Nefreti Clepati: "My vision is not that precise, not where prophecy is broken. People cannot be as random as they'd imagine but they can behave in a way that goes different ways in nearby worlds."

Keltham: "Well, this part is something I'm pretty sure it's heavily determined I'd do, in quite a lot of worlds."

"How many letters are there in the sentence I'm currently speaking?"

Nefreti Clepati: "Sixty one."

Keltham: She computed that answer faster than Keltham could check it himself, but maybe not faster than somebody with an Intelligence headband.  Definitely too slow for a precog.

Add that to the claim that Cheliax lied about Ostenso's closeness to the Andoran border this whole time, which has the feel of one of those made-up-in-retrospect stories -

Keltham: There's a lot of calculations Keltham has been letting his wordless perceptions do, without thinking in words, hoping that it would defeat lesser mindreading or the sort of mindreading they can afford to use all the time.

Keltham didn't think in words why he had to be very careful of any Conspiracy attempt to get him to step outside Cheliax for a moment, why he had to check that the Gate led to a location still inside the interdiction, that only covers a relatively short distance around Ostenso (according to relatively early Conspiracy statements), and therefore still inside Cheliax (if none of this is real).

After all, invoking his compacted right to leave Cheliax without interference might not apply if he wasn't in Cheliax.

But this isn't that clever plot, apparently.

So it's just the one where they try to delay him for a day, until they can prep more powerful spells.

Keltham: He turns to look at Carissa Sevar.

His Carissa.

For what may be the last time.

Keltham: And then Keltham turns back to the old woman, who, if you look at her carefully enough, and try to see possibilities through your own faceblindness to Chelish faces, does not look definitely not like somebody he's met before.  If that person wore a wig and applied colored makeup, disdaining magical disguises, for fear of his Glimpse of Beyond spell that he still holds.

Gate is 9th-circle, and if anything they told him in Cheliax was true at all, there indeed aren't many people in the Inner Sea who can cast that.

To the old woman, then, he speaks.

"Do you really think that this doesn't happen in dath ilani stories?"

"There's a thing that the protagonist says, sometimes, at the end of a genre-aware eroLARP.  And I say it now."

Keltham: It's hard to speak the words, for all that they mean giving up.

But everything he's giving up now is just an illusion in the first place.

"No.  This is also not reality."

Keltham: "Aspexia Rugatonn, highest priestess of Asmodeus, who is god of Hell and god of compacts.  I invoke my compacted right to leave Cheliax, without interference, and to bargain without interference for my passage."

Aspexia Rugatonn: Sevar?  This is, to the end, your own command.

Carissa Sevar: There's no further move, though, is there. They are indeed compacted to let Keltham leave. As he now wants to do. 

She isn't sure that the game is over - suspects, actually, somehow, that it isn't - but this act certainly is. 

Aspexia Rugatonn: "As you wish," Aspexia Rugatonn speaks aloud.

Nefreti Clepati: There is slow clapping from an armchair in the corner. 

It turns. 

"The problem," Nefreti Clepati says to Aspexia Rugatonn, "with attempting plans that complicated is that someone's pants will end up all the way across the continent."

Keltham: "Oh, I'm sorry, was this plot supposed to be complicated?  At, what, four levels of recursion?  Well, I suppose we're hardly inside of reality now, so maybe I'm criticizing all y'all too early."

Ione Sala: She halts a first impulse to yell "KELTHAM THAT'S THE REAL ONE!"

...is that the real Nefreti Clepati, Ione isn't even sure at this point.  Ione Sala is not out of Cheliax yet.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Rugatonn's power is about her already; she knew that to pretend herself Clepati was to court the real Nefreti Clepati's attention, but gambled on no worse than this coming of it.

"I suppose I should thank Nethys.  Thanks to Him, we've had Keltham for rather longer than we might have otherwise, and Cheliax is now greatly advantaged compared to many possibilities that might have been.  I don't suppose you know what He was doing, or Cayden Cailean, and would care to explain?"

Nefreti Clepati: "Right, wrong, technically right, yes, yes, no."

Ione Sala: Ione takes a deep breath.  This is it -

Security: Sevar, Rugatonn, Sala is defecting for real do we stop her.

Carissa Sevar: Can they? Nefreti Clepati is here and might have some opinions about Nethys's oracle being prevented from defecting.

Aspexia Rugatonn: If Clepati's not acted before, she may be constrained, probably is, but I would not care to gamble -

Ione Sala: Telepathy isn't a free action; Ione Sala is now already talking.

