lintamande: There is a small packet of notes for Keltham; each of them includes some money, for his trouble reading them. 

Keltham: Micropayments!  Keltham is happy for all of 2 rounds before he remembers not to be.

Decor seems very standard, very prosaic.  Sky effect is interesting.

What do the notes say?

Merenre: Keltham:

We met yesterday; I am Prince Merenre, a sixth-circle priest of Abadar and the pharaoh's primary advisor on economics research and, lately, the Keltham Situation. I'd like to extend an invitation to join me and my wife Ismat, who developed a system for training non-wizards to craft magic items, for breakfast. Today is not particularly better for us than any other day this week.

lintamande: The next letter inquires as to the intellectual property status of the things Osirion stole from Cheliax through espionage on the Project. All spending and profits related to that are enclosed for his review, and they haven't spread it onwards.

lintamande: The final letter has a list of all of the Palace servants, concubines, royals, Church operatives, etc. who did not decline to participate and the prices they listed under Fairness this morning for Keltham to grab them in particular for an hour of questions if he happens to want to talk to a not very selected person. There are hundreds of people on it. Many of them listed negative prices because they think Keltham grabbing them in particular would be really cool. 

Keltham: ...feels like the next story-arc of unreality is supposed to be the one where they imitate Civilization and like he's finally home at last, and he has to notice all the smaller notes wrong with that; which will be harder to detect compared to the louder notes in Cheliax, now that he / the reader have been alerted that Conspiracies are a thing.

Who's got the largest negative price?  Keltham is contemplating trying the most predictable action possible, to see what the next layer of Conspiracy prepared for that.

There was probably something clever he was supposed to do to have the character Korva Tallandria with him at this point, who'd be very useful for figuring this out.  Like, not get her almost sent to Hell.  That was probably the flag event he missed.

lintamande: Largest negative price: seventh circle cleric of Abadar Temos Sevandivasen put 1250gp.

Keltham: Okay, you know, sure, let's try that one.

Keltham was planning to ask a lot of questions about theology and afterlives anyways.  If there is some kind of bizarre metaliterary mirror-universe business going on, he'd like to know about that part immediately, actually.

How does this guy feel about breakfast, and then maybe helping Keltham spend a bunch of time in a library trying to figure out what's up with the universe?  It can go on longer than one hour to make up for any time Keltham spends eating or reading instead of just asking questions directly.

lintamande: He is willing to do that though he actually just arrived in Sothis last night so he isn't an expert on the palace library. 

Keltham: Well, does he have a negative price for a quarter-hour, then?  Keltham does need somebody who knows the palace library well, he's pretty sure, but Keltham doesn't want to miss whatever it is he's supposed to find out here.  So maybe just breakfast.

Keltham: ...Keltham realizes he's making an expression he copied off Carissa, and wipes it off his face.

lintamande: Sure! 500 for a quarter-hour.

They can have breakfast brought up to a table on one of the balconies overlooking one of the courtyards. Temos Sevandivasen looks exactly like the fake-priest of fake-Abadar Keltham met yesterday.

Keltham: "So, you look exactly like - somebody with a very similar but not identical name - that I saw in a scry of Absalom yesterday.  I'm actually going to just say this out loud, because if it crashes local reality I think I'd actually be happy with that outcome."

lintamande: "I generally work from Absalom; I came to Sothis yesterday afternoon following a suspicious interaction with a Chelish agent. Our best guess is that they intended to use a real conversation between the agent and myself to get information to feed you, and then they had to alter their plan on the fly when I refused them, but you probably know much more about that than we do; it's indeed why I was so desperately curious to meet you."

Keltham: How totally logical!

...Keltham actually does remember, then, something about Carissa saying yesterday that she used the Queen's overpriced headband to make up an entire theology.  Which, sure, very legitimate rationalization for this, in retrospect.  Maybe the point of this part is to raise his alarm level and then defuse it with a totally logical explanation.  That's to signal to the reader that most things about the pseudo-Civilization will seem to make sense at first and won't just have outright transparent flaws on day one.

"Well, they got your appearance off the brief encounter, and then I had a long conversation with, I think, actually, my girlfriend, and her version of Abadarian theology which was basically that Abadar was about running business concerns.  I assigned her a research-level math problem to do while 'we' were talking, and at one point also tickled her, because I was suspicious that what 'you' were saying was something she could fake, but she was apparently wearing the Crown of Infernal Something Something at the time and was able to juggle all of that simultaneously."

"You should send her a bill for using your name and likeness.  I'm genuinely curious about whether she'd pay it."

lintamande: " - I'll try, if no one can think of a reason that's a terrible idea. I'm not sure just from the description 'running business concerns' whether it's something where there's genuine Abadaran theology or not? From my own background I'm much more concerned with the applications to governance but there are merchants who've made progress on theology related to running a business that captures wealth in an Abadaran fashion and not through coercion or deception or things that end up amounting to it."

Keltham: "I was trying to verify that I was talking to a genuine priest of Abadar - who I did not know at the time was" supposedly "my god, and that you were hearing my actual questions, and responding to those in ways that only a priest of Abadar should've been able to do.  Except that their version of Abadar was supposedly just about, economics, supply-demand stuff.  So, for example, after I asked 'you' about women not being able to own property in Osirion, and 'you' said that women had relatively more rights after Abadar took over and Osirion was slowly moving in a generally Chelish direction there, I asked 'you' to say something economics about that.  'You' gave an extended analysis of how different combat rules in Avistan had resulted in fewer men, an oversupply of women, and that had invalidated mating strategies where women held out for marriage."

lintamande: Temos isn't very readable, but in a different way than Chelish people; it's like he's very deliberate about the steps between hearing something and deciding how he feels about it, so his response is faster than the eventual arrival of his face at a trouble expression. "There might be something to that. Nonetheless I find myself objecting that it's not the answer any true priest of Abadar would have given you; it is too purely descriptive, and we would struggle to refrain from referring you to a dozen different papers about theoretical models of filial piety, in the course of trying to give you a proper answer."

