lintamande: Abarco looks to the seventh-circle in case he's supposed to do something else with his free spell slots.

Hadrian: "Put them up partially, so she can observe, and then take the manifold down before completion, so you don't lose the slots."  He'd ordinarily hesitate to go with even that much, it distracts Abarco, but they may have to escape to Hell in the very worst case and Sevar having those slots then may help.

Carissa Sevar: Right, then. Carissa wants to be a fifth circle wizard and with the world's fanciest headband, Arcane Sight, and a cooperative existing fifth circle wizard trapped in a room with her she ought to be able to do it. And it'll take her mind off the possibility of Cheliax being annihilated by her boyfriend. 

If they do have to flee to Hell, they'll be glad if she can hang the Teleport anyway; Plane Shift won't land neatly on a fortress between Avernus and Dis, like Aspexia's Gate did. 

Carissa Sevar: And while she does that, she thinks. 

Keltham, what are you doing? What conceivable plan involved refusing to trade with anyone but Lawful Evil until I sold my soul, and then allowed for trade with the Padishah Empire? Did you have something to do with the assassination attempt at the party?

What would you do, if you were Keltham, and had fled Cheliax?

....why is she scared to think about that?

Carissa Sevar: Quite abruptly, Carissa Sevar casts True Seeing with her crown. 

Nothing happens. 

Because she's not in a dreamscape of Abrogail's, and not already kidnapped by Keltham in a clever fashion that he for some reason wasn't yet revealing, and these are in fact Olegario and Abarco and the new seventh-circle assigned to monitor her.

If a more important occasion to cast True Seeing comes up she's going to feel like an idiot. 

lintamande: " - is there something -" says Abarco, in the middle of patiently assembling his Teleport while Carissa attempts to mirror him. 

Carissa Sevar: "No. Just feeling paranoid."

lintamande: "Right. - the lower cross at your four-o-clock is sticky."

'sticky' is what happens when you've miscalculated a spellform slightly, and the magic is interacting with nearby magic that it was meant to be noninteractive with. It can ruin a spellform, or just make it sloppy and more energy intensive than it'd need to be. 

Carissa Sevar: Carissa wishes Elias Abarco was either slightly more, or slightly less, of a dick. He could pick either, really! 

She fixes the lower cross at her four-o-clock. 

Carissa Sevar: There's the optimistic hypothesis, that Keltham was going to do something to benefit Lawful Evil at everyone else's expense. Which implies the interpretation that he's now...also going to benefit the Padishah Empire? ....doesn't quite fit. She isn't sure how to break down 'doesn't quite fit' into pieces she could be ilani at, but it feels like she's trying to write a story, not seeing a set of motivations Keltham might really have beneath the actions she can see. 

Under less optimistic hypotheses, he was willing to trade unfairly with Lawful Evil people because they trade unfairly, and the trade wasn't, in fact, fair. 

If Keltham had been planning to conquer the world, he wouldn't want to trade with people he was about to conquer, to present himself as engaged fairly with them when in fact acquiring the resources to destroy them. And maybe, in panic about Carissa selling her soul, he's now....decided to conquer the world less the Padishah Empire?

Also doesn't fit. If Keltham had to pick someone to not conquer, the Empire is probably unusually bad by dath ilani sensibilities. It has slavery, not halfassed Osirian Abadar-friendly debt slavery but full proper human slavery and a slave trade. It is engaged in wars of conquest of its own. 

...maybe Keltham decided it counted as effectively Lawful Evil, or the Emperor revealed secret proof of his Lawful Evil to Keltham, and she's way overthinking this.  

Carissa Sevar: If you're confused, something's missing, from your picture of reality. What is she confused about. 

Where to start. 

Why Keltham stopped trading with everyone. Why Keltham told her it would be better for Cheliax if she didn't sell her soul. Why Keltham started trading with the Empire. Why Cayden Cailean didn't want Carissa to sell her soul full-price. What greater-Carissa wanted and was planning. What Nethys is playing at, here, why Nefreti said she couldn't help Keltham - and then kidnapped Ione, who by all accounts is helping the Scientific Revolution, so maybe Nefreti was just lying -

Why Zon-Kuthon attacked the Project, when He in fact wouldn't have minded Asmodeus taking over the world. How Osirion's spies are so effective. How the Rovagug cultists found out where Keltham was being kept, and how they were able to get right to his bedroom. Why Cayden/Nethys warned the Project about that. Why Dispater offered to make Asmodia and Peranza retroactively never have suffered, that was in hindsight not a remotely normal kind of god-clause, she was just too busy evaluating it as a test to evaluate it as anything else. Why Asmodia killed herself, if it wasn't because she knew she'd go to the Gardens, and if it was, how she could've known something she caused by killing herself - no, that's probably just 'Erecura, too, still has a scrap of prophecy' -

- what does it mean to still have a scrap of prophecy, what are Nethys and Erecura doing -

Why Cheliax hasn't attacked Osirion, if war is inevitable, Nidal's disposed-of, and Keltham's bluffing about his ability to destroy Cheliax. Why Osirion hasn't forced Cheliax to terms, if Keltham's not bluffing.  

Carissa Sevar: There's a problem with the comforting theory that the Padishah Empire is just Lawful Evil too. Keltham has been at whatever he's up to for a while; he did that the day Carissa left to sell her soul. That strongly favors explanations that have something to do with Carissa selling her soul. 

What does Carissa selling her soul change, for Keltham?

Maybe it means that he - lost hope - that she would oppose Cheliax and oppose Hell. Which - he can't have been considering that all that likely to begin with. 

