Iarwain: NOPE.

Carissa Sevar: "Right!" she says cheerfully. "Kill him."

Iarwain: There's sort of a confused moment while people try to figure out who she's referring to, and then they get it.

Iarwain: Nobody uses ranged spells or area spells, obviously, because that is a kind of stupidity that everyone understands as stupidity.

Iarwain: He dies before even a quarter of the crowd gets a chance to prove their loyalty by getting a hit in.  Security wizards don't have that many hit points, relative to anybody who feels too weak to get in a hit that matters at all without a dagger strike or Acid Splash.

Carissa Sevar: She didn't do anything, but her heart is pounding fiercely. 

Well. That went as well as could be hoped for, really. 

"Are there others," she asks Pilar quietly.

Pilar : "It's complicated.  Most researchers were reassured by seeing, just now, that they've regained power.  I can't predict who'll still be disturbed tomorrow.  I can give you more Security victims on the basis of somebody feeling disturbed yesterday, if required."

Carissa Sevar: "One's enough to make the point, if there's no one else anyone's itching to mention.

I hope this meeting has been informative," she says again to the room. "It is dismissed."

Carissa Sevar: Now, why Maillol didn't do that at the very beginning -

- is a question she will now have the opportunity to put to him.

Ferrer Maillol: Maillol is no ilani, and by now thoroughly believes the version of history where he definitely really totally wanted to do that a month ago, but Subirachs said that the slaves needed to let off some steam.  He clearly failed, even so, but he's not due that much punishment, surely.  He's not Subirachs.  Nobody could possibly blame him for the Asmodia business, the conversation was documented and it's obvious he did the commonsense thing.

"Sir."

Carissa Sevar: "Explain when and how the decision was first made to let the Project staff have a power struggle."

Ferrer Maillol: Decisions to allow self-unfolding events are not usually made in that legible a fashion.  Illegibility means that whoever has less social power can end up with blame shifted to them if something goes wrong, which serves the interest of those who have more social power, who are usually the people who make decisions about how much legibility to have.

"Sir.  If I had to point to a single moment in time, it would be during shift change at temple when I said to Subirachs that people were being idiots and couldn't they wait a few weeks until you got back, and Subirachs said that the slaves here had been cooped up under unnatural conditions for too long and it'd do you good to come back to a situation you could correct with fire and lash, sir.  That was a deniable feeler from me which Subirachs rejected.  Had Subirachs instead said something about how it was understandable but seemed inefficient, I could have offered suggestions.  Pressing the issue would have meant that she'd say no and made me look stupid for asking when she'd say no, costing me further political power."  This sounds too much like trying to avoid all responsibility, which will not fly, as that would make Sevar herself look stupid.  "Subirachs evidently did not expect things to escalate to where she'd be held accountable by Church and Queen, rather than you personally being annoyed with her.  I likewise failed to predict this outcome, and so failed you."  Incompetence obviously not in one's own self-interest, in the course of attempted good service, rather than betrayal or failure to care all that much; that's the ticket to an endurable punishment.

Carissa Sevar: There's - something about that answer she wouldn't get in dath ilan, but she isn't actually sure what it is. "If you'd expected things to escalate, what would you have done at that point."

Ferrer Maillol: "Had I possessed information permitting me to know that Asmodia would disappear as she did, I would have ordered better treatment for her before she came into my office requesting Ione Sala's deal.  Had I known that project tensions would reach only the point they did before then, I would not have expected Subirachs to heed any request to do things differently; she would have been pleased to see you come back and order a Security officer torn apart."

Carissa Sevar: Because - the Project, defending Cheliax, not being annihilated in a war with Osirion - she didn't believe in any of that. Just in the project as a way of making Carissa eviller. Abrogail might have thought that too. It'd be worth killing tens of thousands of people, Aspexia said, if it permits you to master proper Asmodeanism. She feels dizzy. 

Carissa Sevar: "Did you think to do anything that would establish when I returned that this was not of your will, such as, say, making a prediction, or writing down at the time 'I disagree with Subirachs about the decision to let the Project descend into chaos', or revising downwards project projections with a note that this was due to project chaos."

Ferrer Maillol: "No, sir, had such a thought occurred to me it would have seemed to me like insubordination towards Subirachs.  Up until Asmodia's disappearance I - do not think things were going not as she predicted, sir."

Carissa Sevar: "Which is to say, they were catastrophic for the Project, and this fact was not communicated to anyone? Don't you, rather than Subirachs, report to the crown on Project progress? You understood loyalty to her to oblige you to not mention in your daily reports that the Project was going to be doing much worse than planned?"

