12 - null action act ii: unact harder

lintamande: "The only thing necessary [...] is for good men to do nothing."      -- Edmund Burke Abridged

Cheliax: Time:  About a week later.

Place:  The Imperial Palace in Egorian, capital of Cheliax.

This aerial view shows the side of the Palace that contains the Majestrix's quarters, including some rooms with windows and even the occasional exposed balcony.

All such are guarded by a permanent wall of force.

The surrounding aerial volume is patrolled by a species of keen-eyed flying devil with natural arcane sight and invisibility detection, lest anyone be so daring as to seek a glimpse of Abrogail Thrune in her nightgown, or maybe observe her in meeting and read her lips.

Forbiddance, wall of force, patrolling devils: these are the standard precautions taken in accordance with such security mindset as Cheliax has developed, pertaining to known and customary threats at their technology level, magical level, and accustomed levels of opposed intelligence.

Iarwain: Also in the air above Egorian is a Tiny Translucent Sphere.  Even a keen-eyed and arcane-sightful devil has negligible probability of spotting it; the floating glass bead is small, clear, weakly magical, and not that close to the Imperial Palace.

(ai art)

Tiny Translucent Sphere: Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about IOUN stones.

IOUN stones look like simple floating colored shapes, unless you use Detect Magic on them, in which case they look insanely complex and maybe even paradoxical.

The spellforms they maintain behave like continuous spell-like abilities of living magical creatures, like something alive is maintaining a spellform that couldn't be held together by any static shape or cycle of magical forces, only by an organism that perceives and reacts.

IOUN stones circle above their wielder's head through any amount of gymnastics, and dodge blows as if they were alive; if you own more than one, they'll form themselves into pretty aerial patterns.

Outwardly they look like simple gems.

Inwardly they're filled with tiny three-dimensional magic-channels of surpassing complexity.

It's an obvious-to-Golarion-artificers hypothesis that IOUN stones are alive; and were (given known Azlanti habits) created by some horrifying sacrifice of intelligent lives and maybe even souls.  That the tiny intricate channels are there, not to maintain the outer spellform, but to imprison the essence of some living thing that does maintain it.

And yet no known divination shows any hint of necromancy about IOUN stones: no life, no soul.

It's a slightly-less-obvious hypothesis that some mysterious quality of animation or sapience was transferred into IOUN stones, extracted from an animal or a soul the way that the potency of spellsilver can be burned into things that are not spellsilver.

An awful number of awful experiments have failed to make any progress on this hypothesis either.

Not being stupid, plenty of wizards have thought of the possibility that both obvious hypotheses are just plain wrong.

Maybe there's some kind of living-magic effect that you could create with those intricate magical channels? and that is what navigates the IOUN stone's flight and maintains its spellform?

Nobody's ever made progress on figuring out this hypothesized Living Magic either, as might be the key to many different rumored aspects of Azlanti artifice.  Given the vast intricacy of IOUN stones, it doesn't look like an overwhelmingly promising thing to figure out by poking around.  Every artificer whose thinking gets that far dreams of finding the earlier prototype of an IOUN stone: something which (on this general class of hypothesis) maintains some much simpler form of Living Magic that you actually could understand, and maybe then you could decode the more complicated spellforms.

Carissa and her ex are not the only beings with INT 29 ever to examine ancient Azlanti IOUN stones.

They are, however, the first ones to do so already having some idea of what a 'low-tech computer' might look like.  And the first ones to do so having built their own Magical Simulator of Magical Physics, which gives them (a) actual experience in magical analog signal processing, and (b) the ability to simulate unseen magical interactions in some detail.

Tiny Translucent Sphere: To be clear, the Tiny Translucent Sphere is very barely an IOUN stone.  It does not fly around its wielder through all combat circumstances, but only floats in a single place relative to the (rotating) planet.  The only spell effect it maintains is a special weaker case of Prestidigitation.  It could not restore itself after a Dispel.

You couldn't say it was reverse-engineered from an Azlanti IOUN stone, so much as re-engineered from scratch after looking at the partially decodable surface features of an IOUN stone for very loose inspiration.  Maybe the best metaphor would be somebody designing an Analytical Engine from scratch, after staring at a computer built from vacuum tubes and managing to decode key abstract concepts but not the actual software.

- and yet, in the final analysis it's fair to say that Carissa Sevar went and made a literal fucking IOUN stone, the first one to be made since Azlant fell.

Many artificers over many centuries have regarded this as the dangling ultimate capstone achievement of mortal magecraft, short of the differently-unreachable realms of artifacts.  But once you've actually built your first IOUN stone, you can see that it's really just a baby's first step into an unimaginably vaster realm:  The space of Azlanti artifice is just the space of 'all other magic items', once you move past the realm of statically constructed magic items and into those that cast a sense-compute-motor loop to model and maintain a dynamic spellform.

literal fucking IOUN stone: The spellform of the Tiny Translucent Sphere could be analogized to a stripped-down Prestidigitation, receiving small-dimensional input commands from a simulated wizard.

First, the Tiny Translucent Sphere maintains approximately the same station, relative to the Palace in Egorian or rather the rotating form of Golarion; it resists lesser wind currents over its quite small surface area, maintained by Prestidigitation's pound of force.

Second, when activated by a light pressure of magic cast through a scry, the Tiny Translucent Sphere changes the refractive index of light in a lens-shaped volume nearby.  Further light pressures of magic through the scry will rotate and shift that refractive lens.

Finally, the Tiny Translucent Sphere - this part took no additional effort at all - has a magical signature that is unique across Golarion and a number of neighboring planes.