Could he? From an outside perspective it does seem like many people, infected with ilanism, become opposed to Hell. However, Asmodia wanted to go to Abaddon, Carissa feels like it is straightforwardly obvious if you've ever met Carissa that she isn't going to become opposed to Hell for Asmodiaish reasons. 

She kind of did become opposed to Hell for Carissaish reasons. Namely how it's wasteful and not very good at what she thinks should be its job and keeps turning people into paving stones when they're possible to use better than that. Namely the thing she said to Maillol, stupidly, yesterday, that she does owe him something, she owes it to him to make as much of him as she can. That's heresy, of course, but - Asmodeus did compact with her - does Keltham know about Asmodeus's compact with her? Did that change his plans, make them more the sort of plans that are in line with the interests of people on Golarion?

Carissa Sevar: What if Nefreti Clepati wasn't lying. What if it's true, that she can't help Keltham, that Nethys can't help Keltham, and it's just that the Scientific Revolution doesn't help Keltham, because Keltham is not, at this point, aiming to build Civilization on Golarion. Doesn't have any goals on Golarion at all.

Because he's trying to kill Asmodeus. 

Carissa Sevar: It's totally what he'd do.

Carissa Sevar: she loves him very much.

Carissa Sevar: Snack Service insists it's serving Asmodeus's interests somehow. How? Well, see, Keltham is planning to kill Asmodeus, and Nethys and Cayden are steering for - something better for Good than killing Asmodeus, but also better for Asmodeus than killing Asmodeus, which would have to be pretty much anything - 

- there's that prophecy, that if Asmodeus is threatened He'll unleash Rovagug to eat the threat, and then the whole universe will be consumed -

Carissa Sevar: - and it'd be just like her idiot boyfriend, to decide that's a THREAT and he's IGNORING IT -

Carissa Sevar: - there's a thought knocking at the back of her skull, waiting to be thought, a terrible and dangerous one.

Carissa Sevar: She's in a Mage's Private Sanctum. Her boyfriend is planning to murder her god. It had better speak up, whatever it is. 

Carissa Sevar: This is approximately the most unpleasant-to-acknowledge possible reality, ever, in all of history, but - 

- if that's what Good has been playing for - 

- they've been helping her. They've been right.

Carissa Sevar: Asmodeus does not make good use of the souls under His care. He does not make good use of the souls under His care because that is not His only value; He holds it alongside other desires, like for people to have absolute power over one another, the power to make them suffer excessively for no reason. You could have a Lawful Evil god of the words that Carissa spoke to Maillol, that she has a duty to make him stronger and not weaker, that her ownership of him does not permit her to destroy him carelessly for no reason -

- but that god wouldn't be Asmodeus. 

People don't want to go to Hell because Hell is a bad place. They are choosing Abaddon instead because Hell is a bad place. It is so hard to find ilani who can also be Asmodeans because if you have any other choices you shouldn't, actually, serve the god of being allowed to destroy your subordinates for no reason, out of incompetence or because it's momentarily funny.

Asmodeus sucks, and if not for the thing where He'll destroy the world if you try to destroy Him, Keltham would be right, to want to attempt it. 

Carissa Sevar: If she does go to Hell and get all the paving stones to fix they're going to be - unimaginably worse than Maillol. And no one did that by accident because they sincerely believed that they had to learn how to torture people, they did it because they wanted to. 

Carissa Sevar: It's not, actually, hard to see, not at all, not once you look. A little child could see it. 

Probably destroying people is bad, actually. Even if you don't have to look at them and talk to them afterwards. Even if you never have to think about them again. 

Nethys saw that Keltham, when he learned what Asmodeus was really like, would try to kill Him. And by default that would definitely be a complete disaster. So Nethys - and Cayden Cailean - have been carefully maneuvering to arrange terms that Asmodeus can accept, terms that are better than 'killing Asmodeus' for Asmodeus, and better for Good than - well, potentially they just have to aim for 'better than literally everything being destroyed by Asmodeus' -

Carissa Sevar: - how could she have heard that story and not had her faith snap instantly, how could she have ever worshipped something that was willing to destroy the world -

Carissa Sevar: Cayden's interventions all served Asmodeus in that they set up some compromise Asmodeus is going to be willing to agree to to avert a war. The compromise might in fact involve Carissa becoming a Power in Hell who does not destroy people, ever, even the ones she actually hates. The half-Wishes deal was better than the full-Wishes deal because it prompted Carissa to ask for the rights to those souls that seek her.

That's - threading an entire universe through the eye of a needle - but if anyone could do that, Nethys could. 

Carissa Sevar: The reason Nefreti said she couldn't help Keltham in any way is that if Nethys just said to Asmodeus 'look, that there mortal is going to destroy you unless you accept our compromise', Asmodeus would check if Nethys put that mortal there to pull that off. It's important, that Keltham is not a cleric of Abadar, not assisted by Nefreti Clepati, that humans, alone put him where he is, because humanity wanted Asmodeus dead -

Carissa Sevar: ...the reason that Cayden was mysteriously working against Iomedae is probably that Iomedae is all in favor of Asmodeus being murdered, who cares if that destroys the world -

Carissa Sevar: It all fits, it has a sort of terrifying clarity to it, a hundred puzzles reduced to only two or three, and she suspects those aren't the important ones, brushes past them mentally in the heady rush of realization. 

