Keltham: Obviously the Conspiracy wouldn't bring that up if they didn't have a great excuse prepped for it.  He noticed confusion, but he'll ask later; it may be a mistake to make himself too easy to steer.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa steps back to give her boyfriend some time to think, smiling at him.

- now is a good time to give her any non-urgent updates that haven't previously been passed along, and a good time to make sure of some obvious things: the team editing the books retrieved from a Tien-speaking company should be routed through Korva by default, with anything Korva is unsure of going to Asmodia, with anything Asmodia is unsure of presented to Carissa. Carissa hasn't yet been interrupted with anything which likely suggests people are being too conservative in escalating; they should now try escalating the things they considered escalating and then decided not to.

If anyone at any stage in the process thinks that they are making some kind of serious mistake she wants to hear about it. The primary thing they're editing for is references to Abadar's holy symbol or teachings, Hell or devils and to mindreading (as something that is not secret and tightly controlled); they're secondarily editing for Lawful Evil people behaving like, well, Lawful Evil people, possibly by just changing them all to Neutral Evil and some Lawful Neutral ones to Lawful Evil. Tertiary: Nethysianism inconsistent with Ione's, mentions of the minor god they told Keltham they thought was his, references to suicide being Evil (she hasn't previously issued a directive on that but it's obvious now it's going to leap out at Keltham.) Suicide in alter-Golarion is discouraged by Good churches but is not categorically Evil. 

Keltham's leaving Ione out of his investigation, apparently because he suspects she might be an innocent dragged into all this. That makes her a promising person for the false escape plan, if she's in fact not going to betray them for Nethys. Carissa wants a mindreader on Ione full-time and if she seems reliable they should start making modifications to plan #18 or #33.

Keltham might want to scry Peranza in Hell; someone should tell Hell that if that happens Peranza needs to be peacefully asleep in non-appalling surroundings. Keltham might want to scry Hell, in general - might ask for a list of devils and then ask to scry them, or ask to scry the devil Carissa supposedly sold her soul to. Hell should be asked for a list of devils safe for Keltham to scry. Keltham might want to scry the front lines of the war; Carissa wants a specific location for them to drop in on identified in advance and the surrounding units briefed. Keltham might want to scry the Worldwound, same dea -

- that's an obvious endgame for Good's baffling seizure of a fortress at the Worldwound, actually. A natural direction for Keltham's skepticism to turn, at this point, is whether any of the emergencies that purportedly necessitated his relocation to Cheliax and then to this fortress were real. The Worldwound is real and normally Cheliax would be happy to show it to him. But Good is playing some kind of fucking game there, now, and that means it's dangerous to let Keltham look closely - unless that's just what Good wants them to think. Carissa requires the most up-to-date summary of that situation, immediately. And presumably the other fortresses are now being checked very extensively; if there's one Cheliax is confident in, then the teleporter should, asked to go somewhere, go there. Alternately, Keltham might ask Carissa to name a former colleague to scry, or to name five so he can pick one; she'd like five names, in case he does that, who have been at least minimally briefed. A quite good outcome is if Keltham ends up focusing most of his testing today on his theory that the Kuthite war and the godwar and maybe the Worldwound are shams set up to scare him into staying in the fortress. Carissa is hoping he'll think to ask for detailed records of troop deployments, logistics and casualties for the Kuthite war - they have those, and they'll add up in all the right ways, though Keltham might not know enough about war to recognize that. He's not likely to ask for Kuthites to talk to, because the Conspiracy that made up Nidal entirely will presumably horribly scarify some people to show him. 

It seems to Carissa, and she'd like this disseminated to everyone on staff, that this is winnable; not easy to win, not necessarily in their favor, but far from hopeless. There are many possible Conspiracies, Keltham doesn't know where to look, and he gave them a lot of time to prepare. Cheliax is smarter than Keltham imagined, more ruthless, more determined, and Cheliax's obedience to Asmodeus is not something he is even prepared to look for, it is so far outside what he can understand. Those project staff with no role in the current activities but whose assistance might be needed later should rest, reread their notes, and try to avoid spending all their adrenaline before they enter the field of battle. Those project staff who are not necessary to today's activities should pray that Asmodeus's will be done here.

Abrogail Thrune II: "She's not lying enough," Abrogail says out loud to Aspexia.  No Security will hear them, neither of them trusts Security around a weakened Queen.  "She's volunteering too much truth.  She should not have told him that an inch of iron blocks divination.  It would be ruinous if he believed that truth and made a helmet for himself.  Her lies don't need to stand up forever, just for one day."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Correct me if I err in my understanding of tropes, but if you tell Sevar that - even by proxy, such that it doesn't seem like her Queen's command - then the next lie she tells will be the one that Keltham catches."

Abrogail Thrune II: "Yes.  I know."

Keltham: Keltham is not able to truly rest.  He has too much to not think about, if the Conspiracy is reading his mind, including ideas by which right Broom should kill him immediately followed by everybody else in this installation who might've been in the telepathic loop.  He needs to run through all this faster than he'd planned, he will exhaust himself too quickly at this rate.  He really wishes he hadn't gotten those early indicators of mindreading!Conspiracy.

Keltham remembers to himself some videos he's seen over and over.  It's the closest he can come to clearing his mind, and it isn't all that restful.

Carissa Sevar: "If it's all right with you, I'm going to write down some ideas I came up with, then rejected, which it'd be better for you to think of yourself -"

Keltham: "Go ahead -"

Great, now he's thought it, the mindreading!Conspiracy knows it, and he might as well say it out loud to her.

"- but, sorry, I'm mostly tuning out things about the laws of magic, today.  If I pierce a Conspiracy, it won't be be because I got into the technical weeds of Spellcraft and outthought them there, it'll be because I managed to move the fight to my own home ground, which I am presently trying not to think any details about so don't ask how."