Keltham: "What's the actual situation there, relatively briefly?  I've got - a number of high-level questions and should go through them breadth-first before going deep on any of them."

lintamande: "About Osirion and sexism? Osirion is unpleasantly sexist, the Church less so than nearly every other social institution in it but still enough to appall you, probably, if you're accustomed to places that treat men and women no differently. I wouldn't raise a family here, wouldn't really even live here. I don't have a fundamental values disagreement with my colleagues in the Osirian church, I don't think, we just have very different instincts on some questions that are hard to answer."

Keltham: "Have to say, if the representation I got of Osirion was basically true - that women can't own property - among my first instinctive reactions there would be to tell them I'll only be teaching Osirian women, so as not to distract the men from their important work of owning property and being allowed to participate in the economy."

lintamande: "I might be misunderstanding what you'd hope to accomplish by that but I don't think it'd work. Among other obstacles, women in Osirion overwhelmingly cannot read or write, and that is in fact the main sense in which it's true they can't own property; the sort of educated woman with independent means of support or a supportive husband who'd be able to attend your classes also is able to meaningfully participate in the economy in every other way."

Keltham: "Well, breadth-first, I do remind myself.  Deep dive on that can wait.  Trying to figure out what I'd preferentially ask somebody from Absalom, besides a non-local view on - whatever the ass people here are doing - okay, the Starstone.  Were people possibly lying to me about that?  Because the version I got, Aroden came across a giant glowy rock that could've been used to produce, like, a hundred of Iomedae, and put up a huge warded magical containment fortress around it so that only worthy people could get through, one of whom is the god of crime and one of whom is a guy who did it on a drunken bet.  Is there a sane version of this story."

lintamande: "People weren't lying. People who speculate a lot about this kind of thing speculate that existing gods have some kind of veto power over new gods ascending, and the protections Aroden placed either prevent the existing gods from interfering with the ascension of new ones, or satisfy some negotiated condition that allows Aroden to aid the new gods - which would of course now not matter, as Aroden is dead - or that the deaths of most who try in fact power the ascensions of those who succeed, or that Norgorber and Cayden were concessions in exchange for Iomedae, or that the Starstone in fact can ascend a fixed number of people - or a fixed number per period of time - such that rationing it makes sense."

Keltham: "Hmmm.  Now that is interesting."

Obvious thoughts that Keltham isn't going to go into, because breadth-first examination:

- If the Starstone is being rationed, why Cayden Cailean and Norgorber?  Just the first ones through when the winning ticket came up?  Has anybody kept a record of number of Starstone-entrants and deaths between ascensions?- Aroden was ascended by Starstone, but seems to have been much more powerful than Iomedae.  Did he get more of what the Starstone can offer, if the fortress rations it?- What if Aroden was trying to create as many human gods as possible such that Cayden and Norgorber being potential successes mattered more than their future alignments or domains?

"Somebody supposedly an oracle of Nethys - who may have actually been that, if the person who showed up to take her was the real Nefreti Clepati, which she proved by predicting a fairly random future fact - told me that Earthfall shattered prophecy for the second time, with the first time being Rovagug, and that after Earthfall the gods took the last fragments of twice-shattered prophecy and made a prophecy about a Lawful Neutral god who'd use the Starstone to make Golarion their domain and then contain Rovagug forever.  Which Aroden saw coming, changed himself to match the conditions of, and then Aroden's death shattered all prophecy in Golarion forever.  Is that plausible?"

lintamande: " - we don't have much in the way of records from the time of Rovagug, but the fact there was a war with lots of gods on both sides is suggestive that something was interfering with prophecy, usually you see them pay each other to sit it out. I've never heard the claim that Aroden specifically tried to be the god the prophecied Age of Glory was about as opposed to, well, being the god the prophecy was about all along. It is true that Aroden's death shattered prophecy and that everyone thinks that's permanent, and Abadar - and for that matter Asmodeus - are acting like it's long term, making long-term investments in new methods of intervention on Golarion."

Keltham: "People in the Conspiracy - the face Cheliax presented to me - seemed to think - well, maybe it was just that Carissa seemed to think - that unleashing Rovagug was game over, that it would inevitably destroy everything.  Is that conventional mainstream academically-respectable theology?  I would think that if the last set of gods managed to seal Rovagug, and all the gods who fought on Its side are now dead, and there've been some new gods since then, you'd expect that releasing Rovagug would just end with It being sealed again?  What do people think they know and how do they think they know it?"

lintamande: "I don't know much about Rovagug. To my knowledge there were not human civilizations on the face of Golarion when Rovagug first reached the world, and that if there had been, the war that sealed him would probably have killed them all, and possibly just killed every living thing on the planet's surface. There are new gods but that doesn't mean that the aggregate strength of all the gods opposed to the destruction of the world exceeds what it did at the time; the new gods are mostly very weak, compared to the ancient ones, and I don't know if the ancient ones have more or less power than they did then; it might be that the expended resources they have never since regained, not even now. No one has good information on this; it is expensive for the gods to communicate their secrets, and it's hard to imagine under what circumstances any Church would consider this information decision-relevant.

There was a prophecy that some threat greater than Rovagug would appear eventually, and that Asmodeus would unleash Rovagug, hoping that Rovagug would consume that enemy and then be possible to contain, or that they'd weaken each other, and that instead Rovagug would consume everything and that's how the universe would end. But prophecy's broken, and I don't know if that one was ever very definite."

Keltham: ...you'd imagine not, since otherwise Asmodeus would be taking an action known to Asmodeus to lead to failure?

Huh, there's a flash of anger in Keltham's thoughts at the mention of that god.  Keltham may actually be angry here.

"Anything else in the set that includes Rovagug, the Starstone, and Pharasma?  It sounds like those are three known things from outside the local universe.  Is there a fourth?"

lintamande: "There are many other Outer Gods of a class with Pharasma, supposedly, but their concerns are so alien to us that they mostly cannot even be comprehended, and Pharasma prevents them from doing whatever they'd do with this star system and these souls and these afterlives if unimpeded. The Starstone's not from outside the local universe, it was created when several gods sacrificed themselves to slow the moon that collided with the world when Earthfall happened."