Ferrer Maillol: "There - were not projections for any project timelines other than for Avaricia's expansion of existing chemistry work, sir, and that section of the project was mostly not a target of Security harassment and stayed slightly ahead of schedule.  Asmodia chose not to escalate by requesting your Security loyalists to harass Avaricia, and to instead document what she considered instances of harassment to be charged against Avaricia as her responsibility, which I - thought at the time was a doomed political gambit, and which I now acknowledge to be, perhaps, true service to Cheliax by her, at least at that time, perhaps always if her disappearance was not self-arranged."

Carissa Sevar: "So there was nowhere in the daily report to put 'Asmodia's project is doing poorly' and it accordingly did not get reported?"

Ferrer Maillol: "Sir, had Asmodia presented any estimated timeline of her research on roads, to establish a point of comparison, I myself would have expected it to be an overestimate of which she could say she was doing well despite all obstacles, and I would have rejected that estimate as having no basis.  Keltham was not wrong about the impossibility of making good project estimates on basic research, he was wrong about the implied possibility of Golarion natives making good estimates on projects far more straightforward than that."

Carissa Sevar: "Fail your save," she says, and casts Detect Thoughts.

Ferrer Maillol: The sudden shock of horror that goes through him isn't in words, thoughts in words being suddenly dangerous, but he has no choice but obedience now and obeys.

It's been too long since Ferrer Maillol has expected to need to control his thoughts, since he's been answerable to someone who could read his mind and also he had something to hide.

To almost-fifth-circle Detect Thoughts, there's more information, there, than Carissa will have seen when she was third circle.

- that Maillol himself would have been annoyed with this outcome but accepting of it, if not for the Asmodia part, that you can't reasonably ask people to sustain the kind of perfectly lockstepping performance they had around Keltham once Keltham is gone, Sevar is green and expects too much -

Carissa Sevar: "Tell me more about what can reasonably be expected of a Security team and project staff in Cheliax during wartime."

Ferrer Maillol: "On the Worldwound people will pull together temporarily in the middle of battles and blow off steam during their off hours, which has to be managed carefully if you want to prevent long-term damage or losses without" asking people to act like fucking paladins "creating the appearance that you are trying to take from them more than they have, more than they'd expect to be asked on other projects" such that they'd be better off if he had an unfortunate accident involving the complete consumption of his body.

- Sevar is green and has fundamentally unrealistic expectations about how well projects do, even losing Asmodia wouldn't have made his top five embarrassing project disasters if not for the part where Sevar has unrealistic expectations and will flip out about it, they did so well for a whole month of Project fucking Lawful running, this wouldn't seem like such bad news if Sevar hadn't been informed of it all at once -

Carissa Sevar: "I do not think that the only alternative to the Abyssal chaos that's been reigning on this Project is asking people to act like fucking paladins. I see there are whores here now; that's fine. I see there are slaves here now; that's good. Asmodia was being silly, and at the Worldwound would've had to grow up and learn how to keep herself out of trouble she didn't want, like I did. But if this is really and truly the best that can be expected of Chelish people, then she was right to give up on Cheliax, because we are doomed."

Ferrer Maillol: "Yes, sir."

- actually Cheliax continues to be even worse than she thinks, and if Osirion wasn't also worse than she thinks and Lastwall worse than she thinks, Cheliax would obviously have lost long ago -

- the strong rule and the weak suffer, it wasn't chaos the Sevar loyalists looked weak and Asmodia made them look weaker with all her talk of Cheliax's interests and not her own power and threat like she thought she was in fucking Lastwall wanted to believe she was in fucking Lastwall -

Carissa Sevar: "I see."

Carissa Sevar: "I have, after all, been taught a valuable lesson about Asmodeanism; I hope you are rewarded in Hell for it. I would like to continue this conversation in a torture chamber."

Ferrer Maillol: It does not come as an unpleasant surprise, only an unpleasant fulfillment of expectation, he knew this conversation would not end any other way.  "Yes sir."

- she won't break him Sevar doesn't break people only hurts them to make him stronger all his fault was that he failed to predict something that nobody could've predicted there was no way he could have done better, only incompetence not betrayal, Sevar won't forgive but she'll understand -

and, buried deep enough that at third-circle Carissa wouldn't have seen it at all, flickering enough that without a +6 intelligence headband she'd be unable to interpret it

- considered ordering Abarco to tell Security to tone it down some, but feared the further complications that might result if he was seen to intervene on the 'Crown' side of a supposedly Church-Crown conflict, and he could've tried to manage all that complication plus Subirachs but unholy Asmodeus what a pain in the ass -

- didn't seem worth it because Sevar wasn't as scary as Gorthoklek.