And it makes sense of greater-Carissa, who must have had the same realizations and then gone to work on -

She cannot, quite, fathom the courage it would have taken, to realize all this and decide that in order to enable a compromise she needed to go sell her soul to Dispater. She's....pretty sure Dispater won't be amused if she in fact dies and shows up party to a conspiracy to - well, technically she's not party to a conspiracy to kill Asmodeus, she's party to a conspiracy to force Asmodeus to terms so that Hell can be run by someone who won't destroy people, such as, for example, herself. 

Or maybe He'd think that hilarious. Maybe He knew all along. 

Carissa Sevar: Anyway. Current leading hypothesis: Keltham got nervous when she went a couple of days without rederiving their plan and caused a scare so she'd get stuffed into a Mage's Private Sanctum so she'd figure it out. 

Secondary hypothesis: this was a genuine kidnapping/rescue attempt that went wrong somehow. 

Tertiary hypothesis: Nethys was steering for something even weirder and more hyperspecific than 'she rederives the plan'.

Evidence in favor of the secondary hypothesis: this is actually a fucking terrible time and place to rederive the plan. If she'd figured it out this morning she could probably just have bluffed her way out of the Forbiddance, no problem. But at this moment she is locked in a large iron box with three wizards far more prepared for combat than she is, only one of which is loyal to her and possibly would change his mind about that if he were aware that she was apparently a coconspirator in a plan to overthrow Asmodeus. 

Carissa Sevar: Does she have some spectacularly clever way to kill three Security with the advantage of surprise and a lot of Fire Resistance but no other particular resources. 

....no, she really doesn't.  She's not a combat caster; she's not done preparing her spells, she's going to have fewer spells than usual, and they're going to be incredibly suspicious if she starts casting anything even slightly useful. 

....could she scrap her lesser artifact headband for spellsilver and make it into three Arrows of Greater Slaying, in the next couple hours, if she worked really hard on it. ....no. Quite aside from how intrinsically horrifying it is to contemplate destroying an item like this, and the fact it's probably only destructible by the will of Dispater or immersion in the Lethe or something, and the fact she'd still have to stab them with the Arrows of Greater Slaying, she could probably make one today if she worked at quadruple the normal crafting pace. Not three.

Keltham, did you have a plan, here, or was I supposed to get myself out of this one myself?

Carissa Sevar: I have to say, Keltham, I think by any reasonable definition we're firmly into Complicated Romance, at this point. 

Carissa Sevar: It's funny. Figuring it out happened all at once, in a moment of blazing clarity. And the first time, she must've had no time for anything after that, no time for - revulsion, or horror, or self-loathing, she was so busy working out the next steps of the plan, she had so little time in which to take a step back and look at anything - but now, the next steps of the plan require her to finish this here Teleport she's building, and it's not done yet, and so there's lots of time, to look back at it and really see it. 

She's awful. She assumes that it had to be her, for some reason, that Nethys saw a trillion trillion ways it could go and there wasn't a better one, but - she's awful. She wouldn't worship her. People do, but - only out of desperation, presumably, only because Asmodeus has set the bar so terrifyingly astoundingly low. There's not actually anything to worship. She was horrible to Keltham. She was horrible to Maillol. She was horrible to Peranza and the Security watching Peranza and the Security she had ripped apart and the Mayor and in every single case it was for nothing, it did not advance her goals, it was just that she thought she was supposed to be and she thought everyone would be impressed with her and so she did it. She was presented with peoples' lives, their eternal fates, their whole selves, people who trusted her, people who believed in her, and she decided what to do based on what would suppress her cognitive dissonance most. 

She isn't worthy to be a god. She kind of wants to curl up and be a paving stone until she's fixed except - it doesn't fix anything, does it, turning people into paving stones. Everything she said to the Mayor was true of herself as well. Incoherent, cheap, pathetic Evil, doing whatever happens to be in front of you, utterly devoid of principles. Selfish, hollow. Except she was wrong to think that Hell was any better. Less petty, maybe, but if anything more wasteful, because in humans there is the impulse against wastefulness, the voice that she's stopped listening to but that absolutely did warn her every time - and in Hell that is quieted -

Carissa Sevar: It is kind of astonishing that Keltham agreed to keep working with her at all. Or maybe he didn't, and Peranza and Asmodia were his conditions, maybe he told her to go sell her soul if she really wanted to start making things right - she'd have done it -

Carissa Sevar: (Somewhere, distantly, she notices that actually her thoughts are still not adding up, that she's missing something important. Much less than she was missing ten minutes ago, definitely, but - enough to potentially be consequential.)

Carissa Sevar: Whatever it is she will probably figure it out once she's not trying to simultaneously prepare a fifth-circle spell and keep her face totally unreadable to three observers who are on edge and have very good Sense Motive. She suspects that's kind of cramping her style. 

Carissa Sevar: It doesn't really feel very like Keltham, to order her to sell her soul and then after she erased the memory of the conversation order her not to. Obviously she wasn't going to listen to him, but still. It's a weird order to give if you think she's obviously not going to listen. 

Carissa Sevar: It also doesn't feel very like Keltham to not just kidnap her last night. Well, probably Palace security's pretty good, but this situation merits a Wish-kidnap and at minimum she could've been grabbed while leaving Avernus.

Is it possible she - wasn't coordinating with him? 

Carissa Sevar: ....in that case he is probably terrified of whatever the fuck she's doing. 

Just give me twenty minutes, Keltham, I'm coming.  

...she's now unreasonably upset that Maillol isn't going to get his vacation on account of her defecting. She told him he'd get it. Of all the things to find upsetting about having realized that she needs to overthrow her god before her boyfriend tries to kill Him. 