Carissa Sevar: "Makes sense. They weren't spellcraft ideas, I do realize you'd be an idiot to trust me about that."

And she takes out a piece of paper and begins scribbling furiously. 

One place Keltham might be safe outside the interdiction is the Worldwound, if he'd taken the oath, and he could talk to all of the allied churches there. Rejected b/c if anyone did want Keltham badly enough to break the Worldwound oath about it they might do it and it's not worth the risk (is this bad decision theory? she's not sure)

Keltham could ask someone to bring him all of the deployment, logistics, casualties, honors awarded, disciplinary actions, etc., records for the Worldwound and for the Kuthite war. Maillol will hate this plan because they're classified, but it seems pretty impossible for a Conspiracy to manufacture on short notice. Rejected because: only works if Keltham thinks of it. 

Keltham could HANG OUT IN AN ANTIMAGIC FIELD so he stopped having to worry about mindreading. Rejected because: she has already pushed pretty hard for antimagic fields and he's ignoring her and if she suggests it again he will probably conclude that the Conspiracy has a way around antimagic fields. 

Keltham could ask for the Grand High Priestess to raise a gate to let him directly visit Hell, where Asmodeus can probably protect him from the interference of other gods. Rejected because: the Conspiracy could take him to some other place under their control instead; she can't think how he'd verify he was really in Hell. 

lintamande: And three uniformed people visibly straight off the front lines in Nidal (you'd get in a lot of trouble for wearing a uniform that crumpled if you hadn't been summoned straight out of a war zone) walk in, holding an enormous top-tier scrying mirror and a very magic silk bag. 

Keltham: This subtlety, like so many other subtleties, will be wholly lost on the young man out of dath ilan, who considers a bathrobe to be appropriate attire for the Chief Executive of Civilization.

"Hi.  Thanks for coming.  I probably shouldn't explain anything that hasn't been explained already."

"There should be a person who can do a lesser Teleport out to a destination I'll specify and Teleport back, a Greater Scry scroll and someone who can cast from it, and a Comprehend Languages scroll hopefully the divine version."

lintamande: "This is Lord Marshal Fennelosa, wizard of the seventh rank, military emergencies unit, Her Majesty's Third; he'll be teleporting for you today. You're actually going to need a Greater Teleport if you want the teleporter to be able to go to a destination they have not previously seen, and they'll still need a pretty detailed description in that case. I am Paracount Fertinan Arayo, wizard of the seventh rank, from Her Majesty's personal security, and I'll cast the scry for you. In addition to a Greater Scry and a scroll of Comprehend Languages I also have a scroll of Detect Intelligence, per the request conveyed to us."

Keltham: "Yes, thanks, that gets used in a separate experiment."

"Talk me through how Greater Scry works.  Assume high Intelligence in me and first-circle wizardy, but that I otherwise have approximately the knowledge of a small village cobbler about that."

Carissa Sevar: (Carissa has authorized some lies, here: in particular, she's decided that you can't scry the dead. Keltham knows you can communicate with them -- with a Sending or similar - but hasn't been told you can observe them, and it's not the kind of thing one would naively expect to be true.)

lintamande: "'Sure," says Arayo. "Scry' is a fourth circle spell with a one-hour casting time that creates - in a scrying mirror or a still pool of water -- an image of a single target and their immediate surroundings, as viewed from a vantage point above their head. The target can with an act of Will resist being scried, in which case the scry can fail. They could also put up powerful magic on their surroundings which prevent a scrying sensor from forming in their vicinity, in which case the scry would fail. If the target is dead, the scry will also fail. The spell can be made more specific, more precise, and harder for the target to throw off if the caster has a better concept of the target or has some possession or body part of the target's in hand when they attempt the scry. Cantrips such as Detect Magic sometimes work through a scry, but they require extra finesse to manage and will fail if the scry is of low magical quality. It lasts about two minutes per caster circle.

Greater Scry is a seventh-circle spell with a one-round casting time that does the same thing, except the scry is of higher magical quality and it's easier to get cantrips to function through it and it lasts about two hours per caster circle."

Keltham: "Is there a standard way of allowing the scryer to get a wider view, with a cooperative target?"

Oh shoot, Keltham was unable to stop himself from thinking of the obvious solution about carrying around a mirror that would reflect the surroundings.  Plausibly be slightly harder to fake in an illusion, too, though really a curved mirror would be best for that, he could look in closely to see if the curved mirror had the right kind of distortions, as might be hard for an illusion spell to fake if they weren't just casting a veridical curved mirror.

Keltham had wanted to avoid thinking of that, if possible, to see if the Conspiracy would tell him about it or not.

lintamande: "Scrying with a cooperative target is usually used for military communications, rather than for, uh, getting a look at the surroundings, I'd need to think about it. ....the scrying sensor is reliably some distance about the person's head, so you could use Enlarge Person to make them taller? And of course they could fly around, give you a view of the area from the air."

Keltham: "Possibly I misunderstood something, when you said the spell only viewed immediate surroundings, if the view-from-the-air trick works.  If somebody was standing on a hill somewhere, could you look through the scry out to the horizon?  And if not, the obvious solution that comes to mind is for a cooperative target to carry a mirror, that can reflect the more distant surroundings."

lintamande: "The resolution isn't great but yes, you can see the horizon, and I'd expect a mirror to work fine. We can certainly try it."

Keltham: "Ready to go literally as soon as I give the destination?  And somebody please quickly go grab a mirror, the Project should have several on hand - have Ione deliver it, please."

Keltham thinks about how he's planning to send Ione Sala with them, carrying a bag of money, to follow her while she hires some mercenaries to protect her for a day, with a Telepathic Bond to himself -

he's actually planning Ostenso

he's actually planning Absalom

he's actually sending Asmodia

lintamande: "If it's somewhere Fennelosa has been to or gotten a good description of, he can depart - from outside the Forbiddance - as soon as you give a destination."