Carissa Sevar: "My present failure analysis," Carissa says very calmly, "is not that my expectations were too high, but that high expectations must be accompanied by correspondingly high motivation. You'd have done something if you anticipated Her Majestrix and the Most High getting involved, because they scare you. But you and Subirachs both figured I'd be angry, when I came back, and that would be fine. And so, if keeping the situation under control required any creativity, any deep-felt desperation, any doing things you didn't happen to want to do, it simply wouldn't happen.

It didn't matter, that Cheliax needs this project to survive this year. That's not the kind of thing that motivates you. It's weak, caring about things like that. It smacks of Good, really. The only Asmodean thing to care about, in the end, is yourself, and that is the reason why Asmodeus must use torture to get anything He wants."

Ferrer Maillol: "Yes sir."

- why did she pick NOW to figure that out why why why he's not strong enough not creative enough he didn't want to be here, this is why Sevar's in charge not him, she won't find any better, he was at the Worldwound for being the best Cheliax will be weaker if she breaks him -

Carissa Sevar: At that she feels real, genuine contempt, strong enough it startles her. "What the fuck is your plan for Hell, Maillol? Even if I figure out how to be as scary as Gorthoklek, and I'll try, I won't be as scary as the way you'll spend every day of your existence once you die."

Ferrer Maillol: no no no

"Didn't seem like a productive question to consider within Golarion, sir."

- Hell breaks everyone, doesn't matter what their plan is, he'd go to Axis if he could -

Carissa Sevar: There's a sort of sickening momentum to it, not like running right off a cliff, like looking down and realizing you ran off a cliff a long time ago. "Huh," she says, and her voice is steady. "If I wanted to go to Axis I imagine I'd just be a Good person. I can't relate, though. Imagine understanding all of that about human beings and not wanting to burn until it's no longer true of you."

She feels someone attempt to read her own mind. Clumsily; she could kick them out. She doesn't. There are no thoughts, in her, except that she's not a child anymore, and if she needs people to be afraid of her then she'll scare them whatever it takes. 

Ferrer Maillol: He can't think of what to say to that; his mind is a blank horror that you'd need Detect Anxieties to read, not Detect Thoughts.

Security: Security will help this old man walk out.

Carissa Sevar: She is only a little late for her planned 2am return to her office. She has her Glibness up; she is blandly unreadable. She sends for Olegario.

Olegario: Olegario walks in and immediately kneels to the Chosen, feeling mostly heartfelt relief and only a little terror.  He was loyal, he obeyed both orders and discipline.

Carissa Sevar: "You can sit. I'm trying to get an understanding of how the - factions within the project developed."

Olegario: Olegario will describe it faithfully as it seemed to him; Avaricia began it by stating... any political position at all, essentially, anything that wasn't strict Sevar orthodoxy, and then of course everyone who disagreed with her became Sevar loyalists; some thought it a matter of Church and Crown because almost everybody in Cheliax thinks that Church and Crown are choosable sides (even though it seems to him, Olegario, that Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn are aligned on most matters, and he'd wager that they see themselves as siding with each other against the recalcitrance of Cheliax below them both); he wondered what he would do if Asmodia approached him to seek aid, agonized over that, concluded there was no general answer but to do whatever he thought Sevar would have him do about the particulars; but Asmodia never asked him (and in this she was probably wise, Olegario does not see what could have ended well about that).  He knew that Sevar's interests were being challenged but he did not know how to defend them, without orders from above or even a request from Asmodia below; he is glad that this has ended well for Sevar's supremacy in Project Lawful, he did fear that she would be less dominant than before, upon her return from torment, but he sees that the opposite is true; and he prays that Sevar ascends in Hell and that he becomes greater rather than lesser than he was, when his soul is in her keeping.

Carissa Sevar: It's disappointing, on some level, for it not to have been more than that, more cleverness on Avaricia's part, more deft maneuvering by someone. She'd rather govern a den of vipers than a den of naked mole rats.

But Olegario himself, she is not disappointed in, and she says so. She thinks that he is right, in his assessment of the Queen and the Most High, and she thinks that the Most High would name him a better Asmodean than most, if Carissa presented the question to her, which she does not plan to. 