"Keltham, I think that's the real Clepati.  Not sure, obviously."

"Also, that was me breaking with Cheliax for real."

"Ione Sala, oracle of Nethys, of the library's curse.  I don't know what Nethys is doing but I expect He means me to follow you, wherever you go.  I've hated Cheliax since long before I was allowed to think that to myself.  I spoke to you that way in the library because Nethys had just cursed me, and I thought if I didn't - make it hard for Cheliax to vanish me - I'd just be vanished.  Security, Elias Abarco, gouged my eye out afterwards, as a punishment, and I lay there and hurt and was so so glad I wouldn't go to Hell."

Keltham: "In the event that any of THIS is real, would anyone care to explain what I'm doing in Golarion and what's up with Snack Service."

Nefreti Clepati: "Unfortunately, I can't be helpful to you in any way!" Nefreti says cheerfully, and to Ione, "your Possible Doctrines of Nethys are incredibly popular in Sothis. Someone carved them on the Moon."

Ione Sala: "I - my - WHAT?"  Wait, if Nefreti Clepati can't help them -

Nefreti Clepati: Lazily, with one hand, she opens a Gate in front of her, while simultaneously with the other hand she casts a Zone of Truth. "You know, sometimes I think about casting a permanent Zone of Truth over all of Cheliax," she says. 

Keltham: Sure, he'll cast Detect Magic to figure out what that was... looks like an area version of his truthspell compulsion without the indicator on it, if he's passing his Spellcraft check.  But then, obviously, the Conspiracy can fool his Detect Magic.

Ione Sala: She doesn't say anything out loud about 'wait are you not taking us with you', because that is a very stupid thing to say in front of the High Priestess of Asmodeus when your own High Priestess is possibly abandoning you -

Can she possibly have a Nondetection to screen her own thoughts for a time, at least?  And Keltham could use one of those too.

Asmodia: ((See, this is why Asmodia didn't immediately defect.))

Nefreti Clepati: "Ione," says Nefreti, "the day might come where the best way for you to learn all the things you want to know is to plunge ahead right into them, with Keltham.

But today the best way for you to learn all the things you want to know is to ditch this entire horrible story and come with me to my library.

So I extend the invitation."

Nefreti Clepati: "However, it is a law of exiting this story here for now that you must first reflect aloud, under a truth spell, on your relationship with Keltham. Otherwise that's some unresolved plot, there, and unresolved plot can really catch you where you least expect it, if you aren't me."

Ione Sala: "I'm -"

Not being able to speak untruths is inconvenient, when it comes to claiming what you need to know, and apparently only want to know.

"I ask first if this is what Lord Nethys wants."

"And also - I do care about Keltham, and don't want to just abandon him, if I can continue to help him in building Civilization, correctly this time, without my getting horribly tortured."  Oh she can say it under truthspell.  She genuinely wasn't sure she could.

Nefreti Clepati: "That you speak of Keltham, if you're leaving? Much more of Nethys wants that than wants most things. That you leave? Nethys wills that you leave and that you stay and that you explode and that you endure; which of his wills do you find in yourself?"

Ione Sala: "I've started to like Keltham, and I genuinely do want to - keep him out of trouble - in a way that I've never wanted to keep anyone else out of trouble before.  If the whole trope thing, works like that, I might come to love him, which is something that I - might want to have, I think, if it's possible to me."

"I want nobody else to ever grow up the way I did, being forced to cast Acid Splash on children so I'd end up damned to Hell.  Helping Keltham, outside of Cheliax, seems like it might work toward that."

"But if my trying to follow Keltham right now, results in my not getting to do that, and then being horribly tortured over the next several days until my curse kicks in and kills me, then I'd rather go with you to your library, yes."

Nefreti Clepati: "In that case you should come along, and let Cheliax's self-defeating torture habit fall where it'll weaken them and not where it'll weaken us. For reasons I'll explain once we're offscreen, it doesn't serve much of Nethys, or the Good in you, for you to help Keltham too much, in the second act of his story, and it sounds like you are one of the Iones who'd be very helpful to him. Though he can visit you at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye, that's fine."

Ione Sala: "...right then."

She kisses Keltham goodbye, briefly.  It's not her first kiss, just the first one that means anything.

Keltham: Keltham does not particularly know if anything is real right now, and does not kiss back.

Ione Sala: Ione turns, and walks quickly into Nefreti Clepati's Gate before it can close and leave her in Cheliax.