....maybe she can fix that. It's not the best possible trade of credibility for results, but - but she feels like every single fact about the world she could point to as a fact about who Carissa Sevar is, right now, is a sickening and horrible one, and - she can't just -

"If we're going to be in here a while, I request this morning's communications from Egorian, read out to me if that's easier than bringing them here. It seems possible that disrupting all our operations incredibly thoroughly with a single scry is what Keltham was going for, here."

Hadrian: Sounds mentally painful.  He's glad he doesn't have to do it.  Wouldn't do it in any case, he's not having both Sevar-nonloyalists present being distracted at the same time.

"Abarco, get whoever's on the other end of your Telepathic Bond to read her comms to you, you're on relay."

Asking somebody to do that at the same time they prepare spells requires you to be pretty good, but Abarco's not really prepping those spell slots, and if his manifold collapses it just makes Abarco look stupid, which is a price Hadrian himself is willing to pay.

lintamande: That sounds very unpleasantly distracting, actually, but if Sevar thinks she has enough concentration to pay attention he probably has enough attention to repeat what he's hearing. 

Carissa Sevar: She's pretty sure without the artifact headband her scaffold would in fact have collapsed as soon as she started having a stupid emotional crisis, but if that didn't do it, her mail won't. And she can sense that she's intensely distracted, her thoughts racing unproductively down tangents, hiccuping over important considerations and circling back to them, not at her best - it's just, she didn't even need to be at her best, to notice this -

lintamande: Elias Abarco will irritably read Sevar her mail.

Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune: Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune does know literally one competent project manager, an ally in good standing of his, but the first question this project manager asks will be what happened to Carissa Sevar's last project manager, a piece of information notably missing from her last message.

(Unspoken:  In political principle, Carissa could pull Crown authority to get the guy assigned to her willy-nilly; but Carissa Sevar would need to offer a hell of a favor to pry his name out of Alexite if she didn't take good care of her last project manager.)

Carissa Sevar: Well, that's a plausible justification for arranging Maillol a nice resort vacation, at least? Though she's still worried he's going to be recalled from it if she hasn't acquired a new project manager. Maybe she can put Pilar on it. 

Does he recommend any resorts?

Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune: He listed off two options depending on whether she wants somebody to be able to escape their vacation or not.

Carissa Sevar: Ah, Cheliax. Carissa is genuinely and sincerely going to miss it. 

Not that much. 

She would like Maillol to spend a week at the resort that is not a prison, and will send them a note to that effect, emphasizing that Maillol is a valued person to the Chelish state if he recovers.

She will write back to Alexite saying apologetically that the resort is in fact for the last project manager. She is confident she won't make that mistake again but understands he might not want to rely on that. 

Carissa Sevar: There's a lot of other stuff she'd have put on this scaffold, if she'd known her plan when she started preparing spells, but that'd probably arouse their suspicion, and she can't afford that; this plan goes most smoothly if they're not worried there's a plan at all. She doesn't think that squeezing a Silent Image onto the end will similarly attract concern; she prepares that one a fair bit, for lectures. 

She listens to the rest of her mail, authorizes a couple of things, and starts tying the spells off.

Teleport, Greater Invisibility, Fly, Detect Thoughts, Silent Image. She should in principle be able to prepare way more spells than that but this is an incredibly sloppy scaffold. It's probably all the emotional distress. 

Carissa Sevar: Here goes, then. 

She'd love her Glibness pin but activating it would be incredibly suspicious. "I have some guesses to convey about what Keltham might be doing."

Hadrian: "Can relay."

...guesses she worked out while doing a decent second-attempt 5th-circle scaffold, and also answering her mail, apparently...

Carissa Sevar: "He's smart; we were obviously going to move me to safety on a probe from a scry, so that was intended. Intended why? Maybe he's going to destroy the Project site and wanted me out of the way first, except in that case I'd have expected the followup very shortly after. Maybe he's planning to Discern Location and come after me while I'm obviously going to have fairly little Security by comparison. Maybe he's planning something wildly more complicated than that, but regardless I'm in retrospect unhappy that we did the precise by-the-book thing in response to his perturbation; it means we are definitely precisely where he planned for and wanted. 

I'm somewhat tempted to go to Dis off that alone."

Or to, you know, hold hands and smile while you cast a Plane Shift to Dis, at least.

Hadrian: "Try to route to Her Majesty or do you want to bid for my making the call on that here and now?  Base site doesn't currently have direct comms to anyone with more relevant authority than mine."

Carissa Sevar: "Osirion has bizarrely good intel on us, always has, we have no idea why. If you can't reach Egorian directly I say decide yourself."

Hadrian: "You're the Keltham expert.  I'll make the call, but if you don't think we need to run out right now, talk to me for a half-minute about what you think here, what decision you'd make if it was you, why you'd make that call."

Carissa Sevar: "Keltham did something that was obviously going to be noticed, and has not yet followed it up with anything else. The obvious effect of what he did was myself and I assume probably also Her Majesty being immediately taken to safely. Anyone with knowledge of Chelish procedure would have predicted that. Therefore, it's probably the intended result. 

I don't know what he's playing at. Dath ilani stories feature very complicated plans; they're all clever sexually frustrated sadists and they like it that way. My only takeaway from the fact I can't understand his plan is that it's bad news. I don't know where we are, but Keltham does, and that gives me a bad feeling.  If we wouldn't have sent me and Abrogail to bunkers because he told us to then we shouldn't have done it now. 