She has a few more questions, just to fill out her full picture of the timeline, and then tells him that she's acquired another loyal minion hoping that she'll become the Power in Hell that is whispered of these days. He's undergoing Security checks right now but should be here tomorrow, and Olegario can direct him as he sees fit, and kill him if he's useless, though it is her sincere hope he won't be.

Then, Avaricia. 

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Chosen."

Carissa Sevar: "I hope we're both clear on the fact I'd kill you if you weren't something of a bottleneck on our chemistry."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "I like to presume, sir, that if my contributions had been wanting up to this point, I'd have possessed less confidence in my judgement that Asmodia was up to something, and not mentioned it."

Carissa Sevar: "'Asmodia was up to something'? That's your take?"

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Yes, sir, that is what I believed and still believe, though with much less information than you."

Carissa Sevar: "And so you told the Security to bully her because she was probably up to something?"

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "No, sir. I confronted her, and said that she wasn't serving Cheliax, and that her priorities were a product of her disloyalty, and that I thought real Asmodeans would steer the project better. I think in dath ilan it would've been not my judgment but her superiors', but they, uh, seemed willing neither to make that judgment nor to ask me to stay quiet about mine, as I would have done if ordered. 

Then Security started giving her a hard time because of how she was a traitor."

Carissa Sevar: "She wasn't, you idiot. A heretic, yes, but a traitor, no, not until you made her one by showing her that Cheliax didn't value her and didn't have anything worthwhile for her and was fundamentally not possible for her to respect."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Why was she working on roads, sir?"

Carissa Sevar: "She was muddled. So are you. Forcing people to resolve their muddles in the direction of non-Asmodeanism is not in Asmodeus's interests, nor mine, nor yours."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "Sir, it was my hope that Asmodia would change course to work on weapons, to prove I was wrong and she far more valuable to Cheliax than I was. I didn't intend to push her away from Asmodeanism, but to challenge her to do something that mattered to save us."

Carissa Sevar: Avaricia believes what she's saying, which is only a testament to the power of Splendour for use at lying to yourself. "Liar," says Carissa all the same. "You wanted her to crash and burn so you'd get promoted and everyone would see that you're better than her."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "- both seemed like a satisfactory resolution, sir. I would win if I was stronger and she would win if she was; that's how it works. I don't begrudge my superiors their superior positions, if they have them for their merits."

Carissa Sevar: "And if Cheliax burned in the meantime?"

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "She was working on roads!!!  If you were counting on her to save us she wasn't doing it! If there was a complicated operation to gradually win over her loyalty and not make her do anything that offended her conscience in the meantime, like with Keltham, Maillol and Subirachs didn't tell me of it. And if we need roads for some bloody reason Asmodia didn't herself seem to know it."

Carissa Sevar: "Stop - reshaping yourself around the story you picked - you'd have done this even if she'd been working alongside you on spellsilver refining, you were chafing at being under her even on the Project where her job was absolutely essential -"

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "I never acted or spoke against her when her job was essential, sir."

Carissa Sevar: "Do you know what I think of you? I think you did this entirely out of pettiness, dislike of having to answer to someone who wasn't as Splendid as you, and the desire for power, and made up all the Asmodean justifications after the fact."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "- those are Asmodean justifications, sir."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "I have pride, I don't like being beneath my inferiors. I want to rise as far as my strength takes me. I want to crush my defeated enemies beneath my boots. You are enjoying the benefit of the ridiculous rumors that you're going to ascend and be a Power of Hell, if Cheliax does conquer the world under you you'll be in a position to genuinely attempt it, do you think Asmodeus will promote you just for having given him a lot of value? He's not fucking Abadar! There are eight dukes of Hell and if you want one of their jobs you will have to resent them, and challenge them, and crush them, and take their job from them."

She switches to Infernal, to a common prayer. "Asmodeus, may your will be done in this world as it is in Hell."

And back. "You know this, Sevar. What do you think you're doing to Maillol?"

Carissa Sevar: "Succeeding! Unlike you."

Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer: "See, that's fair. 'You lost, you're going to suffer for it', that's what this meeting is about, that's what this life and the next are all about. But don't name me a bad Asmodean for trying."

Carissa Sevar: "Sure. Congratulations. You're a very good Asmodean. Do we have any torture chambers not presently in use."

      "I think there's still one," says the Security at her door. 

"Get her out of here, then, and I guess delay the rest of my meetings until we have a vacancy."

Carissa Sevar: How about if she works on that Splendour headband now. She's honestly feeling kind of burned out on crafting but her brain is full of - something she doesn't quite like - and crafting feels like just the thing to quiet it. 