Which is to say:  The Tiny Translucent Sphere acts as a combination scry anchor and telescope for purposes of scanning across the side of the Imperial Palace containing Abrogail Thrune's quarters, with windows and balconies shielded by a permanent wall of force.  You could use the IOUN Stone of Peeping to verify her presence, read lips if you focused closely enough and were sufficiently good at reading lips, maybe even get a glimpse of her walking around in a nightgown.  Whether you wanted to do that, of course, would depend on your utility function, and your purposes, and your plans.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn now walks those same halls, decorated in what another place would call 'doompunk', appointed in gold and crimson more than red and black, with traces of Imperial purple never permitted to overshadow Hell's colors.  The ignorant commoners of Cheliax are sometimes reassured "It's not that Cheliax serves Hell; rather it's Hell that serves Cheliax" but this is a lie and everyone of sense knows better.  Hell is far greater than Cheliax, and for a great Power to serve a lesser one is contrary to the Chelish state religion.

Aspexia Rugatonn is heading for a meeting with Abrogail Thrune, pondering, as she walks, the best way to share certain major recent news: a surprise from the distant Chaotic Evil land of Wanshou.  It could be seen as hopeful news, is the problem.  One of the few aspects of trope-reasoning that Aspexia is confident she's understood, is the notion that a hope once spoken aloud in front of a viewpoint character cannot come to pass, or at least not come to pass exactly as it's spoken.  Some of Keltham's spellsilver plans worked as he intended, but that was only possible because of the Conspiracy; things were not really going well for him by his current lights.

(Aspexia Rugatonn has, of course, considered the possibility that she herself is a viewpoint character; considered it, and discarded it.  Her thoughts simply are not as dramatic as the thoughts of the trope-girls like Abrogail; and the story has not so far seemed interested in tormenting her the way it torments Abrogail.)

Abrogail Thrune II: In a chamber on that side of the Palace sits Queen Abrogail II, contemplating a recent report of her own; though at present she is just looking up from that report to gaze upon the Grand High Priestress of Asmodeus, whose attendance upon herself Abrogail has demanded.

(ai art)

Abrogail is not even striking a pose, here, this is just her resting queen face.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "You said you had news of Keltham?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "So I infer."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I continue to imagine that such news was supposed to come to me, before you; not the other way around."

Abrogail Thrune II: "That would require you to understand what you're seeing.  You have not the Cunning to understand or even notice Keltham's handiwork, or Sevar's for that matter.  Your underlings even less."

Aspexia Rugatonn: The quality of their interactions has been strained, of late; but if you don't know how to take that in stride, in Cheliax, you are not long for politics in the country.

"Tell me of it, then."

Abrogail Thrune II: "That discussion may consume some time.  We should dispense with shorter matters before then, if you've any small reports to make or little questions to ask of me."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "As you will, then."

"I'm concerned with how you remain un-assassinated."

Abrogail Thrune II: "People have been saying that about me for a while."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Be serious.  I'm worried that Keltham hasn't killed you yet.  He has not much time left to do that before your child quickens with soul.  It's possible Keltham hasn't figured things out at all.  But with you staying so much in the Palace, he may not have had an easy chance to -"

Abrogail Thrune II: "If I leave the Palace under unusual conditions, if I make myself an easy and predictable target for temporary assassination, Keltham may deduce exactly what I'm doing and why!  Asmodia was your own pet; did you learn nothing from her?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: Her voice is a bit dry.  "I am not sure I so trust all this complicated reasoning, that I wouldn't give Keltham a shot at killing you some easy way.  Instead of prompting him to, perhaps, crater all Egorian for it.  We should not neglect the ordinary form of the game while we chase this - absurdly elaborated one."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I suppose I could stage some affair that leaves me exposed at a predictable place and time.  Whereupon Keltham, if he is truly Wished and headbanded up to INT 29, will deduce exactly what I'm doing and why, and maybe even that you were the one stupid enough to order me to do it.  Would that make you happy?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Perhaps.  I will think on it." 

Abrogail Thrune II: "How goes your training of the would-be Keepers of Asmodeus, as holds you back from so much other valuable work in time of approaching war, on only the word of a Chaotic god?  Are there any hopes vague enough to be told me?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: She frowns.  "Vague enough?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "If it's mysterious to me and not too hopeful, if the audience wouldn't know what you're talking about, that shouldn't prevent things from going mostly as you plan."

(Abrogail Thrune is not aware of how her own desperation to know - to be back in the loop on things - to be told anything, or for that matter given some hope of regaining her story-relevance and pride - is skewing this judgment.)

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Matters with the Keepers of Asmodeus go about as well as could be expected."  It would lack dignity if Aspexia Rugatonn cackled evilly; she hasn't done that since she stopped adventuring and went into administration.  Also, of course, she'd never show that much emotion in front of Abrogail; and also also it'd probably be too much hope to give her.

Matters with the Keepers of Asmodeus are going at least as well as could possibly have been expected.  Only the shadow of Cayden Cailean's involvement, that He somehow expects to benefit from this alongside Asmodeus, would hold Aspexia back from breaking into full-scale maniacal laughter if she were in private.

Abrogail Thrune II: "You can probably go slightly less vague than that.  Are Asmodeus's Keepers all sixth-circles?  Has one reached eighth-circle?  Are they a significant-enough military force to matter?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Asmodeus has granted all of them His second circle, which is as much and more than any sane person would have hoped for.  All who've reached the second circle of wizardry are now training in mystic theurgy beside."

Which is another thing that Aspexia would laugh about maniacally under better circumstances.  Who would have thought that Intelligence, properly trained, could become a Wisdom bonus, to make for Asmodeus a cadre of wizard-priests?  Her eventual successor may have power enough to go toe-to-toe with Nefreti Clepati without two eighth-circles backing her up about it.

"But," Aspexia continues, "if twenty second-circles, of whom fourteen are training as bare-apprentice mystic theurges, are a military key to victory - the path is hidden from my sight."  Even if ALL TWENTY OF THEM would choose Hell over Elysium.

Abrogail Thrune II: "You're almost smiling."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "You would almost smile too, in my position.  I've gotten them started on intrigues and backstabbing each other for pride of position, the stronger bending the weaker to their uses, and they are scrupulous about never doing so in a way that inhibits their group productivity."  Aspexia Rugatonn doesn't know why all this teaching matters, but it's so satisfying that she's not doing much questioning of Snack Service's claim that it does.

"Any good news from Korva Tallandria, that wasn't so good it had to be kept from you?"