I don't think he'll predict Dis. People don't just walk right into Hell, it's not safe at our level except for how I'm Dispater's favored possession which he likely doesn't know yet, and even if he talked the entire Padishah Empire into coming to pick me up they'll refuse him, if I'm in Hell. For a wide variety of possible plans - anything involving kidnapping me, or demanding Cheliax return me if I love Abrogail more, or destroying Cheliax if it doesn't hand me over, or assassinating me - being in Dis thwarts them."

Hadrian: He considers, while also relaying the words through his Telepathic Bond, and makes the call.

They are in fact underneath Asmodeus's main temple in Ostenso - not wanting to move Sevar outside the noninterference zone to somewhere that gods could get at her - but an army to resist the Padishah Empire, that is not.  And the point about the action having no visible product except their own response action is giving him a bad gut feeling too.

"All right.  Let's go to Hell.  Abarco, you're first through the saferoom door."

lintamande: "Respectfully, sir, I should stay behind in case Sevar tries to ditch the Plane Shift."

Carissa Sevar: On second thought, she's not indifferent between slightly more competent and slightly less competent Abarco.

Hadrian: "Interesting idea, Abarco," says Commander Hadrian.

This fucking idiot.  Abarco did not need to say that out loud.  Well, Abarco will realize how he fucked up, once he gets the telepathic message that was already en route to relay, ordering Abarco silently to stay out of the Plane Shift so that a traitorous Sevar could just land on him.

(Partially it's his own fault, Hadrian is a fresh commander over Abarco and shouldn't have assumed Abarco knew Hadrian for a competent commander who'd think of that; should've warned Abarco of the plan by relay, before Hadrian said out loud that he was going along with it.  Not that this forgives anything.)

Carissa Sevar: "You have foiled the brilliant stroke of my master plan to pass up dozens of opportunities to desert, demand to sell my soul, do so, and then immediately desert," she says dryly. 

They reach the edge of the Forbiddance. Rescue Teleport, Keltham? No?

Iarwain: Even at INT 24, you can't predict a sequence of events like that, or time it precisely when somebody is in a scry-screened area.  INT 24 is not enough to knock billiards into billiards and make trick shots deliberately.

In fact, that person's strategy was skewed towards exploration rather than exploitation, as makes more sense at the beginning of a task, where information is at its most valuable when amortized over all remaining time.

His plan was mostly that he would poke Cheliax and then observe what happened next using a pair of Discern Locations on the subsequent movements of Carissa Sevar and Abrogail Thrune.

The result of the Discern Locations were that Carissa Sevar was moved to beneath Asmodeus's temple in Ostenso and Abrogail Thrune was Mind-Blanked.  This does narrow down a lot of previously-probable-from-his-perspective variance-in-possible-worlds.

Based on the prior exhibited competence of Cheliax, and their lack of any established fictional genre or real-life history about dath-ilani-style dueling geniuses, he does not expect that Cheliax has deduced what he's doing, deduced his probable table of probable possibilities, figured out his sensory modality is Discern Location, and selected a response optimized over the update he'll make as a result.  Augmented Golarion mortals do not appear to be that smart, they do not know the direction in which to try to be that smart even if they have the theoretical brainpower for it.

He's going to track that possibility anyways, of course, that they have visualized him partially or in toto and optimized a response to update him in their preferred direction.  Abrogail Thrune wouldn't have planned that far in advance, the Conspiracy didn't plan that far in advance, but Carissa Sevar has now had serious dath ilani exposure and been issued an artifact headband.

Iarwain: INT 24 isn't enough to predict a sequence of events like that.  It is enough to list out lots of possibilities and optimize over the probable ones.

That person did explicitly consider that Carissa, having obtained an artifact headband, had been cognitively perturbed, and might defect from Cheliax once out of her previous state of mind.

That person did moreover explicitly consider that Carissa might be more ripe for defection from Cheliax if she was put into a situation where her mind was knowably-to-her probably not being read, such as a situation which prompted high-powered Nondetection, or Mind Blank.

This situation - as is, in fact, not exactly what has occurred - was his major possibility #5, subpossibility #5.3.  Probability 3%.

Iarwain: That person credits 'tropes' less than he once did, having worked out some of the hidden rails of causality underneath, that gods were meddling too.  But he assigns weird coincidences a higher probability than if he hadn't run into all the weird shit he had.  Something is messing with probability around this planet.

It is worth the extra effort to give that force some small boosts and opportunities to mess in his favor, if it happens to be so inclined.  That 3% chance is not the only equivalence-class of outcome where Carissa Sevar defects for some reason, today, as a result of causality playing out from his plan.

Therefore, that person has placed himself where he can hear a Sending (he's protected against Demands, obviously).

And he also timed his probe by when - according to Ione Sala's allowable pre-Nefreti knowledge - Carissa Sevar would just be waking up, if she was sleeping according to her usual Ring of Sustenance habits.  He timed it for then plus 20 minutes.  That, he reasoned, ought to prevent Carissa from having already hung spells that day; and would give Carissa a chance to hang spells useful in defecting, if she ended up put under a Mind Blank to prevent Wishnapping by him, and the artifact headband boosts made her realize that serving Asmodeus was stupid.

Iarwain: INT 24 is not enough to predict an exact sequence of events.

So that outcome is not mostly what that person expects to happen.  He's not going to show up with a mercenary army unless Carissa manages to call him about that, or signal him in any number of possible ways.  There's all kinds of possible ways for Carissa to escape once Mind Blanked, right?  Probably the tropes will be with her.