Keltham: "I thought I read a version that - something else was coming and the gods collided a moon with it to try to stop it, but that didn't work, it just smashed through the moon?"

lintamande: "The account I'd heard was that an underwater civilization on Golarion tried to pull an asteroid down onto Golarion to destroy a surface civilization they were at war with, thinking they'd survive it. They miscalculated, and it would've destroyed life on the planet; the gods moved the moon to deflect it, and then sacrificed themselves to slow the fragments in their collision with the world. But 'something from outside the local universe' played no particular part in it except in the sense that all asteroids are from very far away. It was initiated by a Golarion civilization, deliberately.  

There are many other examples of things from very far away impacting Golarion, of course. Famously something landed in Numeria long ago and the gods put up a bubble around it; no one who enters is ever possible to communicate with or get information about again, including in an afterlife. And I've heard it claimed Baba Yaga is from another universe."

Keltham: "If you pull down an asteroid that's massive enough and fast enough to shatter a moon on impact - a reasonable civilization wouldn't expect to survive that impact in the first place, that's not the kind of calculation that's easy to screw up if you can redirect asteroids at all.  And also you wouldn't expect the asteroid to have a core piece left over that turned people into gods when they touched it.  And the whole thing sounds like maybe agents weren't choosing optimally, which makes it sound prophecy-shattering, which you wouldn't expect random asteroids to be.  You can imagine entities from Outside sending in something like, an uplifter.  Or maybe a poisoned gift, a Starstone that uplifts cooperative civilizations that will eventually trade with you, who'll be grateful for the help, but if the local civilization starts fighting over the Starstone instead of just using it on everyone, it's also very easy to weaponize - we've got a whole subsection of literature about that, how aliens might send us gifts cleverly meant to destroy us -"

"Sorry, going depth-first again.  What's known about the larger universe that includes Outer Gods and not just, it sounds like maybe this whole local region of reality is inside a bubble that Pharasma is maintaining?"

lintamande: "I have never heard of any indication that Earthfall involved problems with prophecy except that the algothulls died and didn't expect to, and I think you... might be operating from a wrong conception of what kinds of mistakes civilizations make when they're smart enough to avoid them.

There are also other examples of the death of a god leaving magical residue that enables other entities to ascend, there's a famous case in Tian Xia, so my understanding was always that the death of the gods in Earthfall left the magical residue that made the Starstone, which is what you'd expect to happen insofar as you have expectations about that anyway.

I don't know anything about the Outer Gods beyond that there are entities like Pharasma, which are not comprehensible or wise to try to comprehend, and Pharasma maintains this universe and largely discourages their intervening here."

Keltham: No, sorry, even for Golarion, 'in order to strike at your enemies, redirect an asteroid towards your planet, using careful orbital calculations, which on arrival will be going fast enough to blow right through your moon and shatter it' is a bit much.  A much smaller moon than dath ilan's, presumably, but still.  You need a certain basic level of competence at doing calculations like that in order to redirect asteroids and get them on target at all.

"Are there any known instances of helpful interventions from beyond, any signs that we have friends out there?  Or is it all things like - something landing that has to get enclosed in an anti-infohazard barrier, Dou-Bral getting inverted to Zon-Kuthon, possibly the Starstone -"

lintamande: "We don't have friends out there. That is the closest thing to a consensus that exists about the Outer Gods."

Keltham: ...oh, right.  There's another way to guess that prophecy was broken during Earthfall.  Keltham was rationalizing too fast on account of Ione having told him where his answer would end up.  There are multiple pieces of evidence here, he'll probably find more later.  He doesn't need to leap on individual points as decisive arguments.

"Abadar paid Zon-Kuthon to go into the Plane of Shadow for 'as long as the sun was in the sky'.  The book I read presented it as a surprise gotcha when Earthfall blotted out the sun.  If the gods knew about Earthfall, Abadar wouldn't have chosen that term or been caught be surprise... actually, that sounds like Zon-Kuthon maybe knew about Earthfall coming... counterargument, maybe the agreement wasn't meant to last any longer than it did and both sides knew that..."

"But, yeah, I buy that we don't have friends out there.  Just to be explicit about it, though, any known inhabited other stars, alien species?"

lintamande: "Yes, it's believed there are lots. Abadarans like publishing papers about how to have trade relationships with them in principle but it's probably too dangerous in practice, absent Abadar's specific assurance it's safe in a given case."

Keltham: "Believed there are lots?  How do you end up believing but not knowing?"

lintamande: "Well, every planet in our star system is inhabited by aliens of one stripe or another, and sometimes distant stars wink out, or behave oddly as if being altered by some deliberate intent, and some petitioners in Axis are not from Golarion, though we don't have enough communications with the other planets around our star to rule out that all of the mortals with souls live on different planets in this star system and the other star systems have only gods and mindless beasts and whatever sent the thing that landed in Numeria. I would be very surprised by that, though."

Keltham: "Are there other entire planes, like this one in having mortals in them and their own set of star systems, that are not this plane, but part of Pharasma's bubble and connected to Her afterlife system?"

lintamande: "There could easily be, but I haven't encountered specific evidence of that."

Keltham: "You'd expect the afterlives to know about it if there were aliens from lots of different planes showing up, they'd know whether they remembered constellations consistent with being in the same galaxy as everyone else."

lintamande: "It's not at all obvious to me that people would remember constellations in such a fashion as to usefully figure that out, especially since in many worlds the stars might not be visible, or everyone might live underground. But even if Axis did know whether all of the aliens come from the Material Plane and demiplanes originating from the Material, the gods are prohibited from sharing all the secrets of the universe with us; we cannot simply pay Axis for a book of all they know of the universe, even if we could afford it."

Keltham: "They literally can't tell you how large your universe is.  That seems like a bit much, frankly."

"So, yeah, what's up with the prohibitions on afterlives telling the mortals - just about literally anything, it sounds like - whose idea was it, is there a reason?"

lintamande: "The explanation I always found made the most sense to me is that, for any god, at least when prophecy yet endured, there were a hundred words that they could speak, that would turn all mortals to their service; and the gods who did not approve of mortals being so manipulated bargained for communications to be too limited for that, which means limited indeed."