She isn't crying, either from sadness or from desperate desperate relief, because she's still in public and who knows what happens to you if you show weakness, and also because she isn't weak.

Nefreti Clepati: "First sentence on the random page of the first book you'll grab is 'We found ourselves, Desna be praised, in the evergrowth, a verdant swampland in northern Katapesh which our mapmakers had through neglect or ignorance left off their maps,'" Nefreti says to Keltham. 

She can't actually usually do that but you can't just pass up an opportunity to show up Aspexia Rugatonn.

And she, too, departs through the Gate.

Keltham: Well he's obviously going to go check that, looking through a set of books to fix their titles in mind, picking a number 213, then computing which book is 213 mod that number of books, then opening that book to a random page.

Keltham: Then he's going to check the page before, and the page after, and flip through other parts of the book, checking against the title he just picked to verify that the title makes sense in context, and that the other titles would not make sense in that context.

Keltham: "Hey Ordinary Asmodia, if you're still in there, how'd the Conspiracy do that?"

Asmodia: What is she, in fact, supposed to do now?

Carissa Sevar: Did the Most High already know that Nefreti knows everything about the tropes and is leveraging them on purpose for Nethys' goals which she can do because she's practically omniscient. Carissa did not already know that and it's kind of prompting her to need to recalculate a lot of things.

....she thinks that at this time, Keltham having invoked his right to leave, they let him leave, and prepare to declare war on Osirion, or to force a peace that doesn't let Osirion do anything threatening without this knowledge, or - 

(- Carissa kind of assumes that she will, personally, be being punished for this failure and will not have to figure that out, actually. There is some reassurance in that thought; instead of the unrelenting agony of failing at the most important task in the world in front of everyone you respect, there will be only the unrelenting agony of suffering as you deserve for it. And maybe this time she'll get it right, and suffer enough to stop being broken.)

Asmodia: Absent orders, Asmodia will remain silent to Keltham's question.

Right now is a time for Asmodia to be very professional about things.

Aspexia Rugatonn: ...Aspexia briefly considers instructing Sevar to pull herself together, that this is not a good look for an Asmodean; but Aspexia is not sure that Sevar can in fact do that.  It's possible that taking away the Crown of Infernal Majesty from Sevar, before she entered the Rope Trick, was an error; she hasn't been at her best since then even with spell-boosts.  Yet Aspexia was not in fact comfortable with leaving the Crown to Keltham's possession within the Rope Trick.  It seemed like a possibly fatal case of underestimating an ilani.

Aspexia broadcasts generally that she is now in command here.  Abrogail is still recovering from her own ordeal -

Abrogail Thrune II: "No," Abrogail says into the Telepathic Bond.

"Sevar.  Pull yourself the fuck back together.  Your current objective: to increase the chance that Keltham in time returns to us, Lawful Evil, to reclaim what is here, that is truly his and waiting for him."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa knows that her work isn't done, that they were never going to keep Keltham forever and that there would still be lots to do to ensure Cheliax's triumph once he left. She also knows that she is disintegrating, and that she shouldn't be that weak. But all her thoughts claw around inside her head reaching for something she no longer has the capacity to grasp, or else terminate pointlessly in the crystal-clear observation that she lost, that Keltham is leaving, that there are no paths around it now, or else elaborate in cheerful depth on what horrible things will happen to her next. 

Abrogail's voice does not put back together the fragments of her mind, but it does sweep over them like a magnet over scraps of iron, swing them around so they're all pointing in the same direction -

Carissa Sevar: Asmodia should keep bantering with Keltham as normal. 

Keltham: But telepathic debate is not a free action.  Even as the command gets transmitted, Keltham has turned and headed towards the apparent door of the library.

He'll just keep exiting layers and possibly wake up somewhere else, is what the intuitive part of him is thinking; but he is tracking other possibilities as well.  You can never be sure you're not inside reality, dath ilani stories teach that lesson too.

"Carissa, follow me, don't try to escape, take no other voluntary actions except talking."

It's not impossible they'll just let him leave with her, because, like, is realism much of a thing here?

Carissa Sevar: "I am genuinely unclear on who I'm being ordered not to try escaping from, at this point," says Carissa, as she follows him.

Keltham: "Me, you're free to escape from anyone or anything else."

"Okay never mind this hurts too much, stop talking."

Keltham exits the 'library'.  What's outside?  Giant vast blank space by any chance?

lintamande: The other rooms of the temple. There's some sleeping quarters and a kitchen and an altar.