Keltham: "Ah yes, right, the Forbiddance.  Let's start making our way outside, then."

he's actually sending them to the Worldwound

his real plan involves books

his real plan involves Prestidigitation

his real plan involves using a timed chemical reaction whose Lawfully expected duration he'll compute only after the fact, to detect illusions

Carissa Sevar: They start walking out. 

"Do you happen to know if the Eleventh's been redeployed," Carissa asks Fennelosa as they walk. "- I'm cleared up to Sensitive, I was deployed with the Tenth and then with the Eleventh before this -"

       "They're still up north. - I think covering out to Terthule, because we haven't been replacing losses -"

"Mmm. Thank you."

       "Any time. My cousin's in the Eleventh." 

She told them not to lie about anything unauthorized, so it's not a lie. With the headband she can calculate in the back of her mind anyway that it'll be suspicious to Keltham, that it'd be better if this man hadn't happened to have a cousin in her regiment. 

Alter-Carissa is of course delighted. "- really? Who?"

         "Guillem Moya, he's third circle, evocation -"

It's not even a surprising coincidence, but that won't stop Keltham from finding it a suspicious one. "Oh! We've met. ...he was insufferable."

         "If all this is ever declassified I'll tell him you said so."

Keltham: He notices, but there's no obvious reason for the Conspiracy to be any more likely to say that, as a lie.  He doesn't know family densities in Cheliax, whether there's correlations in which people get assigned where; it'd be a silly thing to jump on as 'too much coincidence'.  If he considered it a likely Conspiracy tactic at all, it would be as a denial-of-service event where Keltham has to think about that stuff.  As it stands, it's actually useful to him; it gives him something else to think about while he's learning not to think about things.

Is Ione there yet with the mirror, Conspiracy?  Longer delays make it more likely that somebody's trying to emergency-instruct her about what to do if Keltham sends her with on the Teleport - not that this is Keltham's real plan - that thought was itself an attempted distraction, of course - 

Carissa Sevar: Ione was told to fetch a mirror and come here as fast as possible, but also she's pretty sure Keltham's real plan doesn't involve Ione.

Ione Sala: "Here with the requested mirror!  Otherwise keeping quiet until Keltham says differently!"

She's quietly annoyed with how the Conspiracy has been mostly keeping her out of the loop on things, but can't deny that alterIone probably isn't being kept up-to-date on it and it probably helps with her reactions -

Oh, that's a nice military-grade mirror there.  Keltham must've asked them for a scry, somewhere, and she'd bet he's got more in his quick-draw scabbard than just wandering around looking for anomalies.

Keltham: "Thanks, Ione.  Answer immediately, what were you thinking about between when you got the mirror request and when you arrived here?"

Ione Sala: "Trying to figure out why you suddenly needed a mirror, obviously, which I now realize is to try to expand the range you can see while scrying on somebody carrying that mirror."

Keltham: "What was your previous leading speculation?"

Ione Sala: "Conspiracy's going to be casting a lot of illusions today.  For all you know, it's harder to maintain a consistent illusion if the mirror has to be part of it.  Or you were going to do something clever with the Law of Optics, that you hoped the people casting the illusion wouldn't know how to fake."

Keltham: 1.1x for Ordinary, those are high-quality speculations that Ione would be less likely to have come up with if Conspiracy knew why he wanted the mirror and was instead frantically briefing Ione on what to do if Teleported.

"Thanks.  And, sorry, Conspiracy Ione.  In the event you're an innocent caught up in all of this, somehow, I did try to figure out how to send you on this Teleport with a bag of money, but couldn't actually figure out how to do it in a way that didn't risk a bunch of gods or mercenaries descending on Ordinary Ione if Conspiracy Innocent Ione was given a real chance to escape."

Ione Sala: She smiles.  "I appreciate the thought," she says, just like alterIone would say it, and not like true-Ione would say it in a more heartfelt way.

Keltham: Keltham will now head over to Lord Marshal Fennelosa, who he's about to send to AbsalomNidalWorldwoundOstenso and request permission to Prestidigitate some writing onto whatever Fennelosa happens to be wearing.

lintamande: " - sure." He's wearing an obviously magical silk cloak and obviously magical robes, both of them dirty, the cloak slightly bloody.

Keltham: "Just to check, will that persist on this clothing?  Since it seems obviously -"  Detect Magic.  "- is visibly magical?"

lintamande: "You should have a hard time damaging the cloak with a cantrip but dirt, as you might've noticed, sticks fine."

Keltham: In lieu of asking more questions, Keltham will just try to Prestidigitate part of the robes to subtly patterned iridiscence a la intricate diffraction grating, which is the sort of thing that people on the Project have been doing an awful lot of recently.  Does that, in fact, go, with these magical robes?

lintamande: Nope, the magical fabric does not want to be turned into something else.

Keltham: "Sorry about this, but I need you to wear... different robes over these robes, or a shirt, or something else I can Prestidigitate."

The amount of focus that it takes Keltham to converse about this is sufficient that his thoughts slip; he's planning to Prestidigitate his god's mysterious symbol and a Taldane question mark.

lintamande: "Sure," Fennelosa says impatiently. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a nonmagical thick fur cloak, and pulls it on over the magical one. 

Carissa Sevar: The team following Fennelosa will just have to be prepared to Dominate anyone who walks up to him to comment on the holy symbol, though she thinks people will mostly not do that.

Keltham: Keltham will Prestidigitate his god's symbol and a question mark, in diffraction-grating iridescence that somebody who wasn't deeply involved in the Project might not understand the optics of well enough to cast an illusion faking it, and also he's going to weave in some small Baseline fancy script that's going to look like a lot of indistinguishable Elvish curlicues to anybody who doesn't read Baseline, but which Keltham himself can immediately check for coherence.  That hopefully makes it complicated to change on their end and fake in an illusion on his end.