Keltham: "And there's no carveout for telling mortals... how to mine spellsilver, or make huge quantities of acid, or the other things they'd need to know to lead better lives than this.  Question mark?"

lintamande: "Abadar would almost certainly sell us information about industrial processes if it were permitted for Him to do so."

Keltham: "Is there a known reason why that prohibition is meant to be protective of mortals?"

lintamande: "It might be a concession as part of a deal that was overall beneficial to mortals but I think if it were, in itself, beneficial to mortals, then Abadar would be handling your arrival here very differently."

Keltham: "Because Abadar cares about mortals' welfare?"

On reflection, when Keltham was casting out his thoughts, seeking the god-of-Keltham, he did not, in fact, specify that his god should care about any such thing, only the forms of Coordination.

Keltham, at that time, had not thought much of being told to care about other people, rather than just trading with them honestly.

lintamande: "Abadar cares about trading fairly with mortals. What we do with our share of the gains from trade is up to us. He's the god of our having more resources and more capacities, not of us employing them in any specific way. But, if He had some way that was not very costly to Him, to make us much better off, He would do it, anticipating that we are the kind of people who, when we've grown up, when we're richer and stronger, will repay Him the favor, as the fair-trading gods do among themselves."

Keltham: "But he's not, like, sad about people going to Hell."

lintamande: "I would assume that He objects to most instances in the real world of people going to Hell but if people, fully comprehending what Hell is, decide to go there for some benefit to them, and get the promised benefit to them, I wouldn't imagine He objects to that, no. Nor do I."

Keltham: "Why would he object to most instances in the real world of people going to Hell?  Because everyone ought to go to Axis, and not Hell or Elysium?"

lintamande: " - no, because they're not making an informed choice and if they're promised a benefit they might not receive it. Elysium is fine, why would Abadar object to people going to Elysium?"

Keltham: "From Abadar's perspective, what if anything, in this regard, differentiates going to Hell from... let's say, getting sick and dying of a painful disease?"

lintamande: "Your question seems obvious enough to me I wonder if I'm misunderstanding it. Abadar prefers, for all entities which have values and priorities, that they deal fairly and be dealt fairly with; that they prosper through creating wealth, and have more resources with which to attain what they value. If an entity prefers not to get sick and die painfully, which nearly any entity would, then presumably they'll expend some of their own resources on preventing that, and if they didn't prevent that, they didn't have enough resources, and that's worse than the world where there was more abundance. 

If an entity for some puzzling-to-you-or-I reason preferred to get sick and die painfully, or had lots of resources but didn't disprefer getting sick or dying painfully enough to spend the resources on that instead of on other things they valued more, then that's - fine? It is no concern of ours, if other peoples want other things, so long as they're the kind of people who deal fairly; in a sense that's why dealing fairly is so important, because it permits us to grow wealthier alongside entities very alien to us with concerns very different from ours. 

If an entity dies and goes to Hell because someone falsely told them that Hell was a really nice afterlife where they'd have a lovely time, that is anathema to Abadar. If they die and go to Hell because someone truthfully told them that you go to Hell if you murder lots of people, but they really wanted to murder lots of people, because they valued the products of those murders more than they disvalued going to Hell - fine. If they die and go to Hell because they want to - fine."

Keltham: "Well, Iomedae said that Abadar wanted me to explain what - I was thinking - back then - when I contacted Abadar without having any idea who I was reaching out to.  Roughly, that, but with math.  And I owe Abadar, so I'll get that done.  It's not something I can do in a day, but I'll get it done."

Breakfast is gone.  Keltham doesn't really remember eating it, but there was food on his plate and now there's not, so he must have eaten.

"If we call it here, did you get your money's worth?"

That still matters a lot, to Keltham.  It's just that other things have started to matter too.

lintamande: "- yes, I did." He looks troubled. "There are many Lawful Good followers of Abadar, Keltham. A common reason, among humans, to follow the god of trade and prosperity and fairness, is because you want the world to be better, and you assess that trading with Abadar will give you resources you can use to achieve your own ends. Abadar sees that, and approves of it in us. Wealth means - fewer dead children, fewer suffering people, fewer people going to Hell - which looks like much less of a good trade, when safety and wealth and power can be attained in other ways."

Keltham: "Other people joining this multiagent dilemma just have to consider which side they can most benefit given their comparative-advantage and who they should make a little stronger.  I'm trying to figure out what the final gameboard should look like when it's over."

"I suspect I already know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyways.  In all of the negotiations between gods, that decided all this setup, was any representative of humanity - of the mortals - ever invited to the table, without their having become a god themselves?"

lintamande: "I doubt it very much. We, uh, wouldn't actually understand what was going on, and we'd be damaged by attempting it. It's the awkwardness inherent to Abadar's efforts to trade with us; He tries very hard, but actually cannot meet the standards of mutual comprehension and legibility that gods have among another. There are similarities to trying to do right by your two-year-old, or your horse."

Keltham: "Sure.  There's one god of cooperating with agents who cooperate with Him, even if those agents can't understand Him well enough to make their cooperation conditional on His cooperation."

"And then, to the other gods who were never human, we're just a sort of object that they can arrange in ways that suit their utility function."

"We're like that to all of the ancient gods, really.  It's just that Abadar's utility function is about unconditionally treating agents the way you'd treat them if they actually could negotiate with you."

lintamande: "Most everything out there in the universe is going to be very, very alien to us, and have no concern for us as we have none for them. Trade is - a way to have wealth and abundance and mutual benefit even though that's true.

....also I think the ancient Good gods do care about humans more than that summary captures, but I'm not really an expert on the ancient Good gods."

Keltham: "I wish, alongside a lot of other wishes, that I could from dath ilan bring in a few hundred thousand novels from the Trade With Aliens genre.  I think you'd enjoy them.  Though you'd probably disagree some with dath ilan, about where the average author draws the line about 'aliens you should not trade with'.  It was a Lawful Good civilization, not a Lawful Neutral one."