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail now deeply regrets having ever entangled herself with that woman, as now chains Abrogail to her management.  Abrogail had meant Korva to run the program for injuring Keltham with his asked-but-unwanted 144 children, but Korva's desperately-concealed revulsion at the thought was such that Abrogail doubted the tropes of forcing Korva to do what had been meant as a gift to her of satisfying revenge...

And as later attempts soon proved, Korva Tallandria seemed to be made desperately unhappy - Korva didn't voice it, of course, but it was unconcealable in her thoughts - by almost any possible task that Abrogail presented for her consideration. 

Abrogail's actual conclusion is that Korva is the walking emotional disaster that Keltham thought she was, that he in fact correctly identified her trope; and that Korva will remain an emotional disaster until Keltham somehow wins her back over, and fucks it out of her or beats it out of her or whatever he is supposed to do.

"Tallandria guesses that at her present rate of progress on diamond chemistry, she might in the best case be able to produce her first specks of diamond dust in another month or two, and greatly scale the process around a month after," Abrogail answers.  Every task Abrogail suggested had just made the jilted trope-girl tie herself into a tighter knot of unhappiness and self-hate, until finally Abrogail had left Korva to her own choice of tasks; and that had been what she'd picked, even before the news out of the City of Brass.  "Tallandria's alchemical investigation says that diamond is primarily a crystal of Element-6, the key ingredient of coal, possibly adulterated with some further element or quality that her spectroscopes can't detect yet.  If there is no hidden ingredient to it, she expects that the right use of heat and pressure should be able to form purified Element-6 into diamond, given that it seems to form naturally in the ground to be mined and what Keltham said of such 'geological' processes; but she guesses the synthesis results will come out as diamond dust and forming large pure crystals will prove much harder."

"Tallandria is skeptical of Keltham's maybe-capability to mate smaller diamonds into large ones.  She guesses that without knowing the exact crystal structure, Keltham shouldn't be able to Prestidigitation-alchemize two diamonds into one larger diamond, no matter how cleanly-cut their matched surfaces or if he's able to work within a vacuum. It didn't happen naturally when Tallandria tried it, nor when she attempted obvious blind manipulations of 'potential energy surfaces'.  Tallandria remembers, and transcripts agree, that Keltham at INT 18 said he couldn't think of any simple way to find crystal structures without advanced technology out of Civilization, specifically generators for ultra-tiny light particles and very fine detectors for those."

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia doesn't bother to comment anything along the lines of 'Unlimited diamond dust for Permanencies seems enough to win this whole war', whether Cheliax obtained it first or Osirion did; this is obvious to both of them, along with the fact that they shouldn't take a few extra months to wait.

"It seems some evidence against the image of Keltham's apparent doings reported by Hell out of the City of Brass, I suppose, and the image of his purchase orders for smaller diamonds in Golarion.  I'm not Asmodia to say how much evidence in numbers."

Abrogail Thrune II: "It's the sort of thing that a smarter Keltham would enjoy bluffing us about; that seems more than probable.  The probability that he could actually do it - Tallandria thought she'd have put 5% on it, if the question hadn't immediately made her think it more probable."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I do presume you've instructed Tallandria that if she does have some unexpected breakthrough, she is to conceal it from you and report it first through Church channels?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "Naturally," Abrogail says with considerable bitterness, all carried by the word itself rather than any slippage of tone.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "And the status of the rest of Project Lawful?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "Doing no better or worse than I expected.  No great breakthroughs in chemistry since last you asked; no new information of Keltham's stolen from the Scientific Revolution beyond what we've spied already."

"Meritxell, Yaisa, and Gregoria, are all being maintained in a state that should fall well short of Keltham needing to rescue them.  Tallandria seems unalterably miserable; I've had her research section moved somewhere that Keltham seizing her wouldn't do as much damage."

"Maillol is not recovered, and will probably not recover fully, but I'm keeping him in best condition to be held as negotiating-material against Sevar, whom I read as possibly caring about him.  Likewise those Security besides Olegario who were most loyal to her; and that useless fool whom Sevar rescued from my dungeons.  We are not instructed by our Lord to hold no hostages against Sevar; and she earlier stated that the Lawful Evil form of 'decision-theory' should concede it no threat if you're the sort of person who'd enjoy wrecking somebody that Sevar cared about, but might refrain from doing so if paid."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Careful.  That seems perilously close to stating a hopeful plan aloud; in fact I would say that you've gone and said it."

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail's lips press together thinly, but she makes no reply to this.  "Any news of Pilar Pineda that I'm permitted to know about, since that, too, is now apparently being routed through your offices?  It can be good news so long as it's sufficiently enigmatic and confusing, remember."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I expect many of the reports I'm receiving are false.  Either that, or Pineda has gotten herself into an amount of salacious trouble that I would have sincerely thought required time dilation."

Abrogail Thrune II: "It's probably that second one."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "If they're all true, Pineda has gotten herself into way more salacious trouble than I expected even taking into account that she's a trope-girl."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I'm sure people end up saying that in 'eroLARPs' all the time.  Are there any new major political implications of Pineda's deeds, that I should know in order to do my job as Queen?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Pineda was spotted in Wanshou.  In other news, the elder kraken who ruled that land has perished, and Wanshou's new government has declared themselves Lawful Evil now, with a state flag depicting a great city amid flames.  Quite the remarkable decision for a land claimed for the last century by Chaotic Evil, though they declare themselves strictly independent of Cheliax if not Hell."

Aspexia Rugatonn: The words are no lie, but they are very finely sliced.  It's the sort of thing that the Queen genuinely needs to know about, that Wanshou has been claimed in the name of Hell; that's going to affect her affairs of state.

Aspexia wants to try and see if it's possible to keep from Abrogail the news that Pilar's involvement was merely her self-prophesied kidnapping, in a scandal leading to the downfall of half of the Wanshou government's ministers...

...almost immediately after those ministers had been appointed...