"How are we staying in contact once you've Teleported?  Telepathic Bond, or does Message work across Greater Scry?"

Keltham is trying to avoid thinking about how much it costs Conspiracy to claim that he needs to give all his instructions in advance (20 bits).

Carissa Sevar: She anticipated that, which is why they said that cantrips worked across a Greater Scry.

Though also that number seems high and she suspects Keltham's trying to think false things on purpose.

lintamande: "Message should work fine," Fennelosa says.

Keltham: "All right then, I'm about to give you your destination.  Ready to go?"

Keltham is trying very hard not to think of his next action.

lintamande: "Yes."

Keltham: Keltham casts Invisibility Purge!  Were there any invisible people waiting to go along on that Teleport trip?

lintamande: Nope!

Carissa Sevar: The team accompanying Fennelosa will Teleport in separately from a different location, because there's no reason to have them anywhere near the Project site at any point.

Keltham: "Absalom, the Grand Bazaar if it still exists, otherwise whichever location you most expect to have multiple bookstores."

Carissa Sevar: It is definitely one of the more inconvenient requests he could have made, but not outside the range of things he might predictably have wanted. 

Do it, she thinks. They have lots of books they've been faking for Keltham. She wants a team prepared to swap the covers and alter the first pages to match ones he might request from Absalom.

lintamande: Fennelosa Teleports. 

Arayo casts Greater Scry, and there Fennelosa is, in the middle of a chaotic, bustling marketplace, the iridescent symbol glinting on his back.

Keltham: Message:  Move the mirror close to the scry viewpoint and turn it around slowly.

It's his first glimpse of Golarion for real, and Keltham will be examining it carefully and not without a sense of wonder, for he may be in Ordinary Golarion after all.

lintamande: Fennelosa irritably holds the hand mirror up to the scry sensor and rotates it, very slowly, so Absalom's landmarks can be seen in its edges. He has nothing to hide, yet. 

A skinny child tries to pickpocket him while he's staring up in the air doing something weird with a mirror. He kicks them.

Keltham: ...okay, if he asks he'll be told that this happens a million times per day, if the Conspiracy did it on purpose then they're - trying to distract him - it rhymes with other things, other worrisome signs, like he noticed under Owl's Wisdom months ago -

He'll do what the Conspiracy predicted, he supposes, in the version where they predicted that Keltham would think that being distracted and asking questions because a child got hurt was supplying the Conspiracy with the wrong retrospective incentives.

Message:  If possible, please carry out the rest of this operation while hurting as few children as possible, as little as possible.

lintamande: "Acknowledged," Fennelosa says. The mirror is showing an absurdly tall lighthouse, the spires of some cathedral, a clock tower with incredible stone detailing, a flying person passing overhead, a pseudodragon perching to stare at them.

Another pickpocket brushes up against him and he levitates them fifteen feet in the air rather than kicking them.

Keltham: Okay, nothing obviously out of line with the century-old 14-volume history of Absalom that was left in his bedroom in the 'Imperial Palace' where the Conspiracy brought him immediately after faking the 'Zon-Kuthon godwar', the point at which the Conspiracy started to take its game against him seriously.  That probably wasn't enough time for them to fake entire books, which is why they gave him a century-old set of 14 books, which is the sort of thing that Conspiracy Asmodia would not have permitted if she'd then been in charge, she would have had his room devoid of books rather than do that.  There's a lot of reasons they might be trying to hide something that happened in the last century, but whatever it is, it's even more likely to be in Absalom than elsewhere, and Keltham has any idea of what Absalom was like a century ago.

He can't exactly sight-read the city skyline - for all he knows, anything really tall could be the Starstone Cathedral - but the wide variety of weird tall buildings at least looks like 'Absalom' should look.

Does Keltham see anything that looks like a bookshop?

lintamande: Not in the Grand Bazaar. It's mostly food carts, selling fresh fish and things just-arrived on merchant ships: grains, livestock, textiles.

Fennelosa asks, privately, if he should stay away from the slave markets. 

Carissa Sevar: Ideally not, because they've claimed to Keltham that other places are worse than Cheliax and that'd be useful as evidence. However, if there are children in the slave markets he's going to have an entire full-scale breakdown about that. Someone should scout ahead, spend some gold, and get any children removed or illusioned into adults/halflings/gnomes, after which Fennelosa can walk through there as normal. 

lintamande: "Okay if I hold the mirror less conspicuously, it's like advertising I'm not paying attention to my surroundings," says Fennelosa, weaving through a bunch of stalls of pigs and ducks and caged cats.

Keltham: ...call it 1.5x for Conspiracy, the description Keltham had read in the century-old book implied more of a chance that you could buy everything in the Grand Bazaar, where you would've thought that 'everything' would include books.

Message:  Head to where you'd expect to find bookshops, please.  Fiction preferred to nonfiction, if that distinction exists in Golarion.

(Fiction books are harder to coherently rewrite on the fly; easier to change a paragraph in an encyclopedia than to change a key plot point.)

lintamande: "I haven't been here in a while, okay if I ask someone where to go?"

Asmodia: ...Asmodia is confused by why they don't want Keltham having a full-scale meltdown about child slaves in Absalom, to the point of changing the fabric of local reality in a possibly inconsistent way about that; but she realizes this may not be the best time for Sevar to stop and explain her reasoning.

Keltham: "Go for it."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa would love Keltham to have a breakdown if it meant he'd stop pursuing Conspiracy. She suspects it instead means he demands Owl's Wisdom and Fox's Cunning.

lintamande: "Good Wealday," says Fennelosa to a stall vendor. "I am looking for booksellers, where would I find those."

"You're on the wrong side of the market, sir, they're uptown from here."

"Thank you."

