Asmodia: "I'm aware."

Pilar : "Then sure."

Asmodia: "There's something that I want to protect, even if protecting that thing serves Asmodeus, who I hate."

Pilar : "Thaaaat's not much of an answer."

Asmodia: "But it's the true answer, and even if Security is reading our minds, I'd rather I do my own best not to think about specifics, and not have you thinking about it every five minutes too."

Pilar : "Enjoy your cake, Asmodia.  It's the last piece you'll be getting."

Pilar turns and heads out of Asmodia's bedroom.

Asmodia: "Acceptable," Asmodia says to her empty bedroom.

Pilar : So.  Would Snack Service care to amplify on how Pilar could be that powerful?  Sell her soul to Cayden Cailean, maybe?  Is this where she finally gets pitched to come over to the Light Side, the Light Side has cookies?

Curse of Laughter: Has Pilar ever wondered why there aren't more oracles, if gods like Cayden Cailean and Nethys can just go around cursing Lawful Evil Asmodeans with curses that work to their own advantage?

Pilar : Actually no, Pilar failed to notice her confusion about that.

Curse of Laughter: It's because the gods can't take the powers back, and the people cursed ultimately get to choose how to use the power that comes with the curse!

Pilar : Now that Pilar is actually thinking about it, this does not seem like enough of a reason.  You could try for curses that were just inconvenient to start with, and maybe just not let the oracle level...

...

Curse of Laughter: Yep!  That's right!  Once a god chooses an oracle, they can't stop the oracle from leveling!  If the oracle figures out how, they can just grab the power away from the god!  Don't want to spare the power to make your oracle ninth-circle?  Too bad!  Once you've chosen an oracle, and the oracle has earned that much power, they get to take the power to become ninth-circle whether you like that or not!  You'll just have to unchoose a lot of your other clerics!

That's where Erecura actually came from, by the way!  Onnnneee time Pharasma tried choosing an oracle of Her own!  Then by the time Erecura finished ripping Pharasma's power away from Her, Erecura had turned into a god Herself, so Pharasma cursed Her to stay in Hell, and Erecura managed to seduce Dispater and get a garden there for Herself etcetera etcetera.

Pilar : And how do oracles get more power, then?

Curse of Laughter: Besides their god just giving it to them?  The way oracles earn more power is... actually sort of a god-concept but, roughly, by predicting things correctly in a way that changes the future.  There's a sort of extra bonus if you predict the future in a way that makes that future happen.  Like when Pilar predicted that Keltham wouldn't be kidnapped by Rovagug cultists, in a way that changed the future and made him not be kidnapped by Rovagug cultists!

You could think of oracles as maintainers of Prophecy.  And even with Prophecy shattered, the rules laid down for oracles are still operating, it's just harder for oracles to do the thing they do.

Pilar : Pilar has arguably been doing quite a lot of predictions that caused other events to happen, and Pilar hasn't gotten any more oracle circles that she's noticed.

Curse of Laughter: Yep!  Because Pilar has been inside Broom's god's nonintervention zone, so even if it's cheaper to empower Pilar more now that she's earned it, Cayden Cailean couldn't do that!  Even when Pilar was in Egorian to do spy sweeps, Cayden Cailean couldn't give Pilar the power she'd earned, because Cayden Cailean would've been doing that with the intent to affect events inside the nonintervention zone!

Otherwise Pilar would've totally been doing some pretty impressive oracle work.

Pilar : But Pilar can, apparently, just seize this power for herself.

Curse of Laughter: Yep!  If she knows how!

Pilar : ...and what does Pilar need to do for Cayden Cailean to be told how?

Curse of Laughter: Come on!  Pilar knows that's not the sort of relationship Pilar has with Cayden Cailean!  He's not Asmodeus!

But it totally does involve Pilar embracing the power of her curse, and the purpose of her curse, and her embracing that she wants and needs to be more powerful in order to fulfill the purpose of her curse.

Which - Pilar's curse being what it is - does totally mean that, to tear Cayden Cailean's divine power away from Him, Pilar needs to call on the power of friendship, in order to protect her friends!

Pilar : Hm, let Pilar think about that.... no.

Nnnnoooo. 

No ways, no how, NOPE NOPE NOPE.

Pilar : This is where Pilar gets told that it serves Asmodeus's interests plus Broom's god, isn't it.

Curse of Laughter: Tearing some of Cayden Cailean's power away from Him and using it to serve Pilar's guesses at Asmodeus's interests, and Pilar becoming the sort of person who does that, will in general and in expectation lead to a world that's better off as Asmodeus sees it, than if Pilar doesn't do that.