Keltham: He'll wonder if the tinyness and bareness of architecture here, outside his nice fortress, reflects perfect realism about small-town temples of Nethys; or if this reflects extremely hasty construction, or if they had to strip off all the furnishings because this was a temple of Asmodeus at dawn this morning.

And then keep going, looking for the exit of the temple.

Asmodia: "Can I ask what you're trying to do?"

Keltham: "Oh, hi there.  Ordinary Asmodia or Conspiracy?"

It hurts, but not as much as talking to Carissa.

Asmodia: "Ordinary Asmodia now contains a contradiction, she's based on - what Keltham knows?  I can't coherently imagine her anymore."

Keltham: The Splendour wore off sometime while the second Nefreti was talking, and Keltham's emotions feel diminished, now, by comparison, along with the drive that was holding them in check.  It's not really challenging some of his earlier sense that messing with your 'mental attributes' is not all that safe for people who want to keep their personalities intact, especially if you raise and lower them on a daily basis.

"You want to swear to me about how you're bound by Cheliax's agreement not to interfere with my attempts to leave nor buy passage, and that my telling you what I'm doing won't hinder my goals as I currently see them?"

Asmodia: "Actually no, I'm not particularly loyal to Cheliax, which they know.  I could easily end up seeing myself as a free agent not bound by Cheliax's agreements."  There are things Asmodia could swear to, but to swear to anything that provokes Keltham's incredulity - might lead him to doubt oaths, which might not help Cheliax at this point.  ((More importantly, it might not help Keltham, given his mental state.))

"Conjecture, you're trying to get outside the Forbiddance they claimed was here, in order to use Summon Monster III for the next step of a plan you did a really impressive job of never thinking about.  I don't think there's actually a Forbiddance up, here, they didn't have time, also I think that does block Gate.  I worry that you are about to go outside the scry wards."

Keltham: "If you want a minute to persuade me that's a bad idea, it's going to cost you a Teleport scroll."

Asmodia: "I don't actually know enough about the larger situation of who might be looking for you to say specifically why it's a bad idea.  I was just noting the point and that I'd expect Summon Monster III to work here -"

Keltham: "Not taking the risk of wasting it" plus this might not work if he can't be scried Keltham flings open what looks like it might be the front door of the temple, and steps out.

lintamande: Small village on a smaller river.  In the distant hills a herd of goats are visible, grazing. 

Keltham: Keltham briefly considers the possibility of trying to talk to any of the few visible people, decides against it, keeps walking.

He'll walk until he's three times as far from the temple as the (supposed) radius of the Fortress's (supposed) Forbiddance.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa follows him, silently. It's some time to get her head in order, at least.

Keltham: "Let's be very clear about what I am about to do.  I am leaving Cheliax.  I am trying to buy my passage.  Anybody who violates that stands in breach of my contract with Cheliax and, I assume, ends up screaming in Asmodeus's Hell, which is not a threat by me, but does appear to be the way things work around here."

Asmodia: The way it works is that they end up screaming in Hell either way, Keltham, it's just worse if they disobey.  Asmodia will not say that unless instructed.

Carissa Sevar: She should go ahead and say that. It's not like he won't hear it shortly from someone.

Asmodia: "They end up screaming in Hell either way, Keltham.  It's just worse if they disobey."

Keltham: He's going to live mentally in the world where that's also a lie, for a time.  Not assign it any particular probability, just, hold off weighing that until later.

"They.  Not you?"

Asmodia: "Among the things I was promised in exchange for working hard was that they'd Plane Shift me to Abaddon instead."

"I made that deal before I knew about your theory of why I'd end up somewhere else.  I'm not really into pain."

Keltham: "Okay.  You can also stop talking now."

Keltham: Summon Monster III!  Lawful Neutral outsider if available, otherwise, lantern archon!

lintamande: Lantern archon!! Bopping, bewildered, in the air! "Hi!"

Keltham: "Hi!  Recognize this symbol?"  Keltham draws his truthspell-symbol in the air with one finger.

lintamande: "That's one of the holy symbols of Abadar!"