Keltham: There sure are a lot of different people in Golarion.  Less variety in clothing, compared to dath ilan, of course; but the people inside the clothes sure are different - does that person have scales?  She's pretty.  Keltham will have to think about whether or not he's perverted enough to ask Meritxell to look like that next time.

lintamande: A toad breathes fire at him from one of the stalls. A woman wrings a chicken's neck and hands it off to a tall, green-skinned orc. A beggar grabs at his feet and starts a spiel about his dying wife. 

And if he has a go-ahead from the lead team (which is covering up any Abadaran holy symbols they see as well as any child slaves) he'll cut through the slave markets, on his way uptown.

Carissa Sevar: Go.

lintamande: Absalom has periodically debated abolishing the slave markets. Not the institution of slavery, nor even the slave trade; both bring Absalom much prosperity. But the markets, yes. They're an unpleasant place, an eyesore both literally and metaphorically; they make people who don't mind slavery in the slightest uneasy. 

The slaves are mostly very minimally dressed, in some cases nude. Some are in cages, but most are for efficiency just chained to each other, shackled hands and feet. Most of them stare at the ground, or at the wall. Some are crying. Some are struggling. There's an auction block, where a man with a booming voice is collecting bids on a lot just arrived from distant Casmaron. 

There are no children. This required ripping some babies out of their mothers' arms before Fennelosa got there, but their owners were duly compensated.

Carissa Sevar: And give the babies back, afterwards. Even nearly-fully-corrupted Keltham will care about that, not to mention that Snack Service is about to threaten me about it.

Curse of Laughter: Snack Service would otherwise have advised Carissa Sevar against disrupting future relations with Keltham, had she been that silly!

The suspicious Asmodeans should really have enough evidence by now to update about some things!  They should not feel constrained in how they serve Asmodeus by Snack Service's presence, even if Cayden Cailean wouldn't like something.  Snack Service will warn them if they're about to do something that is about to significantly harm Asmodeus's interests simultaneously with Cayden Cailean's.

Keltham: He closes his eyes after a few seconds.

(Whatever this is, if there's a reason for Conspiracy to fake it, Keltham shouldn't cooperate with that reason and give them a retroactive reason to arrange this.  That's a reason to keep his eyes closed, right?</motivated-cognition>)

"Carissa," he says not by Message, "tell me when he's through."

That does not particularly look like a situation that sane people would not suicide out of.  Maybe if it was temporary.

Maybe those are Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, or Chaotic Neutral people and this is the section of the market where they sell people who can't say no.  In which case blowing up Absalom to stop this wouldn't particularly be helping them.

...or maybe they lied to him about afterlives, that's rising in prominence too.

He'll give them this, it doesn't feel like Conspiracy so much as it feels like an Ordinary that is wronger than they told him yet, in ways that they have, per his own request, held off from rushing to tell him about.

Carissa Sevar: She squeezes his hand. "I'll tell you."

Fennelosa could teleport out now, while Keltham's not looking, but it's not like they have an entire approved bookshop in Cheliax for him to go to either. If anything, a bookshop in Cheliax would probably reveal more. Fennelosa should proceed, and the team that came up with all the Keltham-approved books should put those Keltham-approved books in Fennelosa's Bag of Holding for ease of swapping in either at the bookstore or subsequently. 

As soon as they're out of the slave markets, then, and just entering a section of bazaar that's full of animal skins and leathers and furs - "okay, it's over."

Keltham: Keltham doesn't answer; he's running through basic possibilities for abolishing the slave trade in Golarion, just in case he's missing something obvious.  Some of the thoughts are along the lines of 'maybe don't sell any +4 intelligence headbands to Absalom' and 'if this is what Cheliax was like before the Church took over, they might have done some pretty extreme things in the takeover process that they'd want to conceal from me until I understood why that was necessary', both of which are explanations for why the Conspiracy would want to fake this.

If he decides this world is real, among Keltham's next steps is going to be talking to that paladin to find out what Good's current plans are on this slavery thing.

...if Ordinary were deliberately protecting him from this, though, they should've warned him about it.  Not just walked him into an abused-people-market.

He's going to focus on this test.  Needs to focus on this test.  It also matters, even on this scale.

And something about him is taking all of this more seriously, now, even to the point of being willing to inconvenience bystanders.  But he's not - quite - seeing what he should - the Conspiracy has obvious responses - no, he's not thinking clearly, even if they have obvious responses, he should run the test anyways - the trouble is not thinking about things -

Keltham is looking for somebody in his field of vision who looks like they might be the local equivalent of a Security wizard, or police officer, or the non-Nidal version of a person carrying an expensive sword.

He's not able to stop himself from thinking that the point is to find somebody who'd be difficult to mind-control, or who it'd be a very big deal to mind-control.

And now that he's gone and thought that, he needs to pick a subject immediately if possible, before they have time to cast an illusion about it.

lintamande: Is he by any chance going to pick the Chelish agent on the lead team who is disguised as a priest of Sarenrae and who is purchasing blankets at the stall right up ahead? Or the Chelish agent on the lead team who is disguised as a powerful Vudrani wizard flying lazily overhead shouting instructions while his harried assistant makes purchases for him?

Or the perfectly legitimate but low-level guards stationed at the edge of the slave market?

Keltham: Yep, totally going for the Sarenrae priest.

Message:  Can you ask that person buying blankets if they'd be willing to answer some quick questions for 5gp, or more if you think it takes more?

(Keltham is substantially increasing the amount beyond what he'd have to offer in dath ilan, because low-trust environment and also he might be about to get some innocent mind-controlled with hopefully low probability.)

lintamande: Fennelosa will head over to the priest of Sarenrae. "Excuse me, father, would you be willing to answer some questions on the spot for 5 gold pieces?"

"Well, I'd have to say that it'd depend on the questions," the man responds in Taldane with a distinctly Taldor-Taldane accent.

Keltham: Message:  They'll be about Cheliax, Nidal, Zon-Kethon, and Asmodeus.  Also ask him if he's okay being Messaged directly by someone he can't see, and replying in kind.

lintamande: Fennelosa repeats this faithfully. 