Pilar would need to start moving on her own, making her own decisions, and thinking for herself, if she started being that kind of oracle.  Snack Service would still point her in directions sometimes, but Pilar would have to mostly take responsibility herself, including for things like weekly Lastwall spy sweeps.  Pilar wouldn't be guaranteed anymore that she was following Snack Service's directions that always served Asmodeus.

All Pilar gets told is that Pilar going down that whole path would, probably, on average, have promoted Asmodeus's interests in the end when it was all done.

Pilar : FUCK PILAR'S CURSE!  FUCK ASMODIA!  WHY CAN'T EVERYONE JUST LET PILAR BE PILAR!

Curse of Laughter: From the beginning, nothing was said of what would become of Pilar.

...also, uh, remember when the Most High told Pilar to run an entire intelligence operation and negotiate with Chaotic Good divinity all on her own?  Because Aspexia was trying to -

Pilar : Pilar does remember, and thank you for reminding her, because Pilar is just going to write directly to the Most High and request orders like a good slave fucking does.

Curse of Laughter: Aspexia Rugatonn isn't perfect.  Ask her so, and she'll tell you that herself.

If Pilar writes the Most High about this, without having thought things through herself first, if Pilar just requests orders from Aspexia Rugatonn and obeys them, without doing any thinking or acting or taking responsibility beforehand, the end results will be worse in expectation for Asmodeus's interests.

lintamande: "If when you've figured things out Iomedae can't help you," the cleric says after an attempt at explaining superweapons to him, which he's now forgotten but which prompted some useful revisions to the pages, "you could ask Her people to renounce Her and work on it ourselves, in our own capacity."

Keltham: "Too much, too fast, not ready for that much Lawful Goodness."

"...though I could be - abruptly ready for it - if I have to be, I guess - to be clear I am not actually sure what is going on here at all."

lintamande: "It seems very confusing," he agrees. "Cayden Cailean is a good man and His followers understand something important about fixing the world - and so I'm assuming He's not just betraying us, but - it's hard, to try to walk forward in this much doubt. But it'll be harder, I think, on your own."

Keltham: "I have Ione Sala.  She can't help me with anything important, but I can talk to her.  Allegedly."

"I am still trying, to decode everything else, and taking on new companions is an irrevocable step that I am not going to try until I have a better grasp of what's going on.  It is suggestive that the, Nethys-Cailean axis, sent me, essentially, one person who I can talk to for sanity's sake, but who isn't allowed to help me at all.  Not every possible version of that unknown background story is something you can fix by renouncing Iomedae."

lintamande: "Certainly. Just keep it in mind."

Keltham: "Thank you for your service to Golarion and humanity, mortality, but not to myself, because none of this that you are doing should be for me.  All of this is for the world that Cheliax threatens, not for me.  Nothing should be done to help me unless I ask."

lintamande: "You're part of the world, young man. But a part that merits the same help in its own right as any other - that I can do. Goodbye."

Keltham: People need to just listen to him when Keltham says... well, it's plain enough why they don't.

Keltham is going to go rest, close his eyes for a bit, because he is tired, now.

Keltham: ...aaaaand nobody sure did wake him up at all, from that 'nap'.

Well, now it's the middle of the night, according to his pocketwatch, as probably matters not much to a Palace running on Ring of Sustenance Time.  Keltham is sort of woozy but still feeling less exhausted, and now he needs to figure out his other priorities...

Keltham: He's got to - actually find out what the state of affairs is with children in the Boneyard and children in Hell.  Keltham did notice like the third time he put off that question, what with the prominent role that mental motion played in his last disaster.

Explicit thinking indicates that there's a probability that it snaps his connection to Abadar right there.

Keltham: Keltham has a Commune that - it's risky to use, if people aren't telling him the whole story, if there's kinds of information that Abadar cannot commit not to use, but, Keltham thought he felt, in Abadar's connection to him, that Abadar really wanted him to use Commune, and - there's versions of the story where it could be stupid to ignore a request like that -

Keltham can't actually bring himself to ignore a request like that, if Abadar is a kind of thing that has feelings at all.

Though Keltham doesn't think, of most of the questions he has in mind, that the expected answers to them would matter a lot to Abadar - he'll ask the Pharaoh in writing if there's a better question (or binary question-tree) that he should ask.

Commune should come before learning about children in Hell, in case that snaps his cleric connection.

Keltham: And the talk with Osirian Governance about how Project Lawful Neutral gets set up - probably does not depend much on when children show up in the Boneyard, unless that happens way before they get qualia, like right after cutting the umbilical cord or something like that.  But Keltham cannot actually rule that out.

So the talk happens after that investigation, which happens after he uses Commune.

- well, that actually does determine his next three priorities, more or less.