...by Carissa Sevar.  Who had come to Wanshou's small mortal government amid their ruined capital Numijaan, presenting herself in Archmagi's Robes, with IOUN stones orbiting her head; claiming that she in single combat slew their former ruler Zhanagorr; whose vast eyeball, scorched and ruined, she cast down before them as a proof; and proclaiming that She now claimed their country in the name of Hell, to be ruled by and for Her cult; and that any within Wanshou who reached at least Neutral Evil from Chaotic Evil, and did Her service in life and called Her name in death, would have their souls claimed by Her.  Exactly one former governing-slave of Zhanagorr did challenge Sevar, but he died upon the spot and without Sevar having turned her head in his direction.

Sevar worked upon a gate of ruined Numijaan that had faced Zhanagorr's waters, setting in place prepared ornaments but enchanting the whole; a gate, she said, to sear the exact words of her compact with Asmodeus onto the skin of any who walked through; and none could join her government or lead in her cult who had not walked through.

Sevar then departed without fanfare, her appearance having lasted less than an hour.

'If Teleports were free', as the saying goes, quite a lot of Lawful Evil people would already be in Wanshou, Rugatonn doesn't doubt.  As it stands, an impressive number of Lawful Evil indivduals who can afford Teleports have appeared in Wanshou; and some of those were appointed by Sevar to be its new government answerable to herself as sovereign, in the name of Hell.

...Only half of those ministers, however, had political careers that survived Pilar Pineda's advent shortly after: posing as a Sevarist, young, beautiful, seemingly innocent, exuding timid submissiveness and frightened sexuality.  Witnesses interviewed by a Church agent afterward reported a level of seductive appeal more often associated with literal succubi than with Splendour 21.

That Pilar was promptly kidnapped and abused by some of the new government leaders is not what caused the downfall of the ministers responsible - Wanshou's new government is Evil.  Rather, apparently, those ministers were inept kidnappers and got in each other's way rather than sharing, which proved them to be bad at coordination and operations work.  Pilar, it is said, revealed her true identity as She-Who-Bears-Cake and told all her kidnappers to resign; and threatened the remaining ministers that if they didn't do better at Lawful Evil, she'd come back and get kidnapped again.

Some of the disgraced ministers hesitated to obey (the story continued) but in that very moment a roar had resounded as the capital was attacked by one of Zhanagorr's spawn; whom Pilar slew, and then provided condiments for its roasting and distribution to the citizenry.  The disgraced ministers had obediently resigned, then, after Pilar returned and eyed them meaningfully while hefting a bag of salt.

All this news should basically not be possible to keep from Abrogail, unless the tropes can prevent Abrogail from hearing, somehow.  Aspexia is curious to see if they do.

Abrogail Thrune II: "How nice of you to fucking tell me, Rugatonn.  That's going to be so much fun to navigate in international relations, especially on the swift heels of Pineda's doings in Korvosa.  I suppose we're invading Osirion anyways, and that takes us past the point where Cheliax can present itself to even the most gullible countries as not being an expansionist threat.  But it would have been nice if the more distant lands had deluded themselves for longer into thinking that only our immediate neighbors stood in danger."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I told you not that long after I heard."

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail's lips press together bitterly; that it's deliberate doesn't make it any less her true emotion.  "I cannot rule like this, Rugatonn!  I can hardly think like it!  It is stifling to the point that I might as well be a statue myself, for all the good I can do!"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "You know," Aspexia remarks conversationally, "I have never been able to understand, on some deep level, why it is that mortals - other than myself, of course - find themselves compelled to think so many harmful thoughts, as will bring them injury or discontent.  I just don't think thoughts like that, haven't my whole life.  I've never truly understood why others don't do the same.  You are not Wiser than me, but you are Wiser than I was when I was twelve years old and doing better than this.  Have you tried to just not think those thoughts, and also not feel stifled about not thinking them?"

Abrogail Thrune II: The Queen does not dignify this with a response.  "Those were all the lesser questions I had of you."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "And I of you.  Now what's this news you said you had of Keltham, that should have proceeded through the Church before it came to the Queen?"

Abrogail Thrune II: The Queen lifts the sheaf of papers in her hand.  "I pray this report about the recent Whisperwood incident was routed to you literally at all?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Matters of the Dark Tapestry are reported to my office immediately, yes."

"- you believe Keltham was involved in that?  To what end?  Stranger things happen daily in Golarion, and we can hardly attribute them all to Keltham's hand."

Abrogail Thrune II: Her voice is a pleasant one, now; and in truth a little of Abrogail's injured pride has been restored.  "You, and your underlings, are all idiots.  I will summarize this report, in case the general trend has been lost within the details."

"One.  A mad cleric, posthumously identified as Vediss Halurexis, kidnapped a Chelish farming village and brought them to the Pillar of Palamia in our northwestern Whisperwood.  The sacrifices were bound and enshrouded in darkness and silence, but one among their number was a tiefling of devil's line who could see through deeper darkness; hence, supposedly, our apparently accidental reception of this report."

"Two.  Vediss Halurexis shattered the Pillar of Palamia, previously thought to be a monument to some unknown god, with a great explosion of flames whose description does not particularly match any known spell signature.  The idiots who produced this report failed to consider that chemistry might be a means of producing this explosion.  I have commanded Project Lawful to examine the Whisperwood site, to see if they can detect any useful residues that can hint to us about how we could make our own great explosions."

"Three.  A huge horror from the Dark Tapestry bubbles up from the ground: a great ooze, forming and reforming hands and teeth and faces, and mouths presumably gibbering blasphemies that were silenced."

"Four.  Before the gathered villagers can be sacrificed, an as-yet-unidentified person in the uniform of Chelish Security appears.  The apparent Security approaches Vediss Halurexis without attacking.  Halurexis attacks with a quickened spell once the mage is near.  Halurexis's head explodes."

"Five.  The gathered sacrificial villagers hear a male voice informing them that rescue has arrived but they will wait in protective darkness and silence for a time, as there are heretical affairs going on outside."

