Keltham: Keltham will buy the newspaper and then ask this male adult his own age what he thinks of the recent political mess.

(There's always a recent political mess.  This is true even in dath ilan; they just have different standards.)

lintamande: "Hmmm? You mean, last week's serial on the Mwangi cannibal tribe? It was really popular, sold really well, I have a few leftover copies if you missed it."

Keltham: "I was thinking of that whole business with the government, actually."

lintamande: "Oh, with the conscription? Pa just told them he needed me in the shop, and that was that. We don't cover that kind of thing in the papers, Pa says people want to be entertained and it's no time to feed them their vegetables."

Keltham: ...Keltham will try reading the "personals section" of the newspaper rather than carrying on that conversation any further.

lintamande: A carpenter is looking for a strong apprentice, seven year term, guild membership at the end of it, digression into how the guild is still strong as ever. 

A healthy man of twenty-eight, sailor, is looking for a wife, doesn't have to be pretty but shouldn't be disfigured, competent to run a household alone for months at a time, of good reputation. 

The church of the Dawnflower welcomes all, and will have the famous preacher Sati Srinivasen in town this week to speak on the redeeming power of Sarenrae. 

A man wants to place a letter with some religious pilgrims, to bring to his dead mother informing her of the birth of his child.

A healthy man of thirty-nine, a tanner, is looking for a wife urgently, as his last wife died in childbirth leaving him with two young children. He has a steady income and a four-room home.

It is possible to purchase insurance against workplace injury for only one silver a week. 

Keltham: He'll check two of his inferences with Fe-anar:

1.  It's cheaper to send a letter along with somebody else's Plane Shift to Axis, plus pay for Axis's interplanar messaging system, than to pay for your own Sending to Axis.

2.  Marriages in Osirion are matchmade by men broadcasting what they want and what they have to offer, and women evaluating those broadcasts, never the other way around.

Prince Fe-Anar: "- that's correct for the letter - a person can take hundreds and hundreds of letters in a bag, whereas for Sending you need to get a fourth-circle cleric just for you. Of course with Sending you know they got it, but Axis has very reliable mail as I understand it. 

I don't know whether women sometimes take out personal ads, I don't really read the newspaper. Women have to apply for the pharaoh's consideration and they do do that."

Keltham: "Actually, that's kind of a stupid question now that I think about it.  If women don't have money, they can't pay for personal ads, soooo..."

Does Sothis have any kind of Exotic Snacks?  Keltham would like to buy something he can actually use, to pay for his next conversation; this so-called newspaper does not seem to be that.

lintamande: There are fried-kabob vendors and stuffed dessert pastries and baked sweet potatoes with honey poured over them.

Keltham: He'll buy a stuffed dessert pastry without haggling particularly hard, then ask the vendor what they think of the recent kerfluffle about conscription.

lintamande: "Well," the vendor says, "I don't see why Cheliax would invade us, they can't possibly be that stupid. So I wonder what it's really about."

Keltham: "Why would it be stupid for Cheliax to invade?  And what'd it be about, if not that?"

lintamande: "Well, we're a Lawful country, and haven't given them any provocation, and weren't part of their empire even when they had an empire, and it'd be very disruptive to shipping, and we'd all rather go to Axis early than surrender to Cheliax, so I just think it'd be stupid, and I can't imagine they'd try it. I don't know what it's really about. Maybe some other country is trying something but we don't want to tip our hand that we're on to them. Or maybe it's just an initiative to get all the boys out of the streets and get them to grow up and be Lawfuller, halt the moral decay of the younger generations. I approve of that, but they shouldn't say it's about Cheliax, that's just insulting intelligent people."

Keltham: Aside to Fe-Anar in Baseline:  "Is Governance holding in secret Cheliax's prospect of spellsilver-derived military advantage, and that Governance is hosting an alien Cheliax might want to kill, etcetera?"

(The loanwords 'Cheliax' and 'spellsilver' are clearly audible in there.)

Prince Fe-Anar: "Yes. I don't know why, probably for some kind of politics reason."