Keltham: He first needs to figure out what his questions to Abadar would be.  By the textbook, Keltham gets nine to ten questions which must be asked (and answered) in nine to ten rounds.  If neither 'yes' or 'no' fits, the god can answer with up to five words, but you shouldn't try to abuse this, it should be a question where you mostly expect a 'yes' or 'no'.

Candidate yes-no questions...

- Is Keltham's apparent world more real than Cheliax's Conspiracy?

- Was the vision from Iomedae real?

- Did Abadar try to protect Keltham more than the minimum required to leave him in shape to teach?

- When Abadar traded with Asmodeus, did Abadar expect that to increase the percentage of mortals in Evil afterlives?

- Does Abadar have feelings, emotions, even if not human feelings?

- Does Abadar value mortals as sentients-that-have-feelings and not just agents-that-trade?

...It's only six questions, though some might take more than a round to ask, and Keltham is blanking on what more he wants to know and dares ask.

Yeah, he really isn't in his best mental shape right now, all poses aside.

Well, enough to send to the Pharaoh, then, to see if he claims that answers are already known for certain, or has anything important to add.  And Keltham can try to think about more while he - eats food, which is not really a thing that has happened to him all that recently.

Keltham: Keltham thinks about Carissa for a few rounds.

Then Keltham heads out of his bedroom to request dinner; and to see if the Pharaoh had a better idea of what Abadar wanted Keltham to ask, or why Abadar wanted Keltham to have Commune; and to check on the status of the setup talk for Project Lawful Neutral, though he's not doing that part right away.

lintamande: One of the concubines will bring him dinner and take a note to the pharaoh and take a different note to Merenre.

Keltham: Keltham eats his dinner, looking sad and emotionally distant but not in active distress.

...he doesn't actually come up with any further questions beyond 'Are you Abadar?', which is at least short, though redundant with 'Was the vision from Iomedae real?' if the answer to that is Yes.

lintamande: We are eager to talk to you mostly because We are intensely curious. We have wanted to communicate with you for a long time and been unable to because of the interdiction. The thing We want the most is probably prices for further direct conversations about, for example, what it is like to be a human (explained in the terms Abadar is familiar with), what human values are, what Osirion is doing wrong, what humanity will want to pay Us for once humanity grows up, whether humanity can be thought of as the kind of entity that will grow up, etc.

Keltham: Of course the story would be like that.

If Keltham is still alive or if his soul is in Axis, a couple of years from now, maybe, they can have that conversation.  If Keltham actually does decide to exit this universe, he'll do that through Axis, if possible, so he can talk directly with Abadar first.

He'll try to teach the math, the way of thinking, to the Osirians, so they can answer those questions themselves, if Keltham can't.

It's - all he can do.

At least now he's not going to have try hard at all, to appear sad and upset during his conversation with Governance.  Though finding out more about children in Hell would've done that anyways, probably.

Keltham: He'll head back to his bedroom, request privacy, write down the final form of his questions, and cast Commune.

"Are you Abadar?" Keltham says to his god, his eyes already watering.

(mortal's mental posture: opening negotiations, closing negotiations, regret of lost opportunity)

Abadar: - that's very worrying. Every recent update He's gotten has been very worrying, but that especially so. 

The structure of Commune holds the god back from the mortal. Allows just the slightest information through, just the answer without any of the context or feeling that would properly surround it, because that's the only way to talk to mortals safely at all. 

Yes.

Keltham: "Is the world Osirion is showing me real?" Keltham says, his voice cracking, crying freely, because gods seem like they should be there alongside girlfriends on the list of entities you can cry in front of.

(mental posture: satisfaction with value received in trade, concern over inadequate reciprocation)

Abadar: Mortals who are concerned about inadequate reciprocation are almost always fundamentally confused!

He can't say that, and isn't entirely sure it applies.

Yes.

Keltham: "Was the vision from Iomedae real and paid for by you?"

(mental posture: concern over inadequate reciprocation)

Abadar: He did pay Iomedae for that conversation, though to the extent it was valuable to Her and advanced Her own interests, She didn't charge Him for it because they are responsible gods who just pay each other for utility, and in this specific case they employed protocols to protect the confidentiality of Keltham's conversation with Iomedae where Iomedae determined the actual cost She'd want to charge Abadar and then picked randomly from a distribution with that at the mean.

For this reason Abadar is tempted to answer 'mostly', but Khemet will tell Him that was confusing and the mortal wants to abstract away details like that. 

Yes

Keltham: "In your bargain did you pay to protect me more than required just to let me teach Osirion?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into nature of trading relationship)

No.

Keltham: That's something.  The story is not forcing him to betray his benefactors to the greatest extent possible.