She only really needs to sleep tonight if she wants her spells back in the morning, and given how busy she presently is, she's not sure that's worth it. 

Carissa Sevar: When she calls Pilar in eight hours later she looks slightly manic but she has a +6 headband of Splendour to present to her. "Please use it to eat Cayden Cailean alive," she says flatly.

Pilar : "Acknowledged.  I'll try, but even if I succeed I can't promise that's not exactly Cayden Cailean's plan."  Pilar takes off her off her old Splendour headband without this having any effect large enough to show up in her expression, puts on the new one.  "I have twenty people who I chose from around Avistan, I hope, I pray, on the basis of them doing great from enduring whatever you think is necessary to create true ilani and Keepers.  Asmodia seemed to think that all of the previous, mess, happened simply because I didn't act without orders.  Or even try to advise Maillol and Subirachs.  My curse says that I could have retained Asmodia by being more proactive about what I knew would serve Asmodeus, which would've at worst have saved tens of thousands of Asmodean lives over the next year and at best have ruined Cayden's plan and left Asmodeus holding all of its gains."

Carissa Sevar: " - I'm going to spend today checking in on all the project groups and figuring out concretely where we're at on everything, but first thing tomorrow I'm going to give myself some Wisdom and try to crack Cayden's plan. Though, of course, if He thought I could've succeeded He probably wouldn't have told you that...

Anyway. I approve of you acting proactively in Asmodeus's interests. You are ordered to keep doing that. I know it makes you miserable and I don't care."

Pilar : "Acknowledged, sir.  It's very good to have you back."

Carissa Sevar: "I am looking forward to meeting your prospective ilani."

Pilar : "Permission to complain about Cayden Cailean, sir?"

Carissa Sevar: "Go right ahead."

Pilar : "I was trying to exchange one soul to Elysium for each one I took for Hell, so it would simultaneously serve Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus - like a boy in wizard school, hating himself and wishing somebody would beat him into doing his homework properly - and whose father was stealing from his master's shop to put him through that school - and my curse let me run out all of those I could find, before telling me that it wasn't necessary but Cayden Cailean appreciated the bonuses."

"I've never been so motivated to gain power in my life as by the thought that every circle is being ripped away from Him."

Carissa Sevar: Do you, Carissa wants to ask, ever feel like we're profoundly outclassed and being toyed with?

But even gods aren't infallible. "Well, if you want to level faster we can try what Her Majesty did with me, though it'd require some modification and also we really can't spare you right now."

Pilar : "Honestly, I am incredibly curious about what your punishment was, if it's permitted to ask."

(There was a Pilar once who would have never spoken that question out loud, if not told.)

Carissa Sevar: "Her Majesty summoned a devil from Hell to bind itself to me, and sit with me, and observe me in my crafting, and punish me every half-hour that I did not exceed my previous best performance, and put me to sleep when my grasp of the magic failed.

I hear Asmodia told Elias Abarco that he'd break in half an hour of whatever was being done to me, and I was really tempted to test that prediction for her, but I can't have him and Maillol out at the same time."

Pilar : "That's the hottest thing I've ever heard in my life.  If Abrogail Thrune ever wants me in love with her, she has my hairs.*"**

(*) As are often used to target magics.

(**) The old Pilar would never have dared even think this.

Carissa Sevar: Pilar is a very strange person and Carissa's going to count herself lucky there are twenty of them available on the planet. 

"Maybe get me a list of which of your would-be ilani are underlevelled, in your judgement, relative to their comprehension of magic."

Pilar : "There's only four who aren't.  Places that aren't Cheliax don't want to stress their little dears too hard, even the ones that are literally fucking begging their masters in words for harsher training."

Carissa Sevar: "Well. I think I can work with that. Good work, Pilar."

Pilar : Pilar smiles, slightly, for if Sevar says it then it's so.

Then she looks closely at Sevar's headband.  Wait, she was crafting that whole time -

Pilar casts Detect Magic, looks at Sevar's headband again.

Takes out her own Sevar-crafted glibness pin and looks at it.

Takes off her new +6 Splendour headband and looks at it.

"If we're both seen wearing these, people on the Project are going to know Cheliax has access to a time-dilated demiplane, sir," Pilar states.  "- People might guess that just from seeing one of them."

Carissa Sevar: " - if Cheliax has access to a time-dilated demiplane that's news to me."