Keltham: "I'm not going to interfere with your standard information-propagation procedures on information affecting the price of widely traded assets without a Very Good Reason, but somebody needs to announce somehow that the price of spellsilver is liable to drop!  People are trading at bad prices!  Anybody who finds out early such as Cheliax has a market advantage!  Is anybody on that?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "That sounds like the sort of thing there'd be a whole office of government dedicated to! Merenre will probably tell you who."

Keltham: "I'm sort of new to the Inner Sea area," Keltham will say to the snack vendor, in Osirian again.  "Does the government here make a habit of conscripting people for bad reasons, do you know?"

lintamande: "Osirion's government? Well I wouldn't say they've ever done it before except with a war threatening. What was that you were saying, about the Prince Merenre and Cheliax and spellsilver?"

Keltham: "Think this one's for you," Keltham will say in Baseline.

Prince Fe-Anar: "It's secret and you're not supposed to know about it," Fe-Anar says. 

lintamande: "Oh."

Prince Fe-Anar: "But it'll be public later and you can tell all your friends you knew before it was public."

lintamande: "Well, all right then. It's not that there's going to be a war, is there? I have sons who're conscription age."

Prince Fe-Anar: "There might be a war but Abadar wouldn't start one unless it was inevitable and waiting for it to start would just leave us disadvantaged when it did."

Keltham: Okay that's less opsec than Keltham thought they were aiming for, there, but okay.  "It seems like the sort of thing where we should let the government make their own announcement, but I can tell them that if they haven't gotten around to it in a week I'll issue my own press release," Keltham will say, in the tone of somebody who apparently delivers ultimatums to national governments on a regular basis and doesn't think much of it.

lintamande: That gets him a stare.

"You'll...tell Abadar to do a press release?"

Keltham: "Does Abadar usually do those?  I was given to understand he had a lot of trouble communicating with humans, and had to like pay Iomedae to send people visions if he wanted to send one without giving them massive headaches."

lintamande: "No, He, uh, rules Osirion from the Black Dome through His human aspect."

Keltham: "Wasn't planning to tell that particular... aspect of Abadar... directly in person, no, I've heard that his Sense Motive is unreasonably high and I'm sort of tired of people reading my mind.  What's your opinion of how Abadar's been running Osirion?  Anything strike you as being, I don't know, nonhuman gods not really having much idea of how humans work?"

lintamande: "Well, that's why He has the human aspect run Osirion," he says. "But if you ask me, they shouldn't let so many foreigners in."

Keltham: "Huh.  Why?"

(Keltham is obviously a foreigner, but the potential reference of this sentence to himself seems unlikely to be the vendor's intent; obviously if the vendor meant that Keltham shouldn't have been let in, the vendor would've just said so.  Keltham also has no particular idea of why this would be a mistake that Abadar would be making, so he's of course going to ask.)

lintamande: "Well, they drink too much and they're irreligious and lots of the foreign adventurers chew tobacco, which is a disgusting habit, and they've driven such an increase in the brothels and indecency. And even the decent ones -  it just bothers me, to think of Osirian women marrying foreign men, and having mixed children. I don't think that should be allowed."

Keltham: "I keep stumbling over the idea that Osirion just invented prediction markets and they're not any better yet than Prince Merenre guessing things... what sort of bad thing happens when there's mixed children, and is there any, like, informal way for people to bet on that sort of thing?"

lintamande: The man looks utterly baffled by this question. "Well, I mean, they might not get raised properly, with a foreign father. Some taverns allow betting but mostly on the chariot races."

Keltham: "Does Osirion's government prohibit betting on anything?"

lintamande: " - well, yes, you're not allowed to run gambling parlors on games of chance."

Keltham: "Never mind, actually."

"If you were going to change one thing about the Osirian government's present practices - say you had a lot of negotiating leverage with the government for some reason - what would you ask them to change?"

lintamande: "I'd say a woman shouldn't be allowed to marry a foreign man if there are Osirian men who'll have her," he says. "And chewing tobacco should be banned."

Keltham: "That seems like - sort of a frankly self-interested policy?  I mean, isn't that just saying outright that you want less mating-competition for women coming from mates outside your own personal reference class?"

lintamande: Blink blink blink. "...yes?"