"Did you net-expect that trade with Asmodeus to increase-even-by-a-tiny-bit the fraction of mortals in Evil afterlives?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into entity's other trading partnerships)

Abadar: It's not a calculation He ran at the time; He can, of course, recall that state of information and try to run it. More trade and prosperity means more people. So far, as people have become more prosperous, more of them have been Evil. This is confusing; you'd think that one of the things an agent would purchase with more prosperity is their preferred afterlife. Abadar's theories include that people prefer the Evil afterlives, that people prefer other things they can buy even though those things cause them to go to the Evil afterlives, or that people are failing to be coherent agents. It's probably the latter. it almost always is.

But at the time, that Keltham would make mortals richer wasn't obvious to Abadar; Abadar considered it a possibility, but expected most utility from Keltham to come from Keltham's understanding of coordination. If the reason that wealth makes mortals Eviller is related to their incompetence at coordination, then if they were more ideal agents they'd be less likely to go to the Evil afterlives, and Keltham would decrease the agents going to the Evil afterlives. Abadar's extrapolation from his own state of knowledge at the time suggests that He would have wrongly expected this effect to dominate the wealth effect He then considered unlikely.

Then there's the question of the resources transfer to Asmodeus; Asmodeus having more resources causes more people to go to Hell, drawing disproportionately but not wholly from the other Evil afterlives, and Abadar has some sense of the exchange rate. Inconveniently this number is within an order of magnitude of the expected effect from Abadar's early state of information from more coherent agents going to the Evil afterlives less. 

Then there's the question of whether Keltham at the time would predictably oppose people going to the Evil afterlives or the actions of their agents. That Abadar did calculate at the time; he quoted Asmodeus the evidence he'd observed over the prior that Keltham would oppose Asmodeus or Cheliax. Presumably Asmodeus attempted to price that in with respect to Hell, but not with respect to Abaddon or the Abyss. Keltham was at the Worldwound at the time, and most mortals at the Worldwound oppose the Abyss, though not usually through particular opposition to people going to the Abyss, which they mostly don't do as a product of the actions of Chaotic Evil agents with that aim in mind...Abadar thinks this factor will be smaller than the others and can be neglected. 

So time to return to the first calculations with more of His attention, as they're close enough to matter. Some chance of wealth causing more Evil, some higher chance of coherence causing less Evil, predictable expected Evil caused by Asmodeus....

Yes

He says when He's got an estimate He's reasonably confident in. 

Keltham: "Do you have feelings, emotions, even if they're not human ones?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into entity's trading algorithm)

Abadar: Khemet thinks some of them are human ones. Curiosity, a tradesman's satisfaction in their work, frustration, delight-at-the-successes-of-a-trade-partner.

Yes.

Keltham: "Do those feelings value mortals as, things with feelings themselves, and not just agents that trade?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into trade-partner's utilityfunction)

Abadar: The question doesn't come across very clearly. It's asking whether Abadar would pay for something, but He's not sure what. Would He pay for mortals to be richer in a way that wasn't a trade with them? ....well, He would and then He'd tell a Good god who'd pay Him for it. Would He pay if He was entirely sure no one including the mortals was going to pay Him back, and that the mortals were not going to grow up into anything that could pay Him back, and that the mortals weren't even as a consequence of their newfound prosperity going to trade more? For example, because all mortals are on separate islands with no way to influence the situation of any other mortals? Is that the question? 

....uncertain leaning no.

Keltham: He's out of questions to ask, and the connection is still live, he can feel it there.

What Keltham does then is not very Iomedan, it's foolish to act spontaneously in a conversation with a god, he hasn't calculated what this question or his feelings while saying it might give away -

"Would you feel sad, if I stopped being your cleric, not just a loss to your utilityfunction expectation, but, sadness, or, an unpleasant emotion?"

Abadar: Many of the responses haven't been immediate; this one is.

Yes. 

Keltham: The connection ends, and Keltham folds over himself and cries for a time.

Abadar: KHEMET I NEED HELP UNDERSTANDING MORTALS

Ruby Prince Khemet III: I have a bad headache already, can it wait. 

Abadar: Here's a distribution over possible outcomes conditional on speaking now. 

Here's a distribution over possible outcomes conditional on speaking 1000 rounds from now. 

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "Delay Pain."

Do those feelings value mortals as, things with feelings themselves, and not just agents that trade?

Ruby Prince Khemet III: ...imagine there were mortals, going around trading and making cities, but there was nothing it felt like to be them; Detect Thoughts would find nothing there; mind-affecting magic could not touch them, and you could give the mortals awakeness, make them like mortals in Golarion, would you do that?

Abadar: ....are they willing to trade for this service?

Ruby Prince Khemet III: Pharasma made a rule that you can do this, without cost, but not in exchange for anything, nor can you let them know you did it so they are inclined to repay you. 

Abadar: .....but would they pay me to do it, if that were allowed.