Different authors drew that line in different places, as produced millions and millions and billions of discussion-board comments about whether a line was being drawn in the right place.

Keltham can't recall hearing of any books about whether to trade with Hell.

Well, to be fair, if that did exist in dath ilan, it would be far in the depths of the Ill-Advised Consumer Goods shop and Keltham wouldn't have heard about it.

"I need to find somebody who indexes the palace library and then do a lot of sporadic reading, on topics including ancient Good gods.  Possibly see you around, I don't know how long you're staying for - you're usually in Absalom?"

lintamande: "Yes, though it's not a long trip, you wouldn't have to pay me much to make it if you want me specifically again. My actual specialty is in strategies for land reform, likely not relevant to the most immediate of your plans."

Keltham: "Civilization's end-state was to charge an annual fee for the value of the land before it was improved, or for the scarcity value of underlying resources being extracted if those resources were scarce, which conceptually was the rent of everybody in Civilization and in practice was used to run Governance.  I was pretty upset as a kid about how it wasn't just being paid to me directly.  If you want to know how the pricing schemes worked, I can describe them with another five minutes I'm happy to take.  If you already know where you're going and the big problem is getting Golarion there, I can't help as much."

lintamande: "I'd say getting Golarion there is the harder half of the problem but I will definitely take five minutes of your time to explain the details of how that's implemented, if it's on offer."

Keltham: Doesn't require much thought from him, if he's talking to somebody who already knows some of the math.  Everybody in dath ilan knows how this works and why.

lintamande: Then Temos Sevandivasen will depart this meeting practically glowing with delight, despite all the concerning stuff in the middle there.

Keltham: Keltham does remember at the last minute to quickly inquire, before he goes, about Asmodia's warning that he needed to ask about early, that it was illegal here to say some things about the Pharaoh.  That seems like something it might be wise to ask somebody from Absalom.

lintamande: "Osirion, like most places, fines people for publishing false material on religious questions, which in Osirion means material out of line with the teachings of the Church of Abadar and churches allied with it, and Osirion bans evangelism for Chaotic and Evil gods.

If you want to get a sense of what people get up to in places that don't have any such laws, I'd check out Holomog, which doesn't, or have someone send you books from there. There are many genuine benefits to less restrictive laws, but also Holomog has an active cult of Asmodeus that teaches that he is unfairly maligned, is actually Chaotic Good, Hell is awesome, and devils just like trolling people to make their lives more interesting. Balancing the different public interests here strikes me as genuinely hard. Absalom is freer than Osirion, I like that better, and if you like that better too we'd certainly be delighted to host you."

Keltham: "Am I liable to get in trouble or burn a lot of political capital by asking people to explain the rules?  Even if I ask in some incredibly naive and alien fashion that, I don't know, takes for granted that men and women sometimes pay each other for sex?"

lintamande: "No. You're an alien, they know it, and I'd be very surprised if they took offense about it. They will meticulously make sure you're never alone in a room with a woman, and be offended if you circumvent them about that, but they'll be happy to explain why if you ask."

Keltham: "I'll be asking, yes."

"Good skill in Absalom, and if a weird girl with cookies appears to you there and tells you to do something nonsensical, I would strongly advise doing it."

lintamande: "I'll keep that in mind, though whatever Cayden Cailean's doing, I can't say I am on his side. When Cheliax came to me looking for help deceiving you, I told the man I'd pay him 80,000gold and extend the Church's protection if he wanted to defect. Playing along more than that does, to speak bluntly, feel complicit, to me."

Keltham: "Consider me to have been told that, and to have nonetheless repeated my advice about the cookie thing."

Project Lawful: Day 91 / Ostenso region

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "I would like to propose opening a prediction market on whether, if I get my own thirty useful idiots to train, I get farther than Asmodia on producing ilani. To be judged by Sevar, if she comes back, or Subirachs, if she doesn't."

Ferrer Maillol: Obvious things not being said aloud:  That if Avaricia wins that contest, or if Sevar can be lured into judging it unfairly, the obvious next step will be to see whether Avaricia got further than Sevar in producing ilani of a more Asmodean bent.  As would naturally be judged by the Most High.  Who might tend to disagree with the Queen of Cheliax on the subject of whether Avaricia's ilani were in fact more useful than the ilani trained by the Queen's favorite.  A disagreement like that, under these circumstances, would naturally tend to be resolved by giving Avaricia her own project section independent of Sevar.

Maillol has very little patience for the part where he first has to decide on this terribly reasonable-sounding appeal to merely open a prediction market which act then seems to put him on Avaricia's side in having fired the opening spells of the battle, or alternatively makes him look unreasonable for denying such a small request blah blah blah why can't he just fight demons.

"Don't bother with the prediction market, Avaricia.  Just go ahead and try it.  You write up the specs on the useful idiots and Cheliax will see about getting you some.  I've also been given to understand that our primary desideratum is producing more Asmodean ilani, and if you feel up to that challenge, the Most High would be the natural one to judge the results, if you end up with any results worth presenting.  Shall I just go ahead and set that all up directly?"

"I'm quite certain that's what Sevar would tell me to do, you see."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Oh, I actually wrote up the specs earlier, in the course of writing up some thoughts on chemistry instruction. I'll pass them along now, in that case. I commend your alacrity." She hands over a sheaf of papers.

Ferrer Maillol: "Here's your already-approved budget, Avaricia."

"I wish you exactly enough fortune to get your own Project section not under myself or Sevar, and no more fortune than that."

Iarwain: Day 91 / Osirion

Keltham: Keltham's first priority in investigating this library is going to be mind-reading magic, mind-controlling magic, mental disciplines or spells or magic items that defend against mind-reading, disciplines or spells or items that defend against mind-controlling.  Also known side effects of using headbands, how do people actually check that their headbands aren't cursed, that sort of thing.

lintamande: Headbands being cursed: not really a thing. Of course, any magic item can be made to look like a different magic item, so you could make a headband that was a disguised Necklace of Strangulation or something, but there's no references in any of these books to subtle curses where the headbands alter your cognition slightly but undetectably, and it's not in anyone's threat model in fiction or nonfiction.