" - well, I don't mind someone Messaging me with questions," the priest says, "but I don't know that I'll have very satisfactory answers for them, and wouldn't want them to feel their gold was misspent."

Keltham: Message directly to person who looks like he'd be hard to mind-control:

"Assuming I otherwise got here from very far away and am pretty ignorant of things, what would you say are the most interesting things that happened with Cheliax, Nidal, Zon-Kuthon, or Asmodeus over the last year?"

lintamande: "Well, they went to war," the priest replies immediately. "Zon-Kuthon's army attacked Cheliax, or so I heard at least, and then the gods united against Zon-Kuthon." Message doesn't permit long replies if you can't cast it yourself, and he can't.

Keltham: "Any else?"

lintamande: "The gods locked Zon-Kuthon away. The war is still ongoing, the church of Sarenrae is engaged by Cheliax for healing."

Keltham: "Any else?"

lintamande: "Not that I'm thinking of immediately, no. Certainly nothing as momentous as that."

Keltham: "Any weird news come to mind involving Cheliax in the last year?"

He's not able to stop his thoughts from mentioning the word 'lead', but at least he got this far, and that's already some evidence against Ordinary.

Carissa Sevar: That's not fair, there's no chance that random priests of Sarenrae would be apprised of Cheliax's leaded pot related initiatives. 

lintamande: "I've heard a rumor that after the godwar started all the gods agreed not to intervene in Cheliax so as not to tear it apart with their fighting?"

Keltham: He'll assign retrospective likelihoods later that a medical priest wouldn't have heard the news about lead, inside Ordinary, versus the likelihood that Conspiracy wouldn't think of it until too late and then not want to tip off that they read the plan out of his mind.

Message:  You can answer this one out loud, it's long.  What is Sarenrae's position on Asmodeus's takes?

121 - 1331 - 14641 - if it's too complex - if it's too simple - 161051 - 1771561 -

lintamande: "I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?"

Keltham: Message:  Asmodeus has some positions on compacts, on power relations between humans, and on free will.  Does Sarenrae's Church agree or disagree with those positions, and if so why?

lintamande: "We're in favor of free will, Good should and can be chosen, it doesn't have to be imposed. In intimacy, people should - practice the virtue of concern for the other. That's a classic Good-Evil disagreement, I suppose. For - contracts - I'd say mostly Sarenrae's church has a different focus. Sarenrae is the goddess of the sun, of redemption, of healing, of the good in everyone; I would say that She - agrees that contracts can be important, and should be precise and fair, but only because as far as I know that works out better for people than not doing that."

Keltham: Well, he's not giving answers as detailed as the paladin, which maybe figures for somebody accosted by weird questions in the middle of a giant amateur-market.  It's not following the previous pattern of the paladin giving answers more detailed about Evil than about Good.

And there haven't been any anomalies in the mirror, or in the apparent symbol from his truthspell that Keltham drew in iridescence or the Baseline script inside it, so either it was an honest answer or they mind-controlled the guy or they ran a sufficiently realistic illusion.

That was mostly what Keltham was expecting would happen inside Conspiracy; this didn't seem like a likely test to blow things open.  It revolved around possibilities of magic, illusion, mind-control, and those are places where the Conspiracy controlled almost all the information he got.

But he tested it, just in case.  Seeing the slave market reminded Keltham, a little, what it means to be involved in serious business, and to maybe make a more serious effort at breaking apart his world if it could be broken.

Message to priest:  Thanks, that's it.

Message to Fennelosa:  Please continue looking for a bookshop.

lintamande: Fennelosa will pay the guy five gold and then keep looking for a bookshop. This end of the bazaar is more upscale: fancy textiles, food vendors, shoeshiners, jewelers. 

There's a bookshop over there! The proprietor has been knocked unconscious and is sleeping upstairs. There's a new, temporary proprietor. 

In he goes.

Keltham: Is Keltham in range to see what kinds of books this bookshop carries?

lintamande: Like most bookshops it carries an eclectic range of books that the proprietor got her hands on to copy! The sign on the door just says 'books from all around the world'.

Keltham: Any foreign-language titles visible?

lintamande: It looks like she carries Taldane and Kelish, mostly, and then one shelf up high is labelled 'distant shores' and has some Tien and some other harder to identify languages.

Keltham: He'll save his Comprehend Languages until he finds a bookshop that carries more foreign titles, then; it doesn't last as long when cast from scroll... no, that's the wrong way to think about it, that potentially gives the Conspiracy too much time to catch him if his thoughts slip up.

Message to proprietor:  Hi, I'm shopping by scry today!  Sorry for this weird request, but if you can immediately go over to one of your books and open it to a section with something inside critical of Cheliax, in any way at all however minor, I'll immediately buy that book.  Bonus points if it's in a language that isn't Taldane.

(Yes, this is also testing whether the proprietor is being mind-controlled in a way that doesn't permit the controller to access native knowledge about their own books.)

lintamande: The person at the desk, who appears to be a boy of about fifteen, startles. "Is this some kind of scam," he says suspiciously. "I'll call the watch." I need to be directed to whichever of the books we placed contains criticism of Cheliax.

      "No scam. My patron's just - very secretive and somewhat eccentric," Fennelosa says, and sets two gold coins on the counter. "Please do whatever he asked."

The boy snatches up the two gold coins. Bites them. "Alright then," he says. "I don't speak any other languages so I'm not gonna get the bonus points." 

And he picks a book off the shelf and starts leafing through it. "There's got to be something in here, because this is from Andoran and they don't like Cheliax one bit. Just give me a minute, okay?"

Keltham: Sure, he'll give a minute.