Ruby Prince Khemet III: ...some of them but not all of them?

Abadar: Confirming the hypothetical is meant to be specified such that I can't just awaken the ones who want to be awake and not the other ones?

Ruby Prince Khemet III: "No, I - that's a fine answer -"

Abadar: How does this action in this hypothetical translate to the answer to the question about my feelings and mortal feelings. 

Ruby Prince Khemet III: You care about mortals' feelings unless they are mine, which you should consider caring about a little more. 

And he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Abadar: Oh!

....he wants to touch the other squirrel, now, with a vision explaining that, but probably it's better to let Khemet do the explaining. He's better at it.

Keltham: It wouldn't have made a difference to anything.  Keltham can read through tropes, he knows that 'uncertain leaning no' can indicate that the alien didn't understand your question, he knows that the real answer out of story-pattern-completion would then be yes.  Hardly a certain line of reasoning, but Keltham wouldn't neglect to compute it both ways.

None of that Commune is about what he has to do, next, anyways, just about - how sad it is, what kind of story Keltham is in, what other tropes he has to be wary of now, how much of himself Keltham would have needed to burn and break along a fixed course of action.

It's not as bad as it could be.  Abadar traded with Asmodeus in a way that was expected to increase the fraction of mortals in Evil afterlives.  Abadar didn't pay any more than was required to get Keltham to Osirion.

Betraying alien friends isn't any better than betraying human friends, but, at least Abadar wasn't - trying to start a friendship.

If Keltham just pays back what Abadar thought he was buying, at the time, that Abadar didn't pay too much to obtain - and then afterwards does something that might make Abadar regret having ever engaged in that trade -

Then that's a terrible black sin and Keltham is surprised that he can still be a cleric of Abadar while thinking it, but it's not a broken word, a broken compact, a lie, the fabric of the universe is still intact after that.  Even if somebody saves your life and your sanity, they haven't bought out - your following of your utilityfunction - if that's not something you agreed to, if they didn't know that's what they were buying, if they only paid the minimum on the transaction and paid for it with more souls in Asmodeus's Hell.  If they didn't treat you like a true friend, in doing that, if they didn't try to buy your friendship or expect that from you -

It's still a sin, to do something that makes them regret having traded with you, but it's not the worst thing that can happen.

Keltham goes to the palace library, then, to find out how many children go to Evil afterlives, starting at what age; what fraction of children go to the Boneyard, starting at what age, what fraction of those go to Axis through Elysium, the Maelstrom through Hell; and of mortal Golarion, the adults, what their own fates are.

lintamande: And there is is, in every book on the subject, not a secret at all, a priority for the Good gods to make widely known.

A child gets a soul early in pregnancy. Not before the first missed bleeding; definitely before they start to kick; there’s uncertainty about the time in between. The best guess is twelve weeks of development, but it’s not advised to count on an abortion being safe that long.

If they die after that, they go to the Boneyard. 

Keltham: That's insane - twelve weeks, there's no way that the embryonic brain - is reflecting on anything, routing much in the way of complexly structured multistage perceptual information even, that's barely enough time to wire up the heartbeat - why would the worldbuilding have souls get attached then -

- in order for the story to present him with an insane time limit, obviously.

Keltham: This about dath ilani, they are trained in a theory of social deception that says that people can arrange reasons, excuses, for anything - so at the end of it all you look at what happened, and try to build an explanation around that alone.

It didn't take very long after Keltham understood Cheliax as a security-theoretic Adversary for Keltham to go back and question the entire chain of logic that led up to Meritxell disguising herself as other people.

And one of Meritxell's guises was Abrogail Thrune, which Keltham did check by surprise with Glimpse of Truth/Beyond in case there wasn't an Alter Self, running, because it was not lost at all on Keltham that if reality was an eroLARP then he would at some point have actual sex with Abrogail Thrune.

He checked the first time, and the third time, but not the second time or the fourth and later times, and with Abrogail running eighth-circle Detect Thoughts on him she could have known whether he had that spell.

Abrogail Thrune, who took the initiative to set him up with having one of his girlfriends use Alter Self.

Were there plausible reasons?  Dath ilani in socially adversarial situations are trained to look past those, at the end result, at what happened and not the reasons for it.

End result:  Abrogail Thrune set him up with one of his girlfriends to use Alter Self, Keltham predictably asked that girlfriend to guise herself as Abrogail Thrune, Keltham did not use Glimpse of Truth to check every time.

Keltham did not write down exact days, about when Meritxell started being other people like Carissa or Merrin; but a conservative estimate would be that it was after Day 50 of the way Keltham himself was counting time.  Abrogail Thrune... maybe Day 60.