Mindreading magic: Detect Thoughts, second circle. A Will save protects against it. There are magic items of it; they're not even that expensive, though they also wouldn't read anyone powerful who was trying not to be read. 

Mindcontrolling magic: oh boy is there a horrifying variety. There's Suggestion, and Triggered Suggestion which you don't remember until you hit the cue for it, and Demand which is Sending with a concealed Suggestion, and Lesser Geas for binding someone to obey your orders for days at a time, and Geas which works on more powerful people, and Dominate Person which lets you puppet someone else at unlimited range as long as you're on the same plane as they are, and see through their eyes, and spells that cause permanent disorientation and the inability to reliably act on your intentions, and Euphoric Tranquility which does what it sounds like, and Overwhelming Presence which makes everyone who enters your presence prostrate themselves on the floor convinced they're in the presence of a god.

Baleful Polymorph renders you permanently a mindless animal.

There's memory modification.

There's a reference to a ninth circle spell that turns you into a book of all of the thoughts you've ever had, and lets people read and edit them, though it's in a work of fiction and it's not clear if the spell is a real thing or not. 

The best protection against mind control, outside an artifact helmet like the Crown of Infernal Majesty, is the spell Mind Blank, which is eighth circle so good luck if you're not an eighth circle caster and don't have one to make you scrolls or cast it for you. Protection from Evil helps against mind control from Evil creatures and casters. Enchantment Foil helps in general, as does Spell Immunity. Nondetection, which also comes in an amulet, is useful against divinations unless the person casting them is very powerful.

A lot of adventurers at least in these works of historical fiction seem to deliberately pass through an antimagic area routinely just so they can notice if any spells fucking with them are active, though that won't detect past memory modification and requires there being one around. (Some wizarding academies have them for research reasons, and there's apparently several hundred square miles of wasteland where magic doesn't work as a consequence of an ancient war.)

Keltham: No such thing as cursed headbands, according to this layer of reality!  Lovely.

That amulet sounds like a priority, yes.  Any such thing as items for Protection from Evil?  Also does anybody know whether Protection from Law on top of that would interfere with the Abadar link?

lintamande: It shouldn't; gods aren't really affected by mortals throwing on lots of mortal protective magic. There aren't items of Protection from Evil or Protection from Law, though it's possible if they post a request some wizard who has figured out how to do it will reveal themself. He also might just want Spell Resistance, which protects against any magic being cast on him that he'd rather wasn't; there are items for that, though they're very, very expensive. 

They can get him an Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location. He's also unscryable inside the Dome; magic generally doesn't work across the Dome.

Keltham: When Iomedae drops a vision on him, does she just get all the contents of his mind?  Does Abadar get all the contents of his mind every morning when Keltham prays?  People here may take it for granted but Keltham comes from a world where people are used to more mental privacy than that.

lintamande: Gods do not learn everything their clerics know when their clerics pray to them, though it's unclear if this is impossible or just outlandishly expensive. Visions like the one he got are very rare, but - probably Iomedae could've in fact learned the contents of his mind, when she was doing that?

The person pointing him around the library volunteers that Abadar would, presumably, have told Her not to do that, even if She doesn't not do that for Good reasons, which she probably does but he would want to ask a representative of Her church about that.

Keltham: Sounds like, say, Urgathoa, can decide to drop a vision on Keltham, read his mind, and there's nothing anybody can do about that.  Or Asmodeus.  Is he wrong?

lintamande: .....Abadar might be able to stop them doing that but there sure is not mortal magic that could stop that, yeah. The vision part might not even be necessary.

Keltham: Cheliax at one point claimed to Keltham, apparently with Snack Service involvement though that would be easy enough to fake, that Rovagug cultists were coming to kidnap him and would have the info to make it to his bedroom.  Maillol - a fifth-circle priest of Asmodeus - supposedly, that is - said that Rovagug wasn't party to noninterference agreements.

How smart is Rovagug.  Is It known to suddenly mind-control people.

lintamande: ....not very smart, and yyyes but only when they lived in the scar created in the world by its imprisonment.

Keltham: There is a puzzle here that Keltham doesn't get about why Rovagug-release cultists still exist - if even the existence of Rovagug cultists is known true, never mind that particular case.

Presumably, nearly all gods are opposed to Rovagug cultists, and ought to be able to coordinate on some sort of exception on their usual nonintervention rules to squish Rovagug cultists, and gods can read minds.

lintamande: ...gods can't meaningfully read minds. Keltham is such a deeply unusual case that it's conceivable a god would burn the astonishing amount of resources and share of permitted-intervention required to read his mind and make sense of what they found, but that's not, like, a feature of the world that can be extrapolated to any case that occurs more than once in a thousand years.

Keltham: Detect Thoughts is a 2nd-circle wizard spell!  Snack Service seemed to practically be reading everybody's mind all the time!  And isn't Nethys supposed to know everything, why don't the other gods just pay Nethys for the information?

...you know, never mind, new library investigation topic.  How did Nethys, Irori, and Erecura become gods?

lintamande: Nethys: the books actually disagree on whether He was mortal, if so whether He was one singular mortal or whether He's rather understood as the end-state of a process many mortals have undergone, and whether He actually counts properly as a god. If He was mortal, He probably became a god through doing a magic ritual which made Him able to see everything in the universe, which simultaneously made Him divine and fragmented Him into trillions of pieces and drove Him mad. Or maybe He broke into trillions of pieces and then some tiny fraction of them ascended. Or maybe He just saw into another plane where He was already a god and let that god possess Him but the process drove him mad. Or maybe, whenever someone seeks omniscience, they are added to Nethys, and that's why He's mad. 

Hard to say, really.

He definitely is attested to have backed the first pharaoh of Osirion in defeating Ulumat, maybe while still mortal (if He was mortal) or maybe while as a god. In one version of the story He ascended from the defeat of Ulumat. He also tried backing the Naga Pharaoh and immediately drove her permanently and irrevocably insane. After she burned all His temples and (in some accounts) all his worshippers He was more hands-off with the visions.