If the only result of things playing out like that is for Carissa to break with Asmodeus, but find herself with no clever options besides confessing the fact to Cheliax before they Detect her thoughts about it, they'll presumably employ her the way Asmodia was employed, or put her into storage to trade to him.  In this case they no longer have a high-level ilani augment of their own to oppose him.  That isn't his optimally desired outcome, but it's an improvement over status quo ante.

Besides the information gained by Discern Location, most of that person's positive expectations of probe results are about cases where Cheliax initiates negotations with him to not destroy Cheliax.  What actually happened instead, here, is not something where he could afterwards say, "all according to plan".  But that's how it goes when you're merely INT 24.

Hadrian: And now Hadrian has to make a call.  Actually leave Abarco behind?  With Sevar forewarned, she wouldn't be catchable that way...

Or he could secretly order Abarco to come with, and bet on Sevar not being sufficiently confident of his doing that, to stay behind, if she's a traitor.  Which she probably isn't, and Abarco is potentially pretty useful in Hell... of course, the traitorous Sevar would expect him to reason like that...

Eh.  Sevar's point about not being predictable to ilani is well-taken.

Hadrian orders over telepathic bond for base to spin some coins or roll a die, whichever they can get to immediately, and have Abarco stay behind with 1/4 or 1/3 probability.

Commander Hadrian doesn't have a fancy artifact headband, but he does have native INT 17 and a +6 headband and has read some Project Lawful Transcripts, so he's not wholly at sea in this crowd.

Carissa Sevar: She really is going to miss it here. She takes Hadrian's hand, and Olegario's, and does not resist the Plane Shift.

Hadrian: Resist Energy (fire) for everyone.  Air Bubble for everyone.

Plane Shift to Avernus for everyone, roughly targeting an area he knows Cheliax sometimes passes through.  Abarco can stay behind if the probabilities went that way.

lintamande: They came out in favor of his coming with. He's here. 

Carissa Sevar: Carissa rolls her eyes at him. "My Teleport, I've been at this site most recently?"

Hadrian: It's not Hadrian's first time in Hell, but the endless background screaming isn't any less disturbing a second time.

They're no longer in a Mage's Private Sanctum.  He could Dispel his Nondetection on Sevar, order her to fail her Will Save against Detect Thoughts... the hypothetical enemy probably couldn't nail a Scry on her in a short time window... but he does not have prepped another of his more metamagiced Nondetections.  Realistically, they are in Hell, it is a dangerous place, Sevar has just sold her soul of her own will, and this will probably go better if they put aside some hesitations and work together.

"Go ahead and try it," he tells Sevar.  If she fucks up her very first Teleport, they'll not be any more lost than they are already.

Carissa Sevar: It's worse without the Planar Adaptation.

It's better with the knowledge that she needs to overthrow Asmodeus.

Carissa tries to hold in her mind the image of the fortress she left from just a few days ago, and Teleport the four of them.

Carissa Sevar: aaaaand in fact fucks it up. Well. Not that badly. This is the fortress but she managed to zap them all with discharging spell energy along the way, severely enough to kill a normal person but not actually all that badly for some fifth circle casters. 

- sorry, she almost says before she remembers she is Carissa Sevar and not the most junior member of this excursion. She will simply pretend that didn't happen, like any dignified Chelish person would.

Hadrian: "Anyone hit by that hard enough we should Infernal Heal?"

(no)

"All right, Sevar, what do we do here?"

Carissa Sevar: "Rugatonn did the talking. They all ask, do you offer a payment or a threat, and she said, 'I am the High Priestess of Asmodeus in Golarion about Asmodeus's business; you will serve me as is your duty,' and then they each let us through. I can talk, if you think they won't back off for you."

Hadrian: Hadrian weighs possibilities, concludes that with them being in literal Hell and headed to Dis he's mostly going to have to play this on the assumption Sevar isn't planning to betray them all.

"You'd know better than me whether devils would be more likely to back off for me or you... unless you don't know, in which case my guess is that our strongest threat does the talking, so that's me.  How do we get the outer gate to open at all?  I don't see anything resembling a knocker."

Carissa Sevar: "Aspexia Rugatonn just....knocked. The result was very loud, she might secretly have a strength of 30 or something. I don't know who devils would be likelier to back off for."

Hadrian: "I'll do the talking, I guess."  He knocks on the door... with an Admonishing Ray, he's not going to need nonlethal damage for anything else in Hell.

Iarwain: After a pause, the fortress door swings open, and a being comes forth like a withered cadavar made of bone.

Its eyes pass over the other mortals out of Cheliax, even the one stronger than itself; settles upon that mortal who was previously escorted by a 9th-circle priestess of Asmodeus and spoke before her, and now returns with a mighty crown of Hell upon her brow.

It waits for the strongest to speak.

Hadrian: "Hadrian of Cheliax, as is Asmodeus's country in Golarion and serves Him.  I am here escorting Carissa Sevar, who is named favored soul of Dispater, and we require entry to Dis."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar stands impassive and motionless behind him. 

Carissa Sevar: And behind her, a Silent Image in Infernal reads, 'they are not serve me, and should not pass alive.'

One of the verbs is conjugated slightly wrong, not in a way that changes the meaning. Carissa was never very good at infernal.

Iarwain: "Enter then," it says to them all, and behind it the second doors of the fortress swing open, revealing the nightmare of chains and gears that guides the maze.

Hadrian: Maybe it's easier when you've got Dispater's favored with you, instead of just Aspexia Rugatonn.  The politics of Hell often have little respect for Golarion's ranks.