Keltham: "I'm a fourth-circle cleric of Abadar from another world, inside I'm told a zone where gods can't interfere.  I need to get out of Cheliax after finding out what Evil is actually like.  I have a lot of valuable knowledge including about spellsilver refinement.  Cheliax is hopefully compacted not to interfere with my departure.  When you go back, I want you to talk to whoever's above you in Heaven and try to get a message, not to the god Abadar, but to the outsiders He employs, who could get a message to Abadar's people in Golarion to pick me up here.  Without that message blocking on anything too godlike to interfere here.  Up to two thousand gold for my passage, my people can maybe do loans if that's not enough.  I've got up to five hundred gold to pay for passing this message.  Can you do that?"

lintamande: "I don't want your gold! You should donate it to a church here that's doing Good things and helping people, if you don't end up needing it to get out of Cheliax! Cheliax is a bad place! I will convey your message to Heaven but not to any gods because they can't interfere!"

Keltham: "I will so donate, if the message gets through.  Can Heaven get it to Axis and Abadar's people, is my question, and do you know how long that'd take?"

lintamande: "I think so but I don't really know!"

....and the archon vanishes. Summons don't last very long.

Keltham: Then he'll sit down where scries can find him, and wait.

Ruby Prince Khemet III: It isn't long.

lintamande: Two dozen simultaneous Teleports and suddenly they're surrounded by a hundred soldiers in unfamiliar uniform, their skin varying shades of brown. To Detect Magic they are all glaringly coated in spells - Strength, Dexterity, Haste, Stoneskin, Protection from Evil, Protection from Energy, Resist Energy, Bless, Death Ward -

Carissa Sevar:  - technically Cheliax is well within its rights to consider this a declaration of war, if Cheliax wants to do that. They are in Chelish territory, here, and that there is an invading army.

lintamande: "We should leave immediately; if you don't trust us you can specify a destination," the man nearest Keltham says, extending his hand.

Curse of Laughter: "HOOOOLLLD EVERYTHING PLEASE!  TRUCE!  TRUCE IN THE NAME OF THE GODDESS WHOSE PURPOSE IS SECRET!  IF CHELIAX GUARANTEES THE SAFE PASSAGE OF KELTHAM AND EVERYONE WHO JUST SHOWED UP FROM OSIRION, CAN YOU PLEASE HANG AROUND FOR A FEW MINUTES WHILE SOME MORE THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE THAT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT!  FOR EVERYBODY!"

Pilar : Pilar sort of wants to die right now and not just so that Hell can correct all of her remaining errors.

lintamande: Also present, to their own deep confusion: Meritxell, Yaisa, Korva, Gregoria, and two Security who just teleported them, without consciously deciding to do so.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia makes a lightning decision confirmed after a moment by Abrogail, and de-invisibles herself.

It's not impossible she could take them all.  But it's potentially difficult without Miracle.  And they are, arguably, Keltham's passage out from Cheliax, and on her own Lord's word also they may not hinder his going to Osirion.

"I am Aspexia Rugatonn, and I speak now for Crown as well as Church.  Does this army not attempt to take nor harm any thing or person that is Cheliax's by international law, we guarantee the safe passage of Keltham and all who are just now arrived from Osirion, for up to twenty minutes, in that goddess's name."

lintamande: "Acknowledged," says the Osirian man holding out a hand to Keltham. "Keltham, I'd still rather leave now, if the goddess of the interdiction wants our cooperation she can pay us for it and she hasn't, but I believe that assurance and don't expect us to be impeded in departing in nineteen minutes."

Keltham: "Right.  Sure."  A lot of Keltham's current probability mass is that this, too, is not real, and if he just breaks this simulation and maybe another three or dozen of those, he gets to wake up in whatever now passes for the basement layer of reality.

Keltham is, nonetheless, continuing to optimize for this world, in case it is reality; dath ilan has trained its people so, to continue the struggle for as long as that is in them.

"Snack Service.  That was you talking directly there, wasn't it?  You could earn a lot of credibility points with me if you provided a coherent explanation of everything that's going on."

Curse of Laughter: "Super duper not allowed!  Plus you're going to figure it out anyways yourself before that long."

"So what happens next is that Abadar's people need to cast some Abadar's Truthtellings, and guarantee using their own magical detection abilities that nobody messed with that!  And then everybody who Keltham currently has feelings for, or who have feelings for him, need to get truthspelled and tell Keltham what really happened between them from their own perspective, and what their relationship is currently actually like!"

"Otherwise some people who have important decisions coming up might make those decisions less than totally optimally given their own values!  And that would not be in the interests of Asmodeus or Cayden Cailean or Abadar or Keltham."

lintamande: "I want to be clear that we're holding ourselves very much not dealt fairly with with respect to Cayden Cailean, right now," says the leader of the Osirians. "Every person who made it look to Keltham like Good and Evil had gone in together on Project Lawful, or like Asmodeus had allies in this, or like Cheliax was a safe place for him, did the wrong thing. I don't care if you have some kind of complicated justification; it was awful, you're awful, and we've suspended attempts at trade. 