Irori pursued mental and physical perfection. Gods were more perfect than mortals so in the course of becoming more perfect He became a god. 

Erecura stole the secret of divinity from Pharasma, who punished her by sending her to Hell, or maybe Erecura literally was the secret of divinity, which grew a will of its own, or maybe Erecura just realized the secret of divinity in one of Her visions and then could not be separated from it, and took it with her into Hell seeking Hell's protection from Pharasma, or maybe Erecura foresaw that the secret of divinity would be needed in Hell, and took it there, defying Pharasma, or maybe Erecura is Pharasma's aspect of defiance and hubris, now acting independently from the rest of Pharasma somehow, or maybe Erecura is Pharasma's daughter after Atropos, or maybe Erecura is just a devil who made all that stuff up to make Herself more mysterious.

Keltham: Golarion has theories about reality like fans have theories about fiction.

Let's zoom in on that Irori business.  That monk of Irori said some things suggestive that there is yet another god meddling in Keltham's affairs for some reason.

How'd he do it.  Did he leave a step-by-step guide.  Has anybody else done it.

lintamande: He was a high-level monk. He did not leave a step-by-step guide. Over time, powerful monks become meaningfully less like mortals, their bodies less able to affect the state of their minds. Maybe if you take that process far enough you become something more like a god. His followers have sought to follow in his footsteps, but none have yet succeeded.

Keltham: Okay, maybe in Golarion it's like totally normal for somebody to do something and then nobody else can do the thing for the next... this book doesn't even say how long except that it's been at least two thousand years... but in Civilization that's not normal.  Keltham can't help but find it a bit suspicious when combined with the whole Starstone business.

Are there by any chance stories about very advanced Irori monks suddenly vanishing and not showing up in the afterlife?

lintamande: There are a couple references to some who attain enlightenment and then leave to wander the universe and are never seen again?

Keltham: Yes, this again reminds him.  Didn't Carissa say something about Aroden searching the universe for thousands of years and not finding anything?  What does the library think is Out There?

lintamande: There are definitely a lot of worlds out there with people on them. No one knows what Aroden was looking for but it's generally agreed He didn't find it. 

Keltham: Humans?  Nonhumans?  Do they know how to mine spellsilver cheaply?  Is there any trade going on here?

lintamande: This library does not answer the question of what Aroden found when he spent thousands of years searching. 

There is not any trade going on here.

Keltham: That's really bizarre, library.  Even if Interplanetary Teleport is 9th-circle, you'd think there'd be, like, people occasionally taking 100 pounds of spellsilver in one direction and coming back with 100 pounds of diamonds, because they're relatively cheaper or more expensive on planets.

(Keltham has 'figure out what diamonds are' on his menu, but he's expecting it to be complicated and has been previously focusing on spellsilver.)

lintamande: Osirians think it'd be incredibly cool to trade with other planets, if you could figure out which ones would trade with you. You cannot just go 'a habitable planet around that there star' to target an interplanetary teleport.

Keltham: But if the aliens - on other planets, or other planes - aren't showing up to Golarion to help, then their planets are all disaster areas of their own.  And if the desolation is that uniform, it's probably maintained by divine mandate in the places prophecy still holds, every plane except this plane, or every planet except Golarion - the scope of prophecy shattering isn't clear.

Or the aliens, if they're more advanced, aren't a kind of thing that cares about the mortals on Golarion.  Or the gods are preventing them from helping...

Anybody seeing a flaw in that reasoning?

lintamande: ....'desolation' seems like a very strong word for Golarion, which is a pretty nice place to live. If everywhere in the multiverse were like Golarion that'd be really good news.

It does seem that the aliens do not have easy interplanetary transport themselves or else don't want to trade with Golarion, or else can't. 

Keltham: ...possibly due to lack of prior literature analyzing the Great Silence, the Osirians do not seem to have grasped the concerning aspect of the reasoning, 'Well, this here planet of Golarion looks possible to fix, though, if we did fix it, the obvious next course of action for Golarion Civilization would be to launch trade and rescue missions to all these other planets and hypothetical other planes, none of whom are already here with trade or rescue missions for some reason.'

Speaking of planet-destroying threats, does the library have any more info about Rovagug.  What It is, where It came from, why people think the world will be destroyed if It gets out of the Dead Vault, that supposed prophecy about Asmodeus letting it out, what international agreements are in place to stop Rovagug cultists like the ones who supposedly went after Keltham, why the cult hasn't been just been stamped out already...

According to the Windsong Testaments, just after the current incarnation of reality came into being, Pharasma took her first step off the Seal in fear of something chewing and gnawing beyond her perception. Her next steps led to the birth of the first deities and one of the new gods stepped forth beyond Pharasma's first fearful step, and in so doing would be transformed and absorbed by that fear. None can remember whether that fear became Rovagug or was Rovagug in the first place In the earliest days of creation, Rovagug was tasked with burrowing through the Abyss.

As mortal life began, Rovagug gnawed his way out of the deepest Abyss and jumped across the Astral Plane to invade the Material Plane. He consumed seven worlds, but as they had no names nor histories, their taste was dull, and he only put up a token fight when the other gods drove him back to the Abyss.

After Asmodeus killed Ihys, Rovagug sneaked into the Material Plane again and fed on the world where the murder took place. As its inhabitants died in agony, Rovagug revelled in the taste, and he proceeded to destroy countless worlds. During this period, he rampaged through Axis in the greatest calamity that ever befell the Eternal City, laying waste to many districts which have never recovered to this day.

Sarenrae decided that Rovagug would have to be defeated, and gathered under her banner an unlikely collection of gods: Abadar, Apsu, Asmodeus, Calistria, Dahak, Desna, Dou-Bral, Erastil, Gozreh, Pharasma, and Torag, along with a number of other gods from more remote parts of the world.