"Six.  The strange mage flies above the horror from the Dark Tapestry and engages in several inscrutable activities.  They included casting flashes of light and trying to drop animal sacrifices onto the horror in different numbers and groups.  Our apparent witness thinks he remembers seeing early on one flash, one flash, two flashes, three flashes, five flashes, and a similar pattern appearing among the animal sacrifices dropped down.  Does that pattern signify any particular Dark Tapestry eldritchness to you?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Not that I've been told of.  I'll inquire of Gorthoklek."

Abrogail Thrune II: "Mm.  I suppose it's possible you might be telling the truth about that.  In any case."

"Seven.  The mage eventually gives up on whatever ritual or bargaining he was trying to perform, if that's even what was happening, and spends nearly an hour casting an incredible variety of different attack magics on our Dark Tapestry horror, using items and scrolls for it, increasing in their magnitude and spell-circle over time.  The Dark Tapestry horror writhes and throws its bubbling self about, probably screams unheard in voices that would drive mortals mad, is little damaged by the spells and regenerates the damage swiftly."

"Eight.  The mage finally destroys the Dark Tapestry horror with another vast explosion.  Still guised as a Chelish Security, he unblinds and frees the gathered sacrifices, informs them that the day's events will no doubt be classified a secret of Cheliax, and commands them to go home and say nothing of this.  He throws down some silver and a few gold coins, saying that he's not troubling himself to distribute it but he does expect all there will receive and keep a payment for silence; and states that the consequences of running their mouths will be left to their imagination."

"Nine.  The next day, our single witness tiefling heads into the nearest town and reports."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I suppose I see the connection to Keltham's chemical secrets, now that you've pointed it out, in the form of great explosions that a tiefling villager's description couldn't identify as spellwork.  I still don't see what purpose Keltham would have in -"

Abrogail Thrune II: "If we believe our tiefling subject's eyes - then who the fuck else would have access to that quantity of scrolls and magic items and would use them to run inscrutable experiments on a horror out of the Dark Tapestry?"

"And if we don't believe his eyes, only Keltham would think of casting that illusion or falsifying that memory."

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia doesn't, quite, think in that way herself.  It isn't really a compliment to notice that Abrogail Thrune seems able to put herself in those shoes.  "I see."

"And - do you know the purpose of all that?"

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail Thrune laughs.  It's high and bitter, it might perhaps, be tinged with a touch of madness, if her Splendour permitted any such thing to enter her voice, which it doesn't.

"Oh, I know what we're meant to think.  The same way we were meant to think that Keltham has a means for aggregating lesser diamonds into greater ones.  Unless of course that simply is what Keltham was about, in the City of Brass, and he didn't bother to conceal it from us because he thinks there's nothing we can do."

"Things out of the Dark Tapestry cause fear.  They cause horror.  Even a very prepared mind will still feel that fear, it is said; you must find fighters and wizards with high Wisdom to gather about you and conclude the fight quickly lest they all go mad.  Who fights a horror like that for an hour, casting spells of increasing power, when they evidently have the means about themselves to kill it more quickly?  Why?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: It takes Aspexia a moment to get that, and then her eyes widen very slightly yet visibly, so vast is her dismay.

For wizards and sorcerers to deliberately put themselves in a situation that outwardly seems painful and scary, but is ultimately safe, in order to increase their power - does not in fact work.  Otherwise everyone would do it.  Abrogail Thrune staked her life when she went to Hell, forfeit if she could not reach at least the fifth circle of sorcery, so that she would be frightened enough despite having deliberately put herself into that situation.

As for putting yourself under sufficient stress via exposing yourself to a powerful horror from the Dark Tapestry; well, the obvious reason why not everyone does that, is that you would go insane.

Abrogail Thrune II: "I quote from the Project Lawful transcripts:  'Civilization would cheat.  They'd figure out exactly what mental state somebody had to be in to absorb extra magic like Carissa did during her date with Abrogail, and then some sixth-rank Keepers would go into that exact mental state on purpose because they could just do that, and very very quickly Civilization would have its own powerful wizards.'  End quote.  He told us, back when he was more naive, exactly how a person like him thinks about the problem of only being a first-circle wizard, showed how much disdain he had for the thought of his Civilization needing to earn power the hard way.  Put yourself under the right kind of stress, into the right mental state, and channel sufficient magic from enough items and scrolls; that's how he thinks of it, and all our lifelong struggles a meaningless ritual we go through because we're dumber than he is.  Is he now fifth-circle, to match his rival and lover Carissa?  Ninth-circle, with Sevar finding her own way of it?  Who the fuck knows?"

"Or."

"Of course."

"That's all just what he wants us to think."

Aspexia Rugatonn: The thought occurs to Aspexia that perhaps Keltham tried his clever idea, spending increasing amounts of money on casting from more powerful scrolls, but by the time he was done he was, say, only second-circle and starting to go permanently insane despite his alien disciplines; so he slaughtered the horror and went on his way.

It even matches Aspexia's understanding of tropes - it would be humorous (she does understand humor, especially cruel humor) if Keltham went to all that work, maybe did himself some permanent damage, in order to gain one caster-circle he could as well have gained from harder longer study.  And a fine joke if Abrogail then became unduly terrified of him too.

Aspexia doesn't say it out loud; it's a hopeful thought, so it must be kept from anyone who might be a viewpoint character.

Or on the other side of things - also an overly hopeful thought - maybe Abrogail remains unassassinated because Keltham has already gained greater interests than Cheliax; maybe greater than all Creation, if the tropes operate on scales larger than that.

Maybe the story's ending, from Golarion's perspective, is that Keltham simply pursues his own inscrutable purposes from now on, in a way that leaves world politics untouched?  It would be a beautiful blow to Abrogail's mighty pride, if Keltham's pride deemed her beneath its own notice.  Maybe he has reached the ninth-circle indeed, now, and the report was accidental from his perspective, and none of it is about Abrogail in the slightest because she isn't that important.

To Aspexia, at least, it seems like this would be a nicely dramatically resonant 'ending' to the story, which really does give her some substantial hope for it being true.  If Keltham is in some sense smarter than just INT 29 implies, he may be so intelligent as to be, in an odd way, harmless to Asmodeus's plans for Golarion, having outgrown the mortal concerns that once led him to meddle.