...even that is assuming they didn't just invisibly magically intercept semen from oral sex, or extract it directly from his testicles while he was under anesthesia, and impregnate a hundred other people; but Cheliax has not been depicted as being that competent so far, at least not to his own character viewpoint, which is the one that should matter if the story is being fair at all.  For them to go a step beyond that and bother to fake the Abrogail Thrune interaction - so that Keltham would have a hundred pregnancies in progress, but only worry about one - it's possible, but seems more like the strategic level of a real dath ilani adversary, than the Chelish Conspiracy as it seems to have developed by then, that didn't have a whole bookstore of books on Cheliax ready.

If the story is being fair, the pregnancies he has to worry about are Abrogail Thrune and maybe Jacint Subirachs.  Those are the two people Keltham asked Meritxell to pose as, who hadn't signed his contract and were not out of dath ilan...

...well, they could have used people Alter Selfing to others he'd signed the contract with, or Alter Selfing in Meritxell's place to the dath ilani women he'd shown her?  That doesn't take steal-semen-from-testicles levels of cheatiness.  But it would come with a risk, that Keltham noticed something off in the interaction, that he expected from Meritxell...

Meritxell and Abrogail Thrune could have rehearsed it, Abrogail imitating Meritxell imitating Abrogail, somebody else could've done the same thing about imitating Meritxell imitating Merrin, and Meritxell did do Merrin earlier but not much earlier...

Keltham: So getting that - woman of Irori, whose name Keltham has forgotten, but who'd be in the transcripts - paying her to assassinate Abrogail Thrune temporarily, would not knowably be enough, even if he also managed to get an assassination on Jacint Subirachs.

Basically, Keltham has less than two months in which to destroy Cheliax, or deploy some other solution to his problems, before the fetuses get ensouled, and would end up in the Boneyard if he ashed Cheliax after that.

A bit less than two months, if the story is being fair.

Keltham: It's not a threat, not a hostage-taking, that Cheliax has in progress.  They have every selfish interest in obtaining Keltham's genes, his heritage, even if that wouldn't change at all whether or not Keltham would ash their country.  If, having pursued their own interest in having half-dath-ilani children, not conditioned on Keltham's reaction, that fetus then becomes ensouled?  If it then happens that Keltham, informed of this, would no longer destroy their country for misusing his teachings, because he wouldn't want to send his child as a scarcely formed fetus to the Boneyard?  Well, too bad for Keltham and good for Cheliax, according to the crystal logic of decision theory.

That's what they're waiting for.  That's why they haven't attacked already.

Keltham: Any chance that Heaven deploys an adequate number of angels to take care of the tiny helpless things in the Boneyard and they all go to Good afterlives or Axis?

lintamande: The Osirians don't even look surprised. 

"The Good afterlives all send people - a lot of people - but there are a lot of babies, not all petitioners become angels and it takes thousands of years and the population was much smaller. And - Hell does too, right, and the Abyss - not Abaddon, they got kicked out for eating the babies -"

Keltham: "Percentages."

lintamande: "...of babies that get a Good afterlife? I think maybe thirty or forty percent? With another thirty or forty percent Neutral?"

Keltham: "'Scuse me a moment."

Dath ilani are very sheltered, by the standards of some of their cousins.  They don't grow up with even moderately, mortal-level horrible things happening to children.  Not even to children somewhere else on the planet, far away and unseen; just, not at all.  Dath ilani are not used to it.  They have no antibodies, no defenses, inculcated in them from a young age; no unspoken social training, by pressure of expectations, not to get upset about horrible things happening to children far away that you can't do anything about.  It is not, in their world, all part of the plan.

Keltham: Back!

"So that's the dead babies.  How about the adults in Golarion?  Or non-adults, what's the youngest that children start showing up in Hell directly instead of the Boneyard?"

lintamande: "The youngest ever known of was ten or eleven, I think - in Osirion's own scries on our dead to figure out how we're doing we haven't seen younger than fifteen. It's about ten percent of people who go to Hell, outside Cheliax, and maybe five percent to Abaddon, and fifteen to the Abyss - that one varies a lot by society -"

Keltham: "Hypothesis, one-third almost exactly because Pharasma balanced it that way, especially if there's any symmetrical phenomenon where one-third sort Lawful, one-third Chaotic -?"

why is he asking this it doesn't matter to anything

lintamande: "It's not re-normed over time to match changes in society, if that's what you're asking, but yes, the distribution's close to even - with more Neutral - on Good to Evil, maybe 30-40-30, and close to even with more people Neutral on Law to Chaos, maybe also 30-40-30, and then Abaddon gets punished for not playing by the rules by letting those people choose the Abyss or Hell, and Nirvana has the most lawyers and Law has better lawyers than Chaos."