Many gods died in this battle, but their names have been forgotten; certainly the gods who sided with the Rough Beast will never be remembered.  Calistria lured Rovagug to Golarion and distracted him while Torag and Gorum forged the shell of the Dead Vault and Pharasma imbued it with potent wards against escape. Sarenrae then sliced open a rift in the Windswept Wastes on Casmaron on Golarion's surface, sending Rovagug stumbling into the Dead Vault. Dou-Bral impaled him with the Star Towers that prevented him from hearing prayers, and the archdevil Asmodeus bound him with a key crafted by Abadar that only the Prince of Darkness could turn. Sarenrae then repaired the rift, leaving behind a smooth scar and instructed her followers to avoid it. Rovagug's defeat marked the end of the Age of Creation.

According to the Concordance of Rivals, when the End Times come, Rovagug will be freed by a desperate Asmodeus in the hope that he will consume the other apocalypse. Indeed, Rovagug will devour the rest of creation before consuming himself, leaving behind only Groetus to turn off the light of the cosmos and a Survivor to rebuild it anew.

lintamande: Rovagug's cult is illegal almost everywhere; however, sometimes some people will independently decide that the universe should be destroyed, and will tend to become cultists of Rovagug. No matter how frequently or harshly a society stamps them out, some new ones will tend to show up; to some tiny insane fragment of Golarion's populace, 'the universe should be eaten' is apparently a popular stance.

Also, some countries refuse on principle to make any religions illegal. Sometimes this is used as a pretense for their neighbors to invade but it's not so much more powerful than other excuses to invade that the countries that do it have been wiped out already.

No one knows what exactly would happen if Rovagug were freed. The best case scenario is probably that the gods are able to reimprison him at the cost of merely the destruction of one or two of Golarion's continents and everyone on them. More horrifying scenarios involve Rovagug getting into Axis again, or just succeeding at not being reimprisoned at all and running off to eat lots more worlds.

Keltham: ...Keltham will turn his attention to (real) (on this layer of reality) geopolitics, trying to figure out the landscape of countries who ought to hear his lectures or go in on a counter-Cheliax alliance to actually build Civilization.

And then to magic, browsing books of spells to see if he can spot any obvious ones that Cheliax decided not to tell him about.

Does this library have books of standard commercially available magic items with prices, like a catalog or something?

lintamande: Yes, absolutely!!

(There are a lot of spells Cheliax decided not to tell him about.)

Keltham: Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection, 35,000gp.  Contains a warning that amounts to 'basically does not work for crap against powerful casters'.

Mantle of Spell Resistance, 90,000gp or so if you can find somebody to make you one, special commission.

...it's funny how prices that would've once made Keltham want to run screaming into the night make so much less of a difference, once he's not sure the money is real.  It seems like - computer-game money, now.

Keltham: Okay.  His brain is full.  Enough library.

Keltham needs to - find out if they located Ione Sala, and were able to get starting info from her, or if he's on the critical path delaying everything.

He needs to find out how much time it takes to learn to cast wizard spells in here, because he feels naked without Prestidigitation.

...he feels like he needs to put the Splendour headband back on, and he's going to ignore that part.

lintamande: They located Ione Sala. She is willing to sell them what she knows, and he should take as much time to rest and reorient and learn about Osirion as he'd like. Everyone is very concerned about him and the general advice for someone in something resembling his reference class would be to go spend a lot of time at a monastery or something not trying to transform the world.

It doesn't take that long to learn how to cast cantrips in here; they can get him a tutor this afternoon, if he'd like.

Keltham: Most people in his reference class may not be called upon to wipe out a large circular area of Cheliax at any random time in the next week.

He'll take the tutor, please.  How long does it take to learn to cast from third-circle wizard scrolls in here?

lintamande: Depends a lot on the person, but if he makes it a priority and has the best tutor they can get him (he does) he should have it down in less than a week.

Osirion strongly expects that the actual worst case scenario here is that they teleport someone in to Cheliax with a peace treaty they wrote up before Keltham arrived, and tell the Queen she can sign in the next five minutes or the country is destroyed, and then she signs. Obviously they can't send that person if the Pharaoh doesn't actually prefer destroying Cheliax to taking other available actions, here, or if Keltham would help with the threat but not the followthrough, but He does, and Keltham would too under the relevant circumstances, and Cheliax will know it. So Cheliax is almost certainly not going to actually get exploded.

Keltham: Yes.  A logic which relies entirely on Keltham ignoring that logic and being ready to actually destroy Cheliax, because Keltham is Lawful, presumably the Pharaoh is Lawful, and obviously there are going to be truthspells involved.  No?  So Keltham is, indeed, ignoring that logic, and proceeding as if he may need to destroy Cheliax at any random time in the next week, and not relying on Cheliax offering to do anything else which is not that; since, if Keltham relies on that offer, and ends up not prepared to destroy Cheliax, Cheliax will not so offer.

Keltham will go try to learn to cast cantrips within the Black Dome, then.

lintamande: It's sort of like learning how to retie your shoes if all your muscle memory got erased. It's kind of annoying, but the tutor is in fact very good, and has a very detailed and precise set of exercises for getting used to the different way that magic moves.

Keltham: Keltham will at one point think of Carissa tutoring him in Spellcraft, send the tutor out, have a sobbing fit for about five minutes, wipe off his face, invite the tutor back in, and resume studying.  Not being able to use Prestidigitation is very inconvenient, including when you need to clean up your face or your clothes have gotten sweaty.

lintamande: He has it down, though inconsistently, after a couple of hours. The tutor says he's a quick study, and apologizes for the inconvenience of the Dome. 

Keltham: Weird thing to apologize for if you're not the first Pharaoh or, possibly, Nethys.

But Prestidigitation that works half the time is good enough, so long as he's not fumbling the catch of the cantrip.

He forgot to eat lunch - oh, Keltham is probably going to want a Ring of Sustenance at some point, and that takes a week to kick so he should probably put one on soon.

...what does he need to learn in the way of 'etiquette' to meet Merenre and Ismat?  The note did say specifically 'breakfast' but Keltham wouldn't be surprised if they'd also do dinner, or afternoon snacks, or -

- actually nevermind his brain just screamed at him.  He should not actually try to meet with Merenre or Ismat or study etiquette today.

He'll next review the note about intellectual property that Osirion copied from Cheliax.  Does it look urgent?  What's up with that?