- establishes baseline -

- too slow -

- too fast -

- how much should a bookstore operator know his own books -

lintamande: "Ha! From a speech by the Supreme Elect Andira Marusek. 'If Cheliax declared the slave trade over, it would end without a shot fired! But Cheliax has embraced as their national philosophy this: 'it's not our problem'. And secondarily this: we're already saving the world, stop complaining. As if it would cost the ships that already patrol these seas a single penny, to make it known they'd stop slavers! They will tell you they have no means to, but the truth is this: they don't care to!! - 's pretty critical, I'd say."

      "Seems kind of unfair to me, really," Fennelosa says. 

"Does it have to be a fair criticism? I don't know what you'll count."

Keltham: Keltham doesn't really have time to consider whether it's fair or not, he'll consider that later.  Right now he needs to spring his next test before hypothetical mind controllers have too much time to consider it.

Message to Fennelosa:  Buy that one and start flipping through it, random pages for me to read.

Message to proprietor:  Okay, now something critical of Qadira, fast as possible, will buy if you find it, same principle.

Keltham knows Qadira exists mainly because of browsing the Absalom history, not because anybody from Cheliax made any statements about it that they'd want to back up; and Qadira is pretty near here, and people in this region should have political opinions about it.  If they planted books about Cheliax here, and the mind-controller only knows about those, this request will take longer.  Likewise if it's all an illusion and they have illusions ready of particular books.

lintamande: "I'll buy it," says Fennelosa. None of the planted books cover Qadira. 

       "Five gold." That's fine; any book from Taldor on recent history is going to say some critical stuff about Qadira, they've been having border disputes. 

"He's overcharging you by a factor of two or three," Fennelosa Messages the scry irritably. "Probably because he's noticed you're rich and eccentric. Should I haggle."

Keltham: Message:  Just pay this one and mention that you'll only be paying 150% of the fair price on the next one.  I do owe him something for incidental exposure to all the weirdness around me, and a bonus for not being able to ask him about that part explicitly for information-security reasons.

lintamande: Fennelosa counts out five gold, takes the book, and starts leafing through it. Publication date five years ago. It's about Andoran politics, mostly following the political rise of Marusek and a series of near-conflicts Andoran got into because its neighbors consider it to be sponsoring piracy. 

The proprietor looks for a book about Taldane military history, that should have some Qadira and some criticism of Qadirans. 

Keltham: Timing on how long it takes them to locate that book versus the book critical of Cheliax?

lintamande: Maybe slightly longer to find the book on Qadira but not all that much so.

Keltham: And the criticism there?

lintamande: This particular author feels that the Qadirans are the enemy of civilization itself and must be defeated in a fierce and immediate offensive rather than be permitted to erode Avistan's defenses, bit by bit; only when the last of them have been slaughtered will Avistan be safe. It is just as critical of Taldor's nobles, who it argues have grown too weak and indolent to hold the border against the Qadiran savages, and are derelict in their duties to themselves, their lands, and all of Taldor; the Qadirans, it argues, are a just punishment for the sins of the Taldane nobles. 

Keltham: ...that is more the quality of argumentation that Keltham expected of Golarion Authors, such as one might find in the library of an archduke's villa.

Okay.  Suppose that this bookshop contains some planted books, some non-planted books, and is missing some obviously problematic books which were quickly removed, by a team that teleported in separately and rushed ahead to carry out that operation and mind-control the proprietor...

Does the store have an obvious fiction section?  Keltham has been reading book titles whenever not otherwise occupied.

lintamande: The separations it uses are 'romances', 'mysteries', 'histories', and 'business'. It's kind of unclear what's in each but the first two seem to be mostly fiction.

Keltham: All right.  Buy the Qadira-critical book.

Then go to the 'mysteries' section.  How many books total?

lintamande: About three hundred.

Keltham: Right then.  Let's spend ten minutes on this.

Message:  Count off every fifteenth book starting on the third one, putting your finger on each such book so that I can see the title each time.  Then, open to three random places in each such book, and show each such random place to the scry sensor for six seconds.  Then buy them all.  You can haggle that time.

Keltham was initially thinking of just buying books that discussed magic or gods or afterlives, then considered that his fortress doesn't have enough books anyways.

If their mystery genre is at all like dath ilan's, if there's even a trace of sanity there, key obscure rules of magic should feature in at least some of these novels; and you can't rewrite fiction as easily as nonfiction.  The pages will be spoilers, unfortunately, but they should serve as a check against the books being rewritten or substituted before he can read them.

lintamande: Fennelosa starts doing this, with some (but not much) visible irritation.

       "Careful with the books," says the boy. 

"I'm buying them."

      "Looks like you're waving them in the air."

"Well, aren't you a born genius. After I do that, I'll buy them. At a gold apiece."

      "They go for four normally."

"You're a bad liar, kid. In-demand books go for two in Cheliax, and Absalom has more trade, so it should be cheaper."

       "You're from Cheliax?"

"Yes."

        "Well, then, buy them in Cheliax, if you think they're cheaper there."

Keltham: Keltham's not paying much attention to this repartee, which won't be very informative in the Conspiracy worlds where it matters.  He's scanning the book glimpses instead.

I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and, surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with him, sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, ‘Tar!’

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be worse by-and-by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it.

‘Tar!’ cried my sister, in amazement. ‘Why, how ever could Tar come there?’

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin-and-water. My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervour of gratitude.

Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth, and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction which had filtered into his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of water. These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.

When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease with him, and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person. His fresh and ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had preserved, and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy air which cause the remark to be made of a man, “He’s a good fellow”; and of an old man, “He is a fine man.”

He said this with such evident surprise that I was perplexed what answer to make, and the more so because coupled with something feeble and wandering in his manner, there were in his face marks of deep and anxious thought which convinced me that he could not be, as I had been at first inclined to suppose, in a state of dotage or imbecility.

'I don't think you consider - ' I began.

'I don't consider!' cried the old man interrupting me, 'I don't consider her! Ah, how little you know of the truth! Little Nelly, little Nelly!'