Keltham: "Percentages in Cheliax."

lintamande: "I have no idea, honestly. We keep our own statistics for the benefit of our own population, we don't have the resources to check up on everywhere else. They claim it's ninety-seven but they're probably lying. If I had to bet I'd bet at ninety."

Keltham: Okay.  It's sort of reasonable of the plot to give him two months to fix Golarion or destroy Cheliax, if that's how bad things are here.  Like, so long as the plotline is solvable, it's better not to hang out in this mindspace for too long.  Two months is fine, Keltham just has to figure out how to refit his plans into two months.  Building up Project Lawful Neutral to at least Cheliax's level, and then leveling up as a wizard himself, is right out, for example.

...maybe the story is telling him to just, finish up the main plot, by then.

Keltham: "What percentage of all souls being generated are Boneyard babies?"

"And, is there any reason to believe that matters are different on different planets?"

lintamande: "I think about half of people die by the age of 5? Of course, in some places where there's lots of abortion, it's higher, that's only counting deaths after birth."

Keltham: "Other planets, other planes?  They feed into the same afterlives, the mortals there aren't any happier in Evil afterlives, Pharasma also balanced them at one-third - is there any known reason not to believe that?"

lintamande: " - the system is not balanced at one third, if people got better more of them would go to Good afterlives. I don't know anything about the situation on other planets but there's not some requirement it be around a third. I think some people are happy in the Evil afterlives though almost anyone would prefer Axis."

Keltham: "'Some people'?  'Some people' doesn't mean anything!  Are we talking one in ten or one in ten million?"

lintamande: "I don't know! It's not like Hell lets you conduct interviews! Abadar might know, and has a great deal to discuss with you anyway; do you want to ask Him?"

Keltham: - no he does not because he is not just acting distressed, right now, he is distressed, and in that state of distress, he has possibly given too much away already.

"Abadar doesn't strike me as the sort of god that will know.  Maybe I'll ask the Iomedans at some point."

Or 'forget' about it, because he doesn't want to remind anyone of the question, and 1 in 10 wouldn't actually make much of a difference.

Keltham asks a few more questions; and then indicates that he wants to rest for a quarter-hour, and then talk to somebody in Governance about the form of the next Project Lawful.

Keltham is tired, maybe slightly dizzy from the time of night he's trying to do this.  But there's no way he can go back to sleep and the story has informed him that he was correct about the time limit and everything needing to be set in motion as quickly as possible.  Probably there was no point in the story trying to hide it from him, since he'd guessed anyways.

lintamande: Sure. They'll have a full update ready for him in fifteen minutes. 

(They'll also have a transcript of the conversation between Abadar's human aspect and the rest of Abadar.)

Keltham: Read whatever books are on hand to let his brain cool down, don't think about ten-year-olds in Hell.

...it's easier than he expected.  A pretty large part of him seems to think this is just the premise of a teenaged-male-edgelord-thought-experiment-trying-to-force-deontology-violations.*

(*) Three syllables in Baseline.

lintamande: The report says that almost everyone who'll be a participant in Project Lawful Neutral is assembled, with the last few arriving in the morning; they have delegations from the Kelesh Empire, from Taldor, from the Magesterium in Absalom and the Academae in Korvosa, from Lastwall and Mendev and Molthune and Minkai and Rahadoum. Here are everyone's credentials and the secrecy commitments they made up front and how much funding their government can put into the project.

Keltham: Keltham reads it over, nods along.  Reads the transcription between Abadar and Abadar's human, nods, doesn't cry again because he's already shed those tears and the plot of the story was plain enough already.

Things start tomorrow morning, then.

Off to speak to Governance about what to tell Project Lawful Neutral.

Merenre: Merenre is, under the circumstances, not going to complain about the hours. At least Keltham's not bothering the pharaoh in the dead of night while he's trying to fend off godheadaches. 

"What can I help with?"

Keltham: Keltham has activated his glibness pin, so that he can present the face to Governance that he wants them to see.

"Project Lawful Neutral kicks off tomorrow and I need to sync expectations with Governance.  - that's not meant to be a real name if you have a better one."

Merenre: "Since it's not exactly secret we'll probably want to call it something everyone can announce to great applause back in their home countries. The Peaceful Revolution or something. Doesn't seem very important to settle right now."

Keltham: "Sometimes these things stick even if you'd rather they wouldn't, is the conventional wisdom out of dath ilan, and it doesn't seem very likely that Golarion would be better at coordinating to change names."

"'Peaceful Revolution' is a bad idea, vetoed.  That's begging the story to ironically twist the name."

Merenre: " - so we spent much of yesterday discussing the 'story' thing, and we think that - in a sense Golarion is a world full of stories, because it has powerful entities trying through small interventions to achieve large results. But you aren't - especially a story, you aren't more a story. 'Chemical Revolution'?"