Hadrian enters, assuming the others will follow him.

Carissa Sevar: She will follow.

Iarwain: The bony nightmare waits until they've passed, and then joins this party, that the chain nightmare will escort through the maze.

As they travel in mazed corridors and pass a company of barbed devils, those fall in as an escort at a wordless gesture from the bony thing.

Iarwain: Through the maze they go.

Further companies of barbed devils are left undisturbed.

Carissa Sevar: She relaxes once it's obvious the message was understood. 

Sorry, Olegario. 

Iarwain: At the end of their path through the maze is a vast iron room with a silvery irised gate set into the floor.  Above the gate, a swaying flat circular platform held slightly above the floor-gate by rough-surfaced chains meeting above the platform, connecting to a slightly thicker chain that goes through a pulley and winds about a huge reel.

A brutish-looking horned humanoid with leathery crimson skin, from whose head protrudes a great mouth filled with sharp teeth, waits about the reel.

Iarwain: The bone nightmare, the chain nightmare, the barbed devils all file into the room.

Iarwain: When all are present, the bone devil speaks.

"Only the favored of Dispater may pass to Dis alive."

Carissa Sevar is not given a chance to respond to this before they all attack her escort.

lintamande: Under many circumstances, a seventh circle and two fifth circle wizards are some of the most dangerous creatures to walk the face of Golarion. "Taken by surprise in melee without spells prepped for this" is not one of those circumstances. 

They go down quickly. 

Carissa Sevar: Carissa watches unflinching. It's Evil, probably, but it's not. - not the stupid Evil of just taking the default action because someone will smile at you about it. She has vitally important strategic goals and knows no other path to attaining them; she cannot trust Olegario to stick with her if she says 'hey, let's defect from Cheliax', or for that matter to believe it's not a test.

She doesn't own him. She owns an option she can exercise only with leave of Church and Crown.

"You defend this fortress well," she says, when the fighting is over, "I am honored." ....are they gonna interfere with her putting these bodies in her Bag of Holding.

Iarwain: "Do you offer us payment for this favor against your enemy, or call it service of Asmodeus against Hell's enemy?"

Carissa Sevar: "....it was service of Asmodeus, perhaps a very important one, but a complicated one. I would pay you for the favor to be certain of my standing, if the price is one I can afford." Or that Abarco and Hadrian can afford, because she is absolutely scouring their bodies for possessions right now like a proper adventurer.

Iarwain: The thing laughs, or at least, that's probably meant to be laughter.  It sounds horrible.

"Ah.  One of those services to Asmodeus."

"You would be wise not to insult us by offering us loot from the corpses of those we ourselves slew.  You would be wise not to insult us by offering us mundane riches less than you took from these corpses that we slew."

"Be there something about your person that'd you find more painful than that to sacrifice to us, that may serve to assuage our pride.  Some greater devil will be along in time, to arbitrate if more debt than that exists between you and Hell.  In due time, when your complicated service is done."

Carissa Sevar: She draws the first ever Glibness sword-pin from her pocket with a sense of utter misery that doesn't, really, make a whole lot of sense - she can just make another - 

"This is a magic item of my own design, made by my own hands, and used on my project, Project Lawful, in Asmodeus's service. I have made others in its image, since then, but this is the first. May it settle matters between us, until it is clear what Asmodeus thinks of my service to Him."

Iarwain: Bony fingers take the needle from her.  "It is a little thing, but I see that it pains you much to part from it.  You can seek to buy it back, do you return here before a century passes.  Expect its price to be dear."

"Do you truly seek passage to Dis in this place?"

Carissa Sevar: "I don't. I think I see the purpose I've been steered for, and it is in Golarion. And if I'm wrong, then I'll come to Dis soon enough."

Iarwain: "You shall come to Dis soon enough either way."

Carissa Sevar: Well, that's not the least ominous thing that a bony many-fingered devil ever said to her while meticulously wiping its claws clean of the blood of people that trusted her. 

....actually it is, but not because it's not ominous, just because that specific thing hasn't happened before. 

Hadrian: There's some pretty valuable things Hadrian has on him, but the most important one right now is definitely this remaining scroll of Plane Shift in his Bag of Holding.

Carissa Sevar: Yep. 

(She could have used her Gates while not in Avernus, and a Wish to get to Keltham, but firstly it seemed like a really bad plan to ask a pit fiend to their face for a Wish that seemed obviously traitorous, even one with a known safe wording, and secondly she might need those Wishes to save Asmodeus and the world.)

Scroll of Plane Shift, presumably he's got a tuning fork for the Material no one planar travels without those ah here it is -

- how about scrolls of Teleport or Sending, any of those -

Hadrian: Both.

Carissa Sevar: Right. 

Fly.

Greater Invisibility. 

Plane Shift. 

It drops her over the ocean, which is fine because she's only here for six seconds while she reads -

Teleport. 

lintamande: In the grand temple of Abadar in Absalom an alarm notifies staff of the appearance of an invisible teleporting person. That happens a lot, in any temple that services adventurers, and they're not anywhere near where the vaults are; no one is particularly concerned. 

Shortly after that, another alarm interrupts Temos Sevandivasen in his office; this is more surprising. 

Carissa Sevar: "Hi," says a woman as her invisibility wears off. She's wearing a nightgown; her hands are bloody; she's the most stunningly beautiful person most people have ever seen. "I'm Carissa Sevar. Can you get me into the Black Dome in the next twelve seconds I am not committing to defecting or taking Osirion's money."