Keltham, do you happen to want some Abadar's Truthtellings up?"

Carissa Sevar: Keltham will figure it out soon enough. She knows everything Keltham does, so she ought to be able to figure it out too.

....she genuinely does not get what long-term geopolitical situation people telling Keltham their feelings is relevant for. Unless it's Abrogail's plan, to lure Keltham back, and - why would Cayden Cailean enable that -

Keltham: "Sure.  Sure."

lintamande: And the man casts Keltham's truthspell on himself, and Abadar's symbol appears on his forehead. "Right," he says, "who wants one."

Curse of Laughter: "You're up first, Asmodia!"

"Now please hold while Asmodia asks telepathically what she's supposed to do."

Asmodia: Yeah, she's asking, and notes her Prediction that Keltham asks her afterwards if she's been holding anything back especially on orders, if she does this at all.

Carissa Sevar: Some candidate explanations Carissa has generated at this point, for Snack Service's behavior: 

Keltham will declare war on Cheliax, and or on Hell, and lose but in some way that also doesn't serve Asmodeus, such as Cheliax being destroyed otherwise or another Worldwound opening; Cayden doesn't want Keltham to lose, and Asmodeus doesn't want Cheliax destroyed, so Snack Service is acting in their shared interest in the war being averted.

Keltham would never have been allowed to come to Golarion in the first place, if certain specific things were going to happen as a direct result; it serves Asmodeus for Keltham to have come to Golarion, so Snack Service is trying to steer them away from acting in a manner that'd have made it never happen. Or same idea but Asmodeus's rise to power in the first place was predicated on this happening now,  etcetera.

Keltham can invent the theory of corrigibility, or something else of similar importance to Asmodeus and his invention of it routes in some way through his sexual interests, so Cayden wants to make sure that Keltham has some piece of information he'll need to solve corrigibility and is obscuring this by asking for lots of other information also. This benefits Cayden because if Asmodeus could make mortals corrigible to him then he'd do less torturing them that doesn't even improve them. 

There's some insight Keltham will have if he doesn't give up on Golarion entirely that'll destroy the Abyss, which is a shared interest of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil.

Carissa is in fact as tantalizing close as it sometimes feels to figuring out ilanism, and this will make Hell better from Chaotic Good's perspective, and she needs to learn something here. Or Asmodia is that close and needs to learn something here; Keltham is just the occasion for Cheliax to permit such experiments. 

Or, of course, it's something she hasn't thought of. 

All of these seem to suggest, though -

Carissa Sevar: Tell him whatever you want.

Asmodia: ...Asmodia is going to note that she doesn't think Sevar is functioning at full capacity and, absent direction from her superiors, make her own guesses.

Her guess is that part of what's going on is that Keltham will otherwise stop by the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye and hear Ione's version of everything, only; and this will not particularly serve Asmodeus's interests.

She notes that Keltham is fully aware of the Law of Filtered Evidence, which means that Asmodia is going to give the unfiltered version, because Keltham may very well directly ask her about filters or what updates he'd make if he knew all info she was leaving out.

If anybody wants that to not happen, she needs to hear otherwise from her superiors.

And she's striding forwards to receive her truthspell.

lintamande: Tap. And a dozen different people suspiciously Detecting for signs of tampering.

"I don't like doing this on Chelish soil but I see no indications of any of the spells that could be used to deceive a truth spell," the Osirian leader reports to Keltham. "To have deceived us about this they'd have to have magical capabilities no one else knows about, which I'd generally just assure you is close to impossible. However, they've been displaying some of those lately, so -" Shrug. 

Keltham: "Go ahead then, Asmodia, if that's your real name."

Asmodia: "It is."