Keltham: "Okay, maybe I phrased things poorly.  Suppose that you knew somebody else with negotiating leverage over the Osirian government, and you were trying to sell them on a policy that was supposedly good for the general public and not just you personally or your own faction - what would be your policy ask?"

lintamande: " - well, I think it's good for all decent men, if women can't marry foreigners."

Keltham: "Okay, but suppose I asked you for a policy intervention that would be a good idea, relative to status quo, for the average of the entire population including men and women.  Or does that question just - never come up, around here?"

lintamande: "Well, it's also good for the women to be prevented from marrying foreign men, since they make bad husbands."

Keltham: "You'd naturally expect that there'd be some good foreign husbands, and that women would already be choosing the apparently better husband if there were better nonforeign husbands than foreign husbands on offer to them?  Like, by default, you don't usually expect people to get better results when you reduce the options available to them, so there must be something nondefault going on there?  To be clear, I'm from pretty far away, and if there's some blatant flaw in my reasoning that any child would see, you should explain to me like I'm a younger child than that."

lintamande: " - well, they're all seduced by the foreign men with their accents and their fancy ruffles and forget to think about whether a man will make a good husband."

Keltham: "What do you predict a woman would say about this key political issue if I asked a woman?"

lintamande: "Well, a nice respectable one or a frivolous girl who wants to marry the man with the laciest collar?"

Keltham: "Both."  Keltham will actually just pass the guy a gold piece at this point, or around ten times the cost of the pastry; he's got no idea how much of a strain this conversation must be for an Intelligence 10 Person, but they're definitely reaching the point where Keltham feels like he should be paying for things.

lintamande: He blinks, baffled, at the gold piece. "Thank you, sir."

It takes him a while of staring at the gold piece to remember there was an accompanying question. 

"I think a respectable woman would say that she doesn't like the foreign influence. And a woman who isn't respectable likes the foreign men because they're forward and seduce her, unless they leave her bereft, in which case she doesn't like that at all. And if it were banned for foreign men to marry her then she'd know for sure they're only leading her on."

Keltham: "Can you expand on 'doesn't like the foreign influence'?"

lintamande: "Well, she'd notice that having foreign men around...is bad...so she'd be against it."

Keltham: "Because they deceive Osirian women into marrying them, using ruffles?  And chew... tobacco?"

lintamande: "Yes, that's right."

Keltham: "Suppose somebody proposed that a better version of this policy would let women marry foreign husbands if they wanted, if the woman showed Intelligence above 16 to Detect Thoughts or Wisdom above 14 to Detect Anxieties, in which case she's probably able to figure out for herself how to not be deceived by the ruffles.  Would you say that's a better or worse version of the policy?"

lintamande: Blink blink blink blink blink. 

"Well, then all the best girls would marry foreigners and that'd be bad for the country! You don't sell all your best cattle!"

Keltham: "Noted.  Would it be better or worse for the women, in your estimation?"

lintamande: "It'd be worse for them!"

Keltham: "Becaaauuuse..."

lintamande: "Because they'd marry foreign men!"

Keltham: "Right, but by hypothesis they have either WIS 14 or INT 16, which I'm guessing is enough that they wouldn't be deceived by ruffles?  And so would only marry a foreign man if they'd made a correct estimate that, in their own self-interest, that man was better than the best domestic man competing?  I can see how this could arguendo be bad for Osirion, but it'd be good for the woman herself, if I'm not still missing something?"

lintamande: “Well, I don’t think it would, even if there’s an argument. From a foreigner.”

Keltham: "Why, though?  Or is it something you're intuiting even though you're not able to give a verbal reason for it?"

lintamande: “….that.”

Keltham: "I assume your objection isn't just to my numbers and that it should be WIS 16 or INT 18 instead?  Though, in my grimdark experience, women with INT 18 are capable of pulling some dreadfully advanced social shit of their own... though I guess she had a +4 intelligence headband by the time she was doing the more advanced plots, in retrospect, and that's just the headband I knew about... anyways, if we set the numbers much higher, like 20 WIS, or 22 INT, does that change your intuitive estimate of whether being allowed to marry foreigners is good for the woman?"

lintamande: "I mean, being very smart doesn't change that they're women."