"Is there anything you believe we ought to be doing about it, if you're right?" Aspexia says aloud.

Abrogail Thrune II: "If he's now fifth-circle?  It makes no difference I can understand.  I can't see the plot which depends on Keltham being fifth-circle in his own right rather than using scrolls or hirelings.  If he's gone over to the upper end of ninth-circle magic, and can cast Wishes in his own right from an unlimited supply of diamonds?  Then our planned assault on Osirion, which approaches by the day, is doomed even if Keltham would not destroy all Cheliax to halt it."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "It's a hopeful thought and so I wouldn't usually speak it to you, but you can't have missed that Keltham might have arranged that play intending you would conclude that -"

Abrogail Thrune II: "Fool.  Keltham would know that, did I find myself deciding to stay my invasion for reasons traceable to information Keltham might have chosen to give me, I'd question if that decision might have been intended; and not actually stay my hand from Osirion, without first, for example, asking Keltham to demonstrate his ninth-circle power.  If he was actually ninth-circle and wanted me to not invade, he could do it that way directly; only hinting at it implies his actual weakness."

"Therefore he is not doing it for hopes that I'll refrain from invasion, for if I found myself refraining from invasion on that account, I'd thereby know he'd planted the information to that end; and so, since I will not refrain from invasion, I go back to wondering if he is in fact ninth-circle, or if he planned my receipt of the information and it is meant to accomplish something else."

"You lack talent at using Cunning, Rugatonn, for all that your headgear grants you a little more than you were born with."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "My Wisdom whispers to me that such intricate reasoning seems risky.  I sometimes reason as if gods can predict our choices, since often they can; but when I reason so, I reason in fewer steps."

Abrogail Thrune II: "It would not be reliable thinking if we were trying to ravel anyone else but Keltham or perhaps now also Sevar.  They might miss some step of that reasoning that I have reasoned they would use.  But Keltham has grown up in an entire society that makes legend and custom of games like these; he will not miss any step of the reasoning, and therefore my reasoning over his reasoning is reliable.  And he knows that I will not miss it, for he taught that subject explicitly and he knows I have read his transcripts.  There is no consistent story where Keltham tries to scare me off from invasion, for he knows that, in the moment of my deciding not to invade, I would thereby know that had been the purpose of his bluff.  So whatever is going on, it is not that."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Perhaps he's doing it to drive you mad with worry and make you less useful to Cheliax, since that seems to be the result being achieved."  Or maybe Keltham is tormenting Abrogail for his own sadistic amusement, in preparation for returning to claim her as vengeance-bride and torture-doll; he's intelligent enough by now to have thrown off the chains that dath ilan lays upon its peasantry.  But this yet again is a hopeful thought and should not be spoken aloud before Abrogail.

Abrogail Thrune II: "That presumes there's something I would figure out, of danger to him, if I'm not given other things to worry about."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Isn't that a hopeful thought?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "Not for these purposes, no.  It sets up a mystery whose answer the audience hasn't heard yet."

"- this situation is not tenable, Rugatonn.  You may be wise, but you are not smart enough, to ravel these puzzles in my place."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "And you're not smart enough either, and less Wise than I.  We will keep the command structure as it is."

Abrogail Thrune II: "It is ultimately my decision."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "So it is; and I've just informed you of which decision is the correct one."

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail doesn't give her the satisfaction of snarling.  "This is madness.  Cheliax cannot possibly win like this, with its greatest mind cowering inside a prison cell with imaginary bars.  Better that I should take all the knowledge and decisions back into my own hands, and trust that the tropes will reward a real fight more than these pathetic attempts to manipulate them."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "You tried your hand at tropery, calling on them to witness your tryst with Sevar; and that went miserably, to all our costs.  You were given your one chance at this way of thinking, and you failed it."

Abrogail Thrune II: "And you are succeeding?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: So far as Aspexia knows, Cheliax has had no further disasters brought on by hubris, which is really a lot of what Wisdom buys you in life, she feels.

"That's a foolish question to ask out loud.  What do you expect the tropes to do to me, if I go and answer yes?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "I am beginning to fear that you are too ignorant to recognize whatever stupid disasters you are blundering into, that I am not being told about!  You heard the report of the Whisperwood Incident and didn't recognize Keltham's hand, or his purpose, or his person!  You haven't figured out that it was Sevar and not Pineda who slew Zhanagorr and claimed Wanshou for Hell!"

Aspexia Rugatonn: (Well, that answers that, at least.)

It hasn't been lost on the Most High that Abrogail's been put to unusual-to-her travail this last month, not free to pursue her usual plans and plots and whims; forced instead to wait on a child growing in her belly and Keltham's possible destruction of Cheliax, while Carissa Sevar's doings and Aspexia's own paltry plottings are kept from her.

Aspexia is, for a fact, starting to worry that the Queen may be going mad of it, being permitted little or no important action.

As the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus, it falls to her to deliver solace in such situations.

"Is this truly all it takes to drive you unstable?" Aspexia says acerbically, letting some of her real contempt creep into her voice.  "One month, living as a literal queen in fine palace, only you have to contend with a few unfamiliar uncertainties and aren't allowed to meddle as you feel like it?"

Abrogail Thrune II: "Don't fucking patronize me, Aspexia.  I'm not a child in need of some motherly cruelty.  The aspect of this situation that is giving me difficulty isn't the lack of action, it's trying to play the game against fucking Keltham, who I suspect of falling barely short of a Dark Tapestry horror himself in terms of his effects on others' sanity.  Sevar's doings at least make sense.  This report of Keltham - is it a record of a true event that reached us accidentally, or sped along only by tropes?  Is it a report that Keltham permitted and intended to reach us?  I can't analyze the plot just by comprehending its obvious effect if I believed it, because Keltham hails from a world of over-intelligent madlings where my imagination of that intended effect would just be the first layer of his own intended plot.  Calculate the consequences of that?  He expects me to do that too!  And I can't guess how many layers deep he'll think I'll go!  He's from a world that plunges their children into false realities to toughen them!"