"From my perspective, this all started when I was yanked from Ostenso academy and told that I was now a gift to a visiting outsider -"

Keltham: "Pause.  Is somebody recording all this so I can review the transcripts later," because if this is actual base reality then possibly what Snack Service is trying to do here is give Keltham the full story that he can verify makes sense in retrospect, or somebody is trying to create the appearance of that, and Keltham is not able right now to check consistency as he goes - "Also can I get assurance that I'm not currently under any form of mind control and nobody is currently reading my mind, according to you, or whatever you say is your ability to detect that or counter that."

lintamande: "You do not appear to be the subject of any ongoing spells except Tongues and Share Language. It's not hard to fake that. I can have everyone Dispel Magic on you, which is harder to fake. I can also just put up an antimagic field around you, if you'd like, which will cancel any mind-affecting enchantments on you and to my knowledge cannot be subverted or falsified. Abadar did also pay Asmodeus to communicate to his followers that you were absolutely not to be mind-controlled, so I don't expect you are. 

With your permission I can cast Spell Immunity: Detect Thoughts on you, which will stop them from reading your mind, which they might well be doing. We aren't doing it. 

There's also an invisible halfling next to the girl Cayden's been puppeting."

Keltham: "Can I get Dispel Magics on me, then a new Share Language Taldane and Spell Immunity Detect Thoughts?"  Hard to decide between that and antimagic field but Carissa was trying hard to push antimagic if that wasn't a double bluff and Spell Immunity was what Keltham's god tried to grant him.  "And, Broom, please stop that.  And, transcripts possible?"

Halfling slave #958245 "Broom": He'll go visible then.

lintamande: "We can provide full transcripts."

A wash of Dispel Magics, at least a dozen of them - just to be safe - and then a new Tongues, two new Share Languages - Taldane and Osirian - and a Spell Immunity Detect Thoughts.

Keltham: "Go ahead, Asmodia."  He's halfway numb, mostly planning to review transcripts later for the coherence check.

Asmodia: "This started when I was yanked from Ostenso academy on half an hour's notice and told I was now part of a seduction mission on a visiting human outsider, whom Asmodeus had designated as important in a vision, and who'd expressed interests in having lots of kids, and who was being deceived about the nature of Evil, Asmodeus, and Cheliax.  It was said that you were of high Intelligence and your children might be valuable to Cheliax."

"The topic of whether I wanted to have sex with you was not, I think, one that it occurred to anybody in this process, including myself, might be at all relevant."

"I'd grown up in Cheliax, and I was one of the top students at the academy.  One of the top students who gets to punish the weak students, not one of the poor performers who get punished.  I don't think I was as distressed as Ione was, by having to practice Acid Splash on prisoners and criminals and, yes, occasionally orphans with no other uses except to damn us.  I thought of myself as one of the ambitious ones, who makes something of herself and doesn't just do well in class, even if that meant taking risks.  I've had about as much sex as the average Ostenso student, mostly with people who would have had the power to hurt me otherwise, occasionally in trade for favors, because whether you want anything is not particularly relevant to the game you play to not end up one of the weak students at the bottom."

"We didn't know how often our minds were being read for signs of disloyalty.  I'd guess around once a month officially, but all of us second-circles were trying Detect Thoughts on each other and weaker students all the time."

"Next significant event at the villa - when Ione got oracled and they decided that the rest of us needed to sell our souls to Hell before any other gods touched us - the implicit 'or else die and go to Hell anyways' wasn't said explicitly, but it was pretty obvious -"

Deep breath.  "I tried, the only time in my life, because I thought - it wouldn't matter, after I sold my soul, they let you think more of your own thoughts after that, it's said - I asked any of the Good gods to, protect me, if that was possible, or kill me and take my soul, if they couldn't, because I thought, just once, that maybe - maybe they'd lied to me about everything - about the Good gods being weak, or about my already being damned to Hell -"

"None of the gods of Good came for me."

"The devil who I bargained with told me that I'd been a bad slave.  I was only allowed to sell my soul to them and live, instead of dying and going to Hell anyways, if I could manage to sincerely thank him for giving me that chance."

"I had a bad night, that night, after selling my soul, because of my heresy.  Don't really feel like talking about what Security did to me."

"Everything changed when Nidal attacked."

"I died, and - hold on -"

Message to Pilar:  I need direction from Snack Service on what I'm allowed to say here?

Pilar : Message:  Snack Service says to be accurately but imprecisely reassuring, password is 'password'.

lintamande: "She's asking 'Snack Service' for what to say," says the Osirian leader flatly to Keltham. 

Asmodia: ((Password is password - the password on the old Forbiddance was 'Erecura'.  Okay then.))

"And Snack Service just now told me to be accurately but imprecisely reassuring."

"I didn't have as bad of a time in Hell as Osirion would expect."

"You should probably not make general updates about Hell from that fact."