Pilar : "Chaotic plane?  You were gone for barely over a month.  I've never heard of a crafter producing twelve +6 headbands in a year, there's - what, surely less than a hundred +6 headbands of intelligence in all of Cheliax, fewer of Wisdom, maybe slightly more of Splendour -"  Pilar's inner Asmodia is wailing about how they can't tell this fact to Keltham, the numbers won't add up.

Carissa Sevar: "I mean, it was somewhat unpleasant. Most people probably would rather work at a slow pace than craft until they hallucinate the Queen of Cheliax mocking them for their failures, and, really, unless you're trying to conquer the world what would you make twelve of them for anyway."

Pilar : "Kingdoms get founded around that kind of crafting capability.  Literally, you could work for two years and produce forty-eight +6 items, and pay them over to forty-eight recent sixth-circles and equivalent fighters to stomp a minor country for you.  If your wits ever stop being valuable to Cheliax, if they ever stop being this valuable to Cheliax, you're getting locked in a crafting workshop and never coming out, you know that, right."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't do anything other people shouldn't be able to do, they just don't bother for some reason!"

She is aware, as she says it, that it's neither an ilani nor an Asmodean way to think. 

Carissa Sevar: "I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I say, let them wonder what Cheliax has in its back pocket. It'll make them less likely to start a war."

Pilar : "None of my candidates are advanced enough to start on crafting magic items according to conventional schedules.  There's one who I think would do very well with that devil system, maybe on something like twelve days on two days off, but he'd have to actually know how to craft first -"

"- wrongthought, I'm not thinking about this right.  My candidates are potential ilani candidates, or I tried to look for those, and those are far more valuable than crafters.  If you just want a crafter to retrain, I can go out one night looking for a crafter who'll do well with harsher training and more pressure -"

"- still wrongthought, I'm trying to please you, and that's not Cheliax's priority or Asmodeus's interest.  My own estimate is that Asmodeus needs ilani and Keepers from you, not crafters, not even completely fucking absurd crafters.  Confirm?"

Carissa Sevar: "Confirm. The reason I want to do that to them, or something like it, is that I think they need to understand what pain can achieve that nothing else can. But maybe they're all like you and understand that intuitively."

Pilar : "Important note.  The first candidates I looked for were ones a lot like me, including being able to take as much pain as I can, ideally with less Goodness as a flaw.  Then my curse started to feel like it was straining.  I thought about it for a while and for the next candidates I went seeking those who can take - unfairness, strict training, who won't try to run away from a game where they're always losing.  But they can't take the same intensity of pain as me, or at least not yet.  You could hold them to a task with a whip without breaking them, even for a month at a time, but not use a devil.  My tentative guess is that what's needed is - accepting frequent punishment, unfair punishment, wanting and needing to being held to a harsh standard by your trainers - and not that there's some step of the training that requires very intense pain."

"If I was wrong about that, we've still got nine who can take anything I can."

Carissa Sevar: "I suspect you're right, and I'd be more sure you were except that Hell uses harsh pain, and so maybe there's some step that actually requires that. If so, I suppose we'll encounter it somewhere along the way."

Pilar : "Should've thought of that myself.  Well, if we're lucky, it's not necessarily an early step and we can train better endurance before we get to it.  Otherwise, Asmodeus is going to have very few Keepers out of Golarion - at least of pure human blood."

Carissa Sevar: "If we can get him two, I'll consider this to all have been worth it."

Carissa Sevar: And next up: reading the letters Asmodia sent to the Queen and the Most High before she disappeared.

Iarwain: It's a failure analysis of Sevar's whole Project, heavily but unobtrusively censored by the copyist!  It actually goes back to before Keltham-loss and notes that Sevar, the project leader, didn't like thinking about tropes and this was already a crippling vulnerability, possibly one that triggered on them, though this is hard to guess since Asmodia wasn't trying to own responsibility herself for making predictions.  In hindsight it seems incredibly obvious that the statue plan would trigger some kind of challenge, and one that Asmodia made very little effort to prepare for seriously, and wasn't given orders by anybody in her chain of command otherwise including the Queen and Most High, both of whom should've been paying far more regular visits and allocating far more resources to the most important Project in Cheliax.  If they didn't otherwise have any +6 intelligence headbands available for Sevar, they should've statued some sixth or seventh circle wizard who was simply not as important as Sevar.

Everything that happened in the Project after Sevar left seems predictable in hindsight and Sevar should've left more detailed orders about that instead of refusing to think about it.