Keltham: "Thanks for your time.  It was very educational.  Bye."

"You've been speaking to Keltham out of dath ilan, a fact that'll probably mean something more to you later."

lintamande: "Goodbye," he says, and serves more customers some pastries.

Keltham: "Commentary, Fe-Anar?" Keltham will say, after walking what he thinks is a safe distance away for saying the name.

Prince Fe-Anar: "I mostly don't talk to people because most people are frustrating and boring. That man was particularly frustrating and boring. You're not going to be able to convince the pharaoh to ban foreigners, immigration isn't popular but it's good for countries as long as you can keep expanding the economy, and we think we have an idea of how to do that."

Keltham: "Fe-Anar, how smart was that person, based on your own grasp of Golarion's population?  -1sd thinkoomph, +1sd thinkoomph..."

Prince Fe-Anar: "I don't know, because I don't talk to people because they annoy me. Probably he's a bit above average, if he's got a food shop instead of being a laborer."

Keltham: "Bit above average.  All right then."

"Do you think I'm ready to have a conversation with - a female that Osirion thinks of as a woman?  I am not feeling very experienced talking to Osirians, but I'm also worried about getting around to actually trying this before I run out of social energy."

Prince Fe-Anar: "It's not that different from talking to men. Just don't get up close to her and don't hand her a gold coin unexpectedly, she'll think you're trying to buy sex."

Keltham: "How do I cause someone to give me complicated, mentally effortful answers if she doesn't expect to get anything in return - I guess the key is doing it expectedly - Fe-Anar, help me out here, I don't want to end up accidentally married to anyone."

Prince Fe-Anar: " - you can't end up accidentally married to anyone! Marriage is very serious and can only be undertaken with the knowing will of both parties! We're not one of those countries where fathers can marry off their daughters without her even saying 'yes'. You can end up propositioning someone, I suppose. 

I don't really know what to say to avoid that. I guess you could just say 'I am not trying to pay you for any favor but your conversation' but they might not believe you."

Keltham: "You know what, incinerate all this, we're trying this the high-trust dath ilani way."

"Will people here... will women here recognize Abadar's Truthtelling, if I cast it on myself, and will they believe that it's real and not an illusion?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "I should think so! It's first circle, even the little village priests have it. And it'd be very illegal to imitate it."

Keltham: Right then.  What's been the general density and apparent population characteristics of nonrich women in this area?

lintamande: Some of the people at stalls are women; there's a little sewing shop behind one of the stalls, with a sign out front that says 'mending and tailoring', with a woman visible indoors; there are lots of women gathered in the occasionally shady courtyard, spinning and talking.

Keltham: Step one, Keltham will cast Abadar's Truthtelling on himself, because he can't do that and also 'maintain concentration' as Keltham now has considerable practice doing; there's something about magical casting specifically that interferes with 'concentration'.

Step two, Keltham uses his Detect Thoughts scroll, purchased in Absalom; he did bring his scrolls with himself, through his flight from Cheliax.

Obviously he is most certainly not trying to detect anyone's actual thoughts, but Keltham does want to look around and take note of who are the highest-Intelligence women present, in his range of vision, and mark their Intelligence levels generally.

lintamande: 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 13, 14. The 14 is one of the women in a shady courtyard spinning; so is the 6. 

Keltham: He'll mark the 6, a 10 who's not in the courtyard, and everyone 12 or above, if they have any distinguishing features other than their faces that Keltham can use to so mark them.

Step three, test his approach on one individual before he potentially ruins the whole courtyard with a poor approach.

Over to the 10-INT who's not in the courtyard, first.  "Hey, I've got a truthspell up in hopes I can say some strange things and have them be credible.  In particular, that I'm a cleric of Abadar from outside Osirion, I have no romantic or sexual or generally harmful intentions towards you, and I want to pay you a gold piece solely to ask you some weird questions about your personal political opinions, which will be kept anonymous and not otherwise associated to you.  Sound reasonable so far?"

lintamande: She takes a step back from him, a little suspiciously. "- yes, cicerone?"