Pilar : "No."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I'm afraid so."

It took time to be sure.  There was no report from the Security team that took Sevar to Hell; Sevar did not reply to a Sending; a Scry failed to find Sevar -

- and another Scry found Hadrian's soul with his owner in Hell.

There were Messages exchanged then, through the Scrying.  When Hadrian reported that Sevar had claimed the Most High had done all the talking last time, Aspexia knew, then, though mostly she had known already.

Discern Location did find Sevar in Osirion, in the Black Dome, though even Discern Location could narrow it no further through Ulunat's living shell.

Aspexia did scry also those devils she and Sevar had met at that fortress, and inquired of them too; lesser beings of Hell's surface layer, permitted to report knowledge of their interactions with adventurers, and not have that be an intervention of Hell.  So Aspexia learned that Sevar had instructed them to kill, looted the bodies of her comrades, taken those bodies with herself, returned to the Material -

Carissa Sevar had claimed to be serving Asmodeus in a complicated way.

Sevar might, perhaps, have simply been lying.

If Sevar's words had been true or at least honest, there might be some tiny hope of Sevar still being aligned to Cheliax, returning to them reconciled, in time.

Aspexia Rugatonn, after careful consideration, is telling Pilar simply that Sevar defected.

The Queen, Aspexia now judges, has shown herself incapable of manipulating tropes - that one night's tryst, in retrospect, was simply appealing to the tropes to curse them after - and so Aspexia is now trying her own hand at it, for lack of literally anyone else.  Does Pilar hold out hope in Sevar, the tropes will crush it; they seem to be in that sort of story.  Does Pilar, now the last surviving trope-girl of Cheliax, believe herself by all signs betrayed, the story may subvert her expectation.

To Pilar, then, it should be told simply that Sevar betrayed and murdered her comrades within Hell, including Olegario, and fled to Osirion.

Pilar : "Am I - to be next, then?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: A jolt of unease runs through Aspexia Rugatonn.  "I cannot read your mind anymore, Pilar, and I do not understand."

Pilar : "Everything about Project Lawful is being wiped away, like Prestidigitating a wall clear of what you've drawn there.  Keltham.  Subirachs, Maillol.  All of the trope-girls one after another, Ione, Asmodia, now even Carissa Sevar -"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Cease this foolishness.  You are not the last remaining trope-girl loyal to Asmodeus, you were the only one truly loyal to Him to begin with."

Pilar : "Yes, Most High."

"I - not of my will, my brain, has thoughts, that disobey your command to cease my foolishness.  You cannot hear them, now, am I to speak them?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia sighs heavily.  "Speaking things can give them more power than only harboring them as thoughts.  It's why I use Detect Thoughts as much as I do among loyal Asmodeans, to hear what people wisely do not let their lips say but which I should know they are thinking."

"If you can pretend that you didn't choose to say those thoughts, somehow say them without hearing them as your words, then do that.  But if you believe I should know what - your brain, as you say, is doing without your will - then tell me of it, regardless."

Pilar : "I'm afraid that Snack Service is going to tell me that I have to - defect, make myself vanish, like Asmodia and Carissa Sevar did, because it serves Asmodeus in a complicated way that I'm going to believe it about.  Everyone on the Project is just going to wake up one day and find out that the last of the trope-girls is gone."

Aspexia Rugatonn: By the tropes, it's less likely to happen exactly that way now that Pilar has said it out loud.

"If you say it that way, Pilar, it sounds like you're thinking about how your friends will be sad if you're gone."

Pilar : "Yes, I was.  I regret my incorrectness."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Your instructions continue to be that if you need to do something to prevent a new Worldwound from opening, you should do that thing."

"Do please try to leave us a note, however, if that happens."

Pilar : "Acknowledged."

Sevar could have left a note.  She didn't.

...Pilar had wanted to, tried to, give Sevar her soul to possess in death.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I must be about my way, Pilar.  It shall in fact take some work to reconstruct a management structure about the Project, after this; there are other Ferrer Maillols in Cheliax, better ones even, but not ones that can easily be removed or replaced."

"Do not allow the rest of the Project to see you looking like that when you return to them.  We cannot, must not, admit that Sevar herself turned traitor.  She was faced with an unexpected opportunity to resume her Keltham seduction project."

Pilar : "I obey, Most High."

Aspexia Rugatonn: The Most High departs.

Pilar : Pilar is too angry at Snack Service even to scream at it inside herself.

She is - not even going to try.

Does Snack Service have any help to offer.  Pilar is just going to ask that.

Curse of Laughter: Nope!  From Snack Service's perspective, everything is going GREAT!  Perfectly according to plan!

Project Lawful has collapsed and been ruined at exactly the time it was supposed to be!

Pilar : Pilar is going to go to Hell and offer to trade her soul to Dispater in exchange for Dispater eating her curse.

Curse of Laughter: Sorry, but that's the way things are, Pilar!

It was a hard-fought game, between the gods, but it's now officially over!  Everything past here is already determined, and all that's left is for it to play out!

Curse of Laughter: There's no way for Project Lawful to recover from losing Carissa Sevar, now that she's made her choice!  The Project doesn't have anybody left who understands probability the way that Sevar and Asmodia did.  The Project doesn't have anybody who even wants to try to understand how to hurt your ilani candidates in a way that makes them stronger and not just more terrified.  The Project doesn't have an experienced manager, and Cheliax doesn't exactly have many experienced managers in the first place!  None of those will want to take on Project Lawful, after they hear about what happened to the last project manager to work here.