Keltham: "This is not going to be a chemistry revolution.  Cheliax got a bit of chemistry, which you can get off Ione Sala.  I need to give you more than they got, medicine, metallurgy, ideally I can figure out things that Cheliax by its nature dares not use or can't just copy."

"Neither Osirian nor Taldane really have a word that means Law-aspiring thought, and if we call it the Reasonable Revolution, every time the Project makes a decision somebody disagrees with, they will say, 'Ha ha, how ironic that you called yourself the Reasonable Revolution'.  Scientific Revolution is maybe the closest concept in Osirian language, although the native concept of 'science' doesn't include key aspects like prediction markets... anyways."

"After syncing up with Ione Sala I am now very sure that I was placed in Golarion at a place and time which would play out in a way that resulted in story patterns, 'tropes', appearing in the world around me.  I made a number of predictions on that theory that I thought were wrong, which were actually correct, apparently, and Cheliax hid that from me.  I will continue to juggle those story considerations myself, if I must, because your disbelief in them is not going to make them go away."

Merenre: "What does 'juggling those story conditions' look like, aside from naming things differently?"

Keltham: "Okay, this part is classified, because I do not want Cheliax knowing that I know it, that I've guessed, they can - if they know I know - change their strategy in a way that might evade the obvious things I'd try to do about it - although, this is not based purely on story reasoning, there is a chain of real-world observation and causality that mirrors the story logic -"

"I predict that Cheliax will successfully come up with a way to neutralize my nonthreatening motivation to destroy their country if they abuse my teaching - my motive to do that just to clean up after myself - in a bit less than two months."

"After that would be the obvious point for them to attack wherever the Scientific Revolution is locating its center of research, or, depending on how far they can get in two months, try to do a lot of damage to any country that supports the Scientific Revolution, including Osirion."

"My current best idea is to spend one month dumping everything I have into either the Scientific Revolution generally, or restricted sections trying to work within the Black Dome on things Cheliax shouldn't find out about.  And then spend the month after that - trying to beat that deadline, on my own, doing things that I - do not consider it wise to share."

Merenre: "I see. All right. Is there anything we can do to help you, aside from assembling the Scientific Revolution as quickly as possible?"

Keltham: "That would be a more reasonable question if we weren't inside a story.  The first arc just concluded with the country I tried to help, betraying me.  I thought at first that the second arc would play that out in a subtler way, but I now think - that the story I'm in - won't repeat itself that way.  More likely is that it will rhyme."

"So my current plan is that I do not charge non-Evil attendees, students, for anything.  Osirion is welcome to rope me off and charge admissions, just like I was a fruit tree somebody else planted, but I'm not accepting any of that money from anybody who isn't Evil and who is not trading with me on the basis of my being an Asmodean trade partner rather than an Abadaran one, because that way, you see, I cannot be forced to betray those trade partners.  You need to - carry out the implied bargain Abadar made originally, where he bought just enough good treatment from Asmodeus that I could come to Osirion and explain things, you need to support my finishing out that bargain but not otherwise try to be friends with me."

There was a version of this, interaction, that Keltham considered, where he screamed at the Osirians about Abadar trading with Asmodeus, and told them that he wasn't trading with anyone who traded with Asmodeus, that Keltham was giving up his own right to be treated as an agent in protest, that Osirion could treat Keltham as a resource and sell his teachings without recompense, the same way that Abadar's trading partner Asmodeus treated the mortal souls being used as paving stones in Hell - but - Keltham cannot bring himself to say that, not now.  Not after Abadar asked him to help explain being human.

Also, that story wouldn't get them to stop trying to be friends with him, now that Keltham thinks about it.  Like, that wouldn't work on him.

Merenre: " - I have no right to stop you from conducting yourself in that fashion, if you want." He looks baffled. "Is there some sum of money I can offer you to talk to the Pharaoh. While masked, if you like."

Keltham: "The fact you think that my talking to Abadar's chosen mortal is a key event, that causes me to change my mind in a way that reasonable arguments transmitted through other people would not - if you offer me a million gold pieces to do it, the fact that you expect to get a million gold pieces of value out of that encounter is proportionally worrying!"

Merenre: "I think that I'm incredibly confused. There's some piece of information or some frame or some context I'm missing that would make me less incredibly confused. Since the stakes very nearly could not be higher, it seems worth trying anything that seems reasonably likely to resolve the confusion, and the pharaoh is specialized in communicating with aliens who see the world more like the way you see it."

Keltham: "So do it through a text-only channel!  Same thing the - complicated faction I don't want to explain right now - did when they wanted to negotiate with - the dath ilani equivalent of things with 30 Splendour!  It's the obvious precaution for only being persuaded by reasonable arguments instead of somebody's superpowers!"