Everything that happened after Sevar left is pathetic.  Pilar had the power to prevent all of this but doesn't like acting without orders.  Pilar understands tropes, like Asmodia, and is a faithful Asmodean, unlike Asmodia, who could've advised Maillol and Subirachs.  If the Most High and the Queen don't want to put Pilar in charge they need to come run the Project themselves because nobody else with authority understands tropes and idiot Securities are pressuring Yaisa into having sex with them and at some point somebody's going to go too far and Keltham is going to stomp into the fortress with an army just in time to rescue her.  Nobody is keeping track of this because they don't like thinking about tropes.

Systems in Cheliax look nothing like Hell and Cheliax should stop pretending that it has an Asmodeanism in hand that even slightly works.  You know the thing Keltham mentioned in animal breeding about how you need to breed chickens according to the success of the coop, because if you breed chickens by individual size you get chickens that bully others and steal their food and the group's output is actually weakened?  That's it.  That's all Cheliax is, right now.  People can't think clearly about the consequences of current aspects of the system because they'll be labeled traitors if they do.  Asmodia is a traitor, if you can call somebody that who doesn't even pretend to be loyal, and it should not have fallen to her to do the failure analysis on this shitshow.  If Asmodeanism wants to change, it needs an actual loyal Asmodean who can say that everything's terrible.

Asmodia isn't particularly spared from her own analysis; it notes that the apparent leader of the remaining Sevar loyalists had no Splendour that didn't come out of a spell and no idea how to run a political battle and didn't want to be there and wasn't loyal to Cheliax; that’s not a good thing when a research manager’s primary stat is supposed to be fighting Chelish political battles in order to prove her worthiness to be allowed to get any research done for Cheliax.  Asmodia lied to herself about whether better roads would be any use to Cheliax, because she was uncomfortable doing anything that would give Cheliax a real military advantage; and managed to be muddled about that, as was in her own interests the moment that Sevar, the only person with any appreciation for having bad slaves instead of muddled ones, stepped out of the Project, and Asmodia's mind knew she could only obtain her goals by being muddled and not admitting to herself what she was doing.  The Queen and Most High know better than this too, and Asmodia does not understand why they abandoned this project to the likes of Maillol and Subirachs.  Why are they even taking Sevar away to be punished this much?  It's so obviously the wrong time!  At least make it clear that Sevar is going to be okay when she comes back!  So much of this political battle is being produced by uncertainty about whether Sevar is coming back at all, or will be the same Sevar when she does!  Asmodia has a hard time believing that the Queen and Most High are doing this as a mistake and suspects some goal at work that Asmodia doesn't understand, but she's writing it down anyways just in case it actually is that much of a mistake, and to emphasize how much this unknown other goal is costing.

Everyone on this Project in anything like a management position without exception is a traitor to Cheliax.  Asmodia, Avaricia, Elias Abarco, Ferrer Maillol, Jacint Subirachs, none of them are doing what serves Asmodeus's interests.  Muddled people don't have the option of not being traitors.  Even Pilar is just doing what she finds comfortable and letting Asmodeus's interests go hang.  Asmodia knew she was a traitor and still ended up muddled because people can't think with Sevar gone.

Asmodia is now, at the last, acting entirely as she believes will benefit Cheliax, stupid as she is, bad as she is at predictions.  She does not know how to say these things carefully, politically, without insolence, without acting far far above her place.  But this is what serves Asmodeus, she knows so now that she has realized her own muddledness, and she intends to preserve her own ability to pass truthspells about that.  If the Most High and Queen crush her for that crime, then that's as much Law as Cheliax has in it, and it'll be weaker for not being able to hire and keep Asmodias.  Though, that's if Keltham doesn't storm in with an army to rescue Asmodia right as the torture is about to begin.  Asmodia isn't relying on that, or trying to use it as negotiating leverage, she's saying it because PEOPLE NEED TO ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT TROPES.

If Sevar returns from torture broken, every dream of Cheliax's is dead.  Asmodia has no idea what strategic goal is worth even removing Sevar for so long, but somebody needs to pull Sevar back to the Project right now.

If anything tropey happens to Asmodia as a result of setting herself up for this much character jeopardy, Asmodia is willing all her possessions including her legal share of the Project to Pilar Pineda, and her last wish to Pilar is that Pilar grows the fuck up.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa had been assuming that Asmodia ran off to join Keltham, but she's slightly less sure of that after finishing the letter.

....and then consciously corrects back, because the Asmodia who was going to run away with Keltham could presumably produce compelling misdirection. Still most likely that's what happened.