"There must be, there must be some Law to govern it, but Sevar is lost, Asmodia is lost, Avaricia and Meritxell and Shilira are not trope-touched and haven't the skill, Tallandria has twisted herself into a knot that's fucking useless for any plots more diabolical than diamond chemistry, Gorthoklek won't give me any useful answers unless I ask exactly the right question, and you are fucking useless because for all your vaunted dealings with divinities you seem to have no concept of what it means to fight someone, fight something, that -"

dath ilan: The math that Abrogail Thrune lacks is not actually all that complicated; it's just the notion of a mixed strategy in an adversarial equilibrium.

Once you've fixed a probability distribution over your adversary's probabilistic models of you, there's some mixed strategy that brings maximum expected dismay to all the probable people your adversary might be, given (your beliefs about) how they're unsure of what the reality is, and unsure of how many layers deep you might go, correctly modeling that you'd randomize in choosing layer depth in order to make the problem as hard as possible for (their beliefs about your beliefs about) their intelligence to solve.  Just answering "one level higher than you" only works if you can predict them perfectly, and also they can't predict themselves.

Once you phrase it that way, it's obvious that any deterministic rule would make things too easy for the adversary, if they correctly guessed that you'd reason that determined way.  And conversely, once you realize there mustn't be a deterministic rule for determining the number of layers in a deception, the notion of a mixed strategy follows quickly.

Really, when you put it that way, it makes you wonder why Abrogail Thrune herself did not work it out.  She is not less Cunning, as measured by Detect Thoughts and raw Intelligence, than those mathematicians who first worked out the notion of randomized fixpoint strategies of adversarial games, somewhere in dath ilan's buried history.  So why didn't Abrogail Thrune solve it herself?

dath ilan: Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about the notion of conflict between entities of asymmetrical intelligence.

Such conflicts are a surpassing theme of dath ilani literature, usually with the smarter entity starting out with the worse position in resources, and having to overcome that through wit that the other side failed to anticipate.

And because there are buried warnings in that same literature, it's emphasized also that the conflicts between humans of shared culture are only a small special case; what matters more than disparities in time-local thinkoomph are disparities in cumulated thinkoomph.

When you get into a contest of intelligence with one of your contemporaries, it's really two tips of one iceberg that are fighting each other: you and they are each the inheritor of a roughly equally vast body of ancestral thought and literature, and then they did a little bit more thinking of their own on top of that.  Even if you're exploring some entirely new territory to your shared culture, you'll be coming in with similar concepts of math, science, how broadly and basically to think.  (At least, that's how it is in dath ilan where people wouldn't just not learn probability theory, or the litanies of known heuristics and their exploits; there, most people do start out with a common broad base of basic knowledge.  Dath ilan, in the course of making sure that everyone gets all the boosts they can, does tend to eliminate that source of variance in advantage.)

Abrogail Thrune wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty is decently smart as an individual.  She didn't invent the notion of mixed-strategy equilibria in layered reflective deceptions from scratch, or solve for that equilibrium, because it's surprisingly hard to invent that sort of thing if you have literally zero hints; literally surprising in the sense that people would be surprised by it.  (Most dath ilani would be shocked out of their heavily technologized shoes to learn how late in their history probability theory was invented, far after the dawn of agriculture, and even after the dawn of gambling as turned out to have motivated the question.)

Nex and Geb had each INT 30 by the end of their mutual war.  They didn't solve the puzzle of Azlant's IOUN stones... partially because they did not find and prioritize enough diamonds to also gain Wisdom 27.  And partially because there is more to thinkoomph than Intelligence and Wisdom and Splendour, such as Golarion's spells readily do enhance; there is a spark to inventing notions like probability theory or computation or logical decision theory from scratch, that is not directly measured by Detect Thoughts nor by tests of legible ability at using existing math.  (Keltham has slightly above-average intelligence for dath ilan, reflectivity well below average, and an ordinary amount of that spark.)

But most of all, Nex and Geb didn't solve IOUN stones because they didn't come from a culture that had already developed digital computation and analog signal processing.  Or on an even deeper level - because those concepts can't really be that hard at INT 30, even if your WIS is much lower and you are missing some sparks - they didn't come from a culture which said that inventing things like that is what the Very Smart People are supposed to do with their lives, nor that Very Smart People are supposed to recheck what their society told them were the most important problems to solve.

Nex and Geb came from a culture which said that incredibly smart wizards were supposed to become all-powerful and conquer their rivals; and invent new signature spells that would be named after them forever after; and build mighty wizard-towers, and raise armies, and stabilize impressively large demiplanes; and fight minor gods, and surpass them; and not, particularly, question society's priorities for wizards.  Nobody ever told Nex or Geb that it was their responsibility to be smarter than the society they grew up in, or use their intelligence better than common wisdom said to use it.  They were not prompted to look in the direction of analog signal processing; and, more importantly in the end, were not prompted to meta-look around for better directions to look, or taught any eld-honed art of meta-looking.

So Nex and Geb weren't really, in the end, that much smarter than their societies; not least, because that society and its cumulated thinkoomph didn't tell them to try to be any smarter than their society.

dath ilan: The real cautionary warnings in dath ilani literature, then, are woven into stories of meetings between humans and aliens, not conflicts between one human and another.  Aliens with a culture a thousand times as old.  Aliens from a chronologically younger species but that think faster.  The real disparities in cumulated thinkoomph would appear in meetings like that.

You can imagine (and dath ilani authors have) an individual alien so smart that it doesn't need to learn about standard openings and ploys in Go (a game that exists in many places), it doesn't need to come from a culture that plays Go, it can just play out possible games in its head for a few hours and be superior to every human player at the end.

You can tell stories about how, if you yourself have higher thinkoomph individually than your opponent, but your opponent comes from a society of greater cognitive depth, you could perhaps try to move your conflict to some new territory that your enemy's society knows not; and beat them on conflict-grounds of fluid intelligence, having moved out of crystallized known facts.