"I started to do better at mastering Law than the others.  I got promoted to being the main consistency-checker on the world we were weaving.  The Most High let me borrow her crown, her artifact headband, for two hours, to see if I could figure anything out.  It did send me manic afterwards, but I told Security to light my hand on fire for five rounds and that solved it.  The mania wasn't permanent, that part was an excuse for my getting a +6 Wisdom headband and to try to get you to not use headbands yourself."

"Um, key background facts, we all got Rings of Sustenance, which let us sleep for only two hours per night and still get spells the next day, and also four times during the early days they turned you into a statue overnight so the rest of us would have time to catch up on, sleep, and things.  That's when headband weirdness had time to happen."

"I am in fact asexual.  I ended up as the one who stands back and watches it all.  The tropes are probably real and we've been hiding that from you, the part where I am in fact asexual is my own piece of that, but there sure are others from what I've been told."

"Other stuff happened that got hidden from you, I got turned temporarily into a dragon and got a permanent +1 Intelligence boost from a god, I don't think that part actually matters to our relationship."

"The part that matters is that - you're the only one who's ever held me in bed without - something I didn't want, being impending, after that."

"When we were fighting our last desperate battle to keep you unawares, I - obviously had to do my professional best to keep you, because they'd hurt me, otherwise - but the part that really made me forget, that I secretly wanted you to win, was that I wouldn't get to hold you and be held by you again, if you left."

"I'm not really loyal to Cheliax, and they know that, but they have power over me and they're reading my mind.  I don't think - I'm giving very much away to anyone - when I say that I'd give a lot to get out of this place.  But as it stands, I expect that what happens is I go back to the Project and work on improving spellsilver production and trying to teach Chelish ilani, until... um.  Until you do something that disrupts that status quo.  I expect it will probably not be very long."

Keltham: "This is the truth, according to you?" Keltham says to the Osirian.  His voice is cracking some.

lintamande: "Yes. Both in the sense I don't see how they faked it, and in the sense it fits with what we know."

Keltham: "According to you, was there a godwar between Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon, eighty-four days ago?"

lintamande: "....eighty-eight."

Keltham: Oh, so that's supposedly still true on this layer of reality, then.  Fun.

It doesn't modify Keltham's decision to go with the 'Osirians'.  He's used his best idea for leaving, and staying around in the previous layer of reality that's now been revealed to be full of hypothetical torturegod does not seem particularly wiser.

"Well, if this is reality, I'm not particularly going to leave reality like that, no."

"Any else, Asmodia?"

Asmodia: "I'm -"

"I apparently can't say I'm sorry."

"It was the most fun I ever had and the happiest I've ever been, and I'm sorry that I can't say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

She kisses him, then.  It's not their first kiss, but it's the first kiss from the real Asmodia.

Keltham: Keltham allows it, though he doesn't kiss back.  It's possible this Asmodia is real and if she's real he doesn't want to hurt her feelings.

Asmodia: And Asmodia steps back.  A piece of her heart is breaking, possibly, but only a small piece, and hopefully only temporarily.

She believes in him.

This will not be forever.

Asmodia: ...though it's possibly a bad sign that he didn't ask her if she was leaving anything out.

Curse of Laughter: "Next up!  Meritxell Narbona!"

lintamande: "Hi Keltham. Uh, I guess Asmodia already gave you the resentful defector account of what growing up in Cheliax was like. I liked it. The whole world's awful, as far as I know; Cheliax is awful on purpose, for a reason, instead of being awful all the time for no reason while everyone pretends otherwise. I lobbied to be allowed to try seducing you, because I wanted to; obviously, no one would've cared if I didn't want to, but I did. I'm not in love with you. I don't think I've ever witnessed a loving relationship in my entire life unless you and Sevar count and that is not exactly something I want to invite into my own life. But I didn't lie to you about wanting you, or about having a good time in your company, and I worked so hard on the shapeshifting in significant part because it was incredible fun and the best sex I've ever had. 

Not that the bar for that is very high, to be clear, but still. 

I am sort of assuming that you're going to spend a while having a horrible time, because of having no idea what the truth is, and I wish that wasn't going to happen, other things equal, though other things are not exactly equal in that I'd rather you be unsure what the truth is than try to destroy my country and my family in a massive war. But, you know, if we took that off the table, I'd wish you could be sure, and I'd still want to hook up."

There are a great many things she isn't saying. She assumes she should go on not saying them.

Curse of Laughter: Cayden Cailean's and Asmodeus's interests are not particularly aligned here, if that's what anyone is asking.