps a spell slot open. I can order him to prepare Detect Intentions in about thirty minutes, and he can try it on you briefly." In the form of Detect Thoughts with a metamagic Extend Duration on it, which will make the spell visibly third-circle. "You'll need to deliberately fail a Will Save, which should also let you verify that it would take a substantially more powerful caster than him to try reading you without you noticing."
"There's more powerful mindreading spells but those would be harder to prove things to you about."
Keltham: Keltham doesn't try to explain that he has only their word for it that they can't deliberately cast weaker versions of spells - to make it feel like he'd have an easier time resisting, or to make the spell more detectable, than it would be unmodified. Maillol isn't Asmodia.
"Asmodeus's orders not a problem?"
Ferrer Maillol: Fuck you too, kid.
"The kind of precautions He required around this sort of thing are noticeably less strict than for Contessa Lrilatha using mind-control on you, yes. You understand what's going to happen, you asked it for a reason that sure doesn't look coerced, that satisfies His restrictions" namely none.
It is not done lightly to lie about what Asmodeus has commanded regarding someone, and what impinges on His honor one does not lie about at all; but misleading truths are in His nature and reputation already.
Keltham: "Okay, let's do that." Them having a totally innocuous Detect Intelligence spell they can exhibit to him undoes some of the earlier updates that formed his previous prior about Conspiracy, around 3x worth of it, if real.
Keltham: "Carissa, according to you, is it usually possible to take a spell that'd ordinarily be powerful, and cast it in a weaker way that would deceive somebody about how easy it was to make their save against that?"
Carissa Sevar: " - huh. You know, I've never heard of anyone doing that, but it's got to be possible in theory, because dumber wizards generally have easier saves, and if nothing else you could curse yourself to prepare and cast the spell while substantially stupider, and given that that would work it's presumably possible to figure out what the dumber wizards are doing wrong and do it wrong on purpose. Though I think that'd be harder than it sounds, because we're talking about muscle memory, right, trained instincts for how to build a spell.
It also wouldn't work if the target had substantial experience with spells, because they could just notice the spell seemed sloppy."
Keltham: "Well, at least they're doing a good job of pretending that Ferrer isn't as good at perspective-taking-of-ignorance as Asmodia and that the different branches of Conspiracy aren't in ongoing communication."
"New obviously magical earrings, Carissa?" He performs Detect Magic as he speaks.
Carissa Sevar: "Present I made you. Or made myself for you. I finished them up yesterday. They cast Geas on the wearer, the sixth-circle magical command spell, I thought it'd be fun. You're now going to declare this suspiciously coincidental timing which I suppose it is, in favor of - Conspiracies that didn't realize you were doing anything weird today until after you saw me, or that need me to be wearing magical obedience earrings - do you want me to take them off -"
Keltham: "...I hate to ruin a sex surprise, but earrings of mind control sure are a thing I suspiciously cannot test on myself. There was going to be some amount of plan spoilage from today somehow, I guess, if I'm asking Cheliax to spend giant amounts of money I should be willing to spend at least a little - go ahead and tell me what the earrings putatively do, we can send Asmodia out first if you like."
Carissa Sevar: "I would mildly prefer that."
Asmodia: "I'll go get in some quick updates of my Conspiracy while Keltham's not looking. He'll never think to suddenly check on me if I say that I've thought of that, causing him to think it's a waste of time."
"Thank you, Sevar, your plot to cause Keltham to give me these crucial two minutes by forging magical earrings will not be wasted."
Carissa Sevar: "Changed my mind, I would prefer Asmodia staying to Keltham dashing out to check on her in the middle of me explaining my sex toy."
Asmodia: "Actually - I will close my eyes, and stick my fingers in my ears and hum to myself while you talk quietly. That works if it's not classified information."
She suits actions to words, and rests her brain while she hums.
((It's the most stressful day of her second life and she'd still take it over any day of her entire first life.))
Keltham: "Proceed while Asmodia sends her telepathic messages. Oh hey you have a short word for that."
Carissa Sevar: "If we're important conspirators we definitely have Telepathic Bond up, which is why I suggested an antimagic field to you. The earrings are command-word activated like the handcuffs, and then treat the controlling party's orders as magically compelled, as the spell Geas. - I invented it from scratch. I thought it'd be fun to try inventing my own magic items."
This is false!! It's less false than it was an hour ago; she's been making some modifications on the fly. If she gets enough undistracted time, then by evening it will probably be true. It means the earrings succeed at their original concept but are less obviously targeted at that.
She fucking loves this headband.
Keltham: "That is the most Carissa sex toy ever."
"I'll try it out sometime when I won't have to wonder if the effect is real."
It doesn't even occur to him to activate the supposed effect on Carissa and question her; the Conspiracy wouldn't make earrings like that, if that would work for him.
Carissa Sevar: Tragic. They could have had a sexy interrogation scene.
Keltham: "You okay with... rephrase. This is your brief chance to argue me out of my holding on to those earrings, just in case they're vital Conspiracy-maintenance equipment."
Carissa Sevar: "Go ahead. However, later, once this is over, you have to be very impressed with me about them or I won't invent any ludicrously expensive magic sex toy surprises for you again."
Keltham: "I doubt I can properly appreciate it until I've got better Spellcraft. But I'll be duly impressed that you're probably not supposed to be able to make sixth-circle items at fourth-circle, that you got access to what sounds like heavily forbidden mind control magic for purposes of a sex game, and with your general pervertedness levels."
"- if I'm holding the earrings does the effect apply to me."
Carissa Sevar: "No! I'd have warned you! Also, you can simply not say" Message 'equestrian pumpkins', "which isn't really the kind of thing people say much by accident!"
Keltham: This sequence of events seems predictable.
Maybe too predictable.
There could be rules about how he has to accept the bearer-controlling mind-control magic item voluntarily or knowingly; they could be suspicious that his Spellcraft has advanced enough to recognize what a mind-control item looks like.
"Apologies to Ordinary Carissa. Remove the earrings from your head, but keep them yourself."
Carissa Sevar: "Yes, Keltham."
She obeys.
Great, she'll get to keep working on them. That went perfectly.
Asmodia: Asmodia, booped by Keltham, will duly open her eyes and cease her humming.
Keltham: "Request quiet while I rest my brain for a few minutes, until Maillol's scry people get here. Possibly afterwards too, if we don't have to talk much to them."
Asmodia: "Some point in the next hour, unpredictably to me, tell me to go to the bathroom?"
Keltham: "Check."
Carissa Sevar: Awww, too bad, she was hoping he'd ask whether and why Geas is even legal to know about, they spent a while workshopping that earlier this week.