Keltham: Keltham will pass over the gold piece, putting it down a safe distance from her.  "I'd like to ask those questions of you later, actually, because I want to set up this survey with some others before my truthspell runs out."

"If hypothetically I were to say under truthspell that I'm from entirely outside Golarion, and that the questions I want to ask you are geared to making sure that I don't harm Golarion in the course of trying to teach things to Osirion to repay a debt I owe to Abadar - would that still work for you, or would you conclude that the truthspell was broken?"

lintamande: "Well, it's strange that you look human if you're from another planet. I thought the things from other planets had eyes on stalks, and lots of legs, that kind of thing."

Keltham: "An excellent point!  My current working theory is that humans here were grabbed from, or just arrived from, my home planet at some point a few millennia back.  I mean, if I arrived here, so could others.  The primary alternative theory would be that reality is very very very large and if you look far enough, you can find other places containing basically humans despite the lack of any common ancestry."

"How about if, hypothetically, I said that the godwar three months ago was over me and broke out two days after I arrived in Golarion?"

lintamande: Blink blink blink. "I....think maybe you should be talking to somebody important? I could take you to a temple."

Keltham: "That's already been done, more or less, and now I'm going around talking to ordinary citizens in Sothis to see if I would be doing this world a disservice by helping Osirion to become more powerful or more productive than other countries.  You would not want to do that with, say, Cheliax, and I am trying to see whether anything less dramatically horrible than that is wrong with Osirion, which I ought to ask their government to correct before helping them too much."

"Anyways, it sounds like the basic facts of the matter aren't too out of place for Golarion?  So I'll be back in a bit, once I've said the basic points to others under truthspell before the truthspell runs out, if that's okay."

lintamande: "....yes, cicerone?"

Keltham: "Or actually, to be clear, I might have a whole conversation with somebody else before coming back.  Hopefully one gp is enough to make up for the inconvenience there."

Keltham will now try to repeat this setup conversation on the smartest woman not inside the courtyard!  Does it go any differently a second time?

lintamande: Nope, about the same! All of these people seem not totally able to keep up with the pace at which he speaks but able to catch the basics like that he's a weird important alien priest of Abadar who wants to ask them questions.

Keltham: On to the courtyard, then.

"Hi, I'm a cleric of Abadar from entirely outside Golarion, who owes a debt to Abadar that, as I understand it, Abadar wants me to repay by teaching knowledge to Osirion."

"I want to check I'm not going to harm the rest of Golarion by teaching Osirion - the way someone would be harming Golarion if they taught say Cheliax - or if there's anything I should be asking Osirion's government to promise to change, before I start teaching them.  To that end, I'd like to pay several of you one gold piece each, to share your frank political opinions with me.  I will have some of that conversation via Message, with each such person, in case any of you have things to say they don't want overheard because of social non-accuracy incentives.  I won't pass on those opinions in a way that associates them to you, and have been promised various obvious things by Abadar's Church about nobody else trying to figure out who said them.  That's all the gold piece is payment for, and I do not seek anything else from you, nor seek to harm you in any way."

lintamande: They stare. 

"Say that again slower, young man, my hearing's not what it used to be," one of the older women says firmly.

Keltham: He can do that.

lintamande: Everyone else is looking to her for judgment. 

She frowns. 

"Well, I suppose that's all right, so long as you're going to take your ideas to someone wise in the church and not do anything foolish."

Keltham: "I was planning to talk to whoever Osirion's government sends me; I did not specify that they be a priest of Abadar, and cannot promise you that I'll only talk to members of the government who are."

"As for my not doing anything foolish, I'm afraid it's way way way too late for that, but I am currently planning to try somewhat harder at not being stupid in the future."

lintamande: "....well, I'll pray for you to find wisdom and have all your big plans turn out all right. You just have to trust that things will come to you."

Keltham: "Oh, I definitely trust things will be coming to me.  Good things is a whole different question."

"Any key questions that anybody wants to ask me while I've still got this truthspell up?  I haven't lied to anybody since I got to Golarion - as my own people define lying, intentional falsehoods told to create false beliefs other than temporary ones not meant to be exploited, jokes don't count nor misleading truths - and I wasn't planning to start in the next hour.  But there might still be things you'd want to check while the truthspell lasts?"

lintamande: They mostly stare. 