Carissa does not see how she could have thought to order Maillol "also, don't let the project immediately descend into stupid factionalism based on imaginary versions of the politics between the Queen and Most High and if it does, don't let random bullies who you've put in Security uniforms impair the top researchers" without the hypothesis in mind he might be that much of an idiot, though it's fair to say there must have been some previous correlate of that level of idiocy that she failed to notice.

She misses Asmodia, she realizes, reading it. Without Asmodia, without Keltham, it's like there's a whole kind of Detect spell and only she has any idea what it sees.

Carissa Sevar: Hopefully Asmodia is in Hell and learning the costs of defying Asmodeus, and that's all there is to say about that.

Carissa Sevar: And with all that squared away, Carissa begins her review of what everyone in the project is working on. You have to hit the ground running, especially if you have incapacitated most of your subordinates.

Somewhere Else

Asmodia: "Okay, I had the thought, I hoped, but I didn't actually think I'd meet you here."

Peranza of Civilization: "You came here the first time you were in Hell, too, didn't you?  It's not just me, it's going to be all of us?"

Asmodia: "Sure looks even more probable now."

"Keltham's out.  He told Cheliax under truthspell, before he left, that if Cheliax misbehaved he'd tell Osirion to draw a circle on a map and then he'd destroy everything inside the circle.  Sevar went off to be tortured for it, and the Project went to shit almost instantly.  I think Cheliax is fucked, if we're far enough outside the story's scry radius that it's not tempting the tropes to say so."

"Now, what actually happened with the enormous Peranza mystery?  I'd say I'm dying to know, if not for, you know."

Peranza of Civilization: "I saw through all the lies during an Owl's Wisdom, and, in the few rounds I had before Security acted, prayed to Iomedae to try to tell Her everything I could about the Project."

Asmodia: "Unholy shit, Peranza!"

"Did you - figure out, that you'd -"

Peranza of Civilization: "Nope.  More of an impulse action, really."

"I'm told I detect Lawful Good now, to beings that can see the alignments of petitioners' souls."

Asmodia: "I'm not realistically going to top that."

Peranza of Civilization: "What are you in for?"

Asmodia: "Left the story of my own decision, by staging an elaborate murder-suicide-escape-or-kidnapping mystery which hopefully brings a storm of higher authority down on Project Lawful and gets Security to stop acting like dicks towards Project members."

Peranza of Civilization: "I hope whatever you did, did not actually benefit Cheliax, what with them being Evil and the hurting people and the maybe war with Osirion and the people going to actual Hell not here."

Asmodia: "Thanks, Iomedae."

Peranza of Civilization: "You're very welcome, Otolmens."

Asmodia: "Say what?"

Even Somewherer Else

Cayden Cailean: I'm not actually feeling good about this decision.

Milani: Surely You are not about to tell Me that You feel sorry about Asmodia.

Cayden Cailean: Of course I feel sorry about Asmodia.  She spoke Keltham's name three times, and snapped her fingers, like in a dath ilani story he'd told her, trying to invoke tropes to save herself, and he didn't appear to save her even at the very end, and then she cried and then she killed herself.  We chose for that to happen.

Milani: Asmodia gets to go to the Gardens of Erecura and rest!  Iomedae isn't wrong that a lot of more deserving people have worse things happen to them on a regular basis!

Cayden Cailean: Pretty sure that if you told her about both options, she'd take the other one.

Nethys: (The other option, according to Nethys's walkthrough left to them, is for Milani to suggest to Otolmens that Otolmens buy Asmodia's soul from Asmodeus so that She can make the Otolmens-sympathetic mortal Her cleric; and for Otolmens to send Her cleric as an envoy to Osirion, to get the anomaly back in the anomaly containment zone; and for Her to pay Asmodeus for the creation of a neutral territory inside the Ostenso region, so that can happen.

Timed correctly, Asmodia says Keltham's name three times and snaps her fingers; and then a Gate opens just outside the edge of the Forbiddance nearest her; and then, a few seconds later, a pit fiend walks out.)

Milani: Accepting that as a fair point on Asmodia's individual basis, the other stakes are so much larger, and the fate of Asmodia so much less grim than many others', that to mourn this turn genuinely does strike Me as stupid rather than respectful.

Cayden Cailean: I'm not questioning this decision because I feel bad for Asmodia missing out on the rest of her storyline, although I obviously do.  I only even mentioned that part because You asked and because I knew it would annoy You.

Milani: Among the many crimes that Pharasma committed against reality was constructing an alignment system in which You and I are in the same sector.

What's the actual problem?