It would be impossible for any man, I care not what his form of speech might be, to express more affection than the dealer in curiosities did, in these four words. I waited for him to speak again, but he rested his chin upon his hand and shaking his head twice or thrice fixed his eyes upon the fire.

While we were sitting thus in silence, the door of the closet opened, and the child returned, her light brown hair hanging loose about her neck, and her face flushed with the haste she had made to rejoin us. She busied herself immediately in preparing supper, and while she was thus engaged I remarked that the old man took an opportunity of observing me more closely than he had done yet. I was surprised to see that all this time everything was done by the child, and that there appeared to be no other persons but ourselves in the house. I took advantage of a moment when she was absent to venture a hint on this point, to which the old man replied that there were few grown persons as trustworthy or as careful as she.

It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a great pity indeed! and I have often wished—but it is so little one can venture to do—small, trifling presents, of any thing uncommon—Now we have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg; it is very small and delicate—Hartfield pork is not like any other pork—but still it is pork—and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast pork—I think we had better send the leg—do not you think so, my dear?”

“My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly in any manner they like.”

“That’s right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but that is the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.

Kit did turn from white to red, and from red to white again, when they secured him thus, and for a moment seemed disposed to resist. But, quickly recollecting himself, and remembering that if he made any struggle, he would perhaps be dragged by the collar through the public streets, he only repeated, with great earnestness and with the tears standing in his eyes, that they would be sorry for this -  and suffered them to lead him off. While they were on the way back, Mr Swiveller, upon whom his present functions sat very irksomely, took an opportunity of whispering in his ear that if he would confess his guilt, even by so much as a nod, and promise not to do so any more, he would connive at his kicking Sampson Brass on the shins and escaping up a court; but Kit indignantly rejecting this proposal, Mr Richard had nothing for it, but to hold him tight until they reached Bevis Marks, and ushered him into the presence of the charming Sarah, who immediately took the precaution of locking the door.

'Now, you know,' said Brass, 'if this is a case of innocence, it is a case of that description, Christopher, where the fullest disclosure is the best satisfaction for everybody. Therefore if you'll consent to an examination,' he demonstrated what kind of examination he meant by turning back the cuffs of his coat, 'it will be a comfortable and pleasant thing for all parties.'

'Search me,' said Kit, proudly holding up his arms. 'But mind, sir -  I know you'll be sorry for this, to the last day of your life.'

'It is certainly a very painful occurrence,' said Brass with a sigh, as he dived into one of Kit's pockets, and fished up a miscellaneous collection of small articles; 'very painful. Nothing here, Mr Richard, Sir, all perfectly satisfactory. Nor here, sir. Nor in the waistcoat, Mr Richard, nor in the coat tails. So far, I am rejoiced, I am sure.'

Richard Swiveller, holding Kit's hat in his hand, was watching the proceedings with great interest, and bore upon his face the slightest possible indication of a smile, as Brass, shutting one of his eyes, looked with the other up the inside of one of the poor fellow's sleeves as if it were a telescope - when Sampson turning hastily to him, bade him search the hat.

'Here's a handkerchief,' said Dick.

'No harm in that sir,' rejoined Brass, applying his eye to the other sleeve, and speaking in the voice of one who was contemplating an immense extent of prospect. 'No harm in a handkerchief Sir, whatever. The faculty don't consider it a healthy custom, I believe, Mr Richard, to carry one's handkerchief in one's hat - I have heard that it keeps the head too warm - but in every other point of view, its being there, is extremely satisfactory - extremely so.'

'Oh Quilp!' said his wife, 'what's the matter? Who are you angry with?'

' - I should drown him,' said the dwarf, not heeding her. 'Too easy a death, too short, too quick - but the river runs close at hand. Oh! if I had him here! just to take him to the brink coaxingly and pleasantly, - holding him by the button-hole - joking with him, -  and, with a sudden push, to send him splashing down! Drowning men come to the surface three times they say. Ah! To see him those three times, and mock him as his face came bobbing up, - oh, what a rich treat that would be!'

'Quilp!' stammered his wife, venturing at the same time to touch him on the shoulder: 'what has gone wrong?'

She was so terrified by the relish with which he pictured this pleasure to himself that she could scarcely make herself intelligible.

'Such a bloodless cur!' said Quilp, rubbing his hands very slowly, and pressing them tight together. 'I thought his cowardice and servility were the best guarantee for his keeping silence. Oh Brass, Brass - my dear, good, affectionate, faithful, complimentary, charming friend - if I only had you here!'

His wife, who had retreated lest she should seem to listen to these mutterings, ventured to approach him again, and was about to speak, when he hurried to the door, and called Tom Scott, who, remembering his late gentle admonition, deemed it prudent to appear immediately.

'There!' said the dwarf, pulling him in. 'Take her home. Don't come here to-morrow, for this place will be shut up. Come back no more till you hear from me or see me. Do you mind?'

Tom nodded sulkily, and beckoned Mrs Quilp to lead the way.

Lady Dorothea had not left us long before another visitor as unexpected a one as her Ladyship, was announced. It was Sir Edward, who informed by Augusta of her Brother's marriage, came doubtless to reproach him for having dared to unite himself to me without his Knowledge. But Edward foreseeing his design, approached him with heroic fortitude as soon as he entered the Room, and addressed him in the following Manner.

“Sir Edward, I know the motive of your Journey here—You come with the base Design of reproaching me for having entered into an indissoluble engagement with my Laura without your Consent. But Sir, I glory in the Act—. It is my greatest boast that I have incurred the displeasure of my Father!”

So saying, he took my hand and whilst Sir Edward, Philippa, and Augusta were doubtless reflecting with admiration on his undaunted Bravery, led me from the Parlour to his Father's Carriage which yet remained at the Door and in which we were instantly conveyed from the pursuit of Sir Edward.