"So you're not looking to get married?" one woman about his age asks.

Keltham: "I've got no idea what your local standards are like for romantic catastrophes, but I'm currently recovering from one that's plausibly worse along several dimensions than literally anything that I would've expected to have happened on my own higher-functioning home planet in the last year.  So, not in the immediate future, no."

lintamande: "Well, young man, we are more than the worst mistakes we've ever made. ...so long as you're supporting the children."

Keltham: Keltham will not answer that; there are thoughts and considerations here that he would not wish to make their way back to Cheliax.

"It is in fact possible to make romantic mistakes of greater scope than that, and end up in relationship dramas affecting the whole planet.  But those details are not something I'd really like to talk about today."

"Any other questions?"

lintamande: No other questions!

Keltham: "Oh, and - I currently have running, and am using only to quantify Intelligence not to read minds, a Detect Thoughts spell.  That does mean I can tell anyone their Intelligence, privately, if they don't already know it.  I would also be interested in hearing anybody's cheerful price if they - just happened to be fairly okay with my reading their mind, if I promised not to tell anybody else what I saw there - because Golarion is still very strange to me, and it might help me, if I could see anyone else's thoughts at all."

lintamande: "Is that legal?" someone breaks the skeptical silence to ask. "Uh, you having it running, I mean, I think it'd be legal if I agreed. Which I don't!"

Keltham: "I've got no idea, what with not living here, but I'd expect sensible Governance to say it's not Terrible if you declare under truthspell that you have not and will not read any minds without agreement.  As I so truthfully declare."

"It's off scroll and doesn't have as much time left as the truthspell, so if anybody wants to take me up on that offer they need to do it quite soon."

lintamande: Letting a man read your mind is probably not as bad as letting him touch you but it's in the genre. They continue staring suspiciously. 

Keltham: Fine and understandable!  Super valid!  Does anybody want their Intelligence told to them, though?

lintamande: ...what for?

lintamande: "Seems a little bit like courting trouble, if you ask me," the old woman says firmly, and everyone else nods like that has settled the matter.

Keltham: ...huh.

He'll pass out a gold piece to the 6 INT, an 8 INT, a 10 INT, all 12s or above, and that old woman, should they choose to accept them.

lintamande: ...yes, they will accept the gold, with their amount of delight varying from 'a little delighted' to 'a lot delighted'. 

The woman with six intelligence immediately hands it to her sister and says "I got a GOLD COIN, Netta, it's GOLD, just look at it!" Netta swats her with one hand and looks anxiously back at Keltham as if expecting him to snatch the coin back.

Keltham: Keltham will avoid saying anything like 'It sure is gold!' out loud; she is not in fact a child, except in a moral/ethical sense, and he does not know how to treat with her.

His first question is to the old woman, and by Message: why would it court trouble to know your own Intelligence?

lintamande: Well, she says back, it's just a number, and you might think too much of that number, and go around thinking it's who you are.

Keltham: "Huh," Keltham says (still by Message).  "In dath ilan, my homeland, we just tell people not to think that, and have a custom against inquiring of other people's Intelligence-equivalent; but it seems like fairly important information to know about yourself, even if it doesn't define you.  If I see a woman with 14 Intelligence, what I was told is Intelligence enough for wizard training on the usual scales, should I not be telling her even that, lest that number come to define herself? - or numerical range, if I just tell her it's at least 14."

lintamande: Well, I don't know, is she so young that she could try to marry a wizard and learn off him? Or is she already settled and has children?

Keltham: Suppose he doesn't know.

lintamande: Well, he could tell her mother, and then her mother can think about whether a wizard is attainable, and tell her only once they've attained it, if it can be done.

Keltham: This old woman presents as being very wise, and seemingly knows all about the dangers of defining herself by her Intelligence score.  Perhaps it is safe to tell just her, then, her own Intelligence score, if not all the other women present?  They don't need to know that she was told.

lintamande: Well, she doesn't expect it'd hurt her, but it wouldn't help her either, so she can't see why learn it.