Conversely (the stories go in dath ilan), if you are facing a terrifyingly smart opponent who is but for the moment more ignorant than you, you had better be ready to try to fight them on grounds that you know better, and defeat them very quickly before they can learn from experience much faster than you would learn from it.

There can be stories about how one side has greater depth of cumulated thinkoomph, and fluid thinkoomph not inferior to yours - minds of the same level but with better technology including mental technology - but the side with better technology is outnumbered and ill-resourced.

There can be stories about fighting aliens that have greater cumulated thinkoomph and greater resources and equal fluid thinkoomph, and your one advantage is surprise; you have time to prepare with your lesser resources, and you can choose your battleground, but you must make all your moves without alerting them, and once you strike you must win very quickly.

dath ilan: As for a story where the opposition has greater fluid thinkoomph and a far greater depth of cumulated deep-thinkoomph and has had time to acquire roughly equal resources and holds the advantage of surprise - well, what would be the literary point?

It wouldn't even make a good sad story about a desperate doomed battle.  If the truly smarter agency has had time to think and prepare and plan, it's not going to battle you at all.  It's not going to attack you through any channel you've thought of, unless your knowledge of that vulnerability still leaves you helpless to defend it.  The smarter agency is not interested in fighting you if that can be avoided.  It would rather just win, in a way that doesn't make a good story.

If you get a chance to fight - if you get a chance to act - the alien is doing it wrong.  There does come a point of wisdom beyond which an agent does stop doing it wrong; or at least, stops doing it wrong in ways that sufficiently smaller agents can understand in advance as wrong.  If there's extrauniversal forces that want things to be dramatic (dath ilani authors, for example), they'll have to content themselves with picking a dramatically suitable moment for the instant win to occur, or maybe focus on the aftermath (if there is one) - at least if they want their stories to be taken seriously by the Very Serious literary critics.

And if you had to derive a single cautionary message from all that dath ilani literature, about what-if you end up in the position of opposing an agency of greater current and cumulative thinkoomph - and you do not have the advantage of surprise - and you do not have greater resources - that message would be -

Tiny Translucent Sphere: A short time ago, Abrogail Thrune was observed in the presence of Aspexia Rugatonn.

Iarwain: Some swift final preparations were set into motion.

Iarwain: They are now completed.

Iarwain: At some distance from the Imperial Palace, a hovering rocket ignites, very quickly accelerating towards nearly the speed of sound.  It's harder to keep a projectile stable over the speed of sound; and by the time it nears the Imperial Palace, it will already be moving faster than the reflexes of anything that could stop it.

Abrogail Thrune II: "- is -"

Iarwain: No mortal hand could guide the rocket precisely enough, to the point where it's now been targeted, given the turbulence of the rocket's wake and the way that tiny errors would amplify.  So the fine steering is being done by an analog magical processor inspired by the navigators on Azlanti IOUN stones, as hinted at by a more cumulated civilization's concept of a "guided missile".

The rocket approaches the wall of force guarding the palace, and a Disintegrate already in the process of going off completes at just the right time and destroys the wall of force.

Abrogail Thrune II: "- smarter -"

Iarwain: The rocket crashes through a window at nearly the speed of sound; at nearly the same instant, a Dispel completes on a half-ton of low-quality high explosive previously under the effect of a Shrink Item spell; at nearly the same instant, that explosive detonates even as it expands back to normal size.

This explosion has been targeted to launch the Crown of Infernal Majesty out of the Imperial Palace into the air over Egorian.  Not on an exact precalculated trajectory, you can't do that with explosions at this magitech level; but the vector between the Crown and the center of detonation has rendered it predictably the case that the Crown will get launched in a known rough direction.  A certain person has just Teleported into Egorian to watch from that direction, ready to spot the magical signature of the fast-moving major artifact and move to grab it after.

Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn have impressive resistances and saves and protective magic items, none of which mattered any more than the Palace's security precautions mattered.  A half-ton of explosive going off in the same room isn't a combat attack, it's just you being dead.

dath ilan: - don't.

(ai art)

Abrogail Thrune II: It's not her first time dying, not her first time waking in Hell in company of the devil who holds her soul as custodian for Asmodeus.  But along with everything else it means that the Crown of Infernal Majesty has been abruptly removed from her; it's that, more than the shock of being dead, that she struggles to recover from, in that moment of surprise.

(And because of that, she doesn't think, fast enough, to think all of the things that she could have thought -)

lintamande: Those devils that deal at all with mortals in their tedious unpolished form are not held in particularly high regard among devils; mortals are, after all, paving stones in expectation and mostly in practice, and those torments and betrayals that can be visited on stronger and more interesting beings are more sophisticated, more impressive, all-around better, than those routine, boring, and limited torments that can be attempted on the recently-dead without destroying any hope of further use from them.

There is another reason why such devils are held in less regard, and it's that they have to pretend the mortals are interesting and important and impressive, at least a little bit, to lure those mortals into signing their souls away, to give those mortals a tiny fragment of a line with which to trick themselves into believing they matter. They can call the mortals worthless worms, of course, but they have to do it in a tone that concedes that this great devil is here, after all, treating with them. Mortals love that. 

Abrogail Thrune II is generally to get a warm welcome, on arriving in Hell, because her presence is likely temporary, and her loyalties need to be permanent. Abrogail Thrune II is certainly smart enough to know that the greeting she gets on arriving to Hell, with hope of resurrection, is nothing like the greeting she'll get when she falls to them forever. But still, she's a mortal, and like most of them she thinks she matters, and feeding that little delusion of hers is critical to not losing her entirely. 

So the senior contract devil in possession of Abrogail Thrune's soul pauses in his conversation when Abrogail Thrune arrives, much as it galls him, and turns from the beings that actually matter to the disoriented shell of this mortal, and says, "well, well... I take it this one wasn't on your schedule?"

He's reading her mind, of course, in case she has the expectation she won't be resurrected and he can drop the farce, or in case she's in a mood where he can light her on fire and then claim later it was for her own good really.

Abrogail Thrune II: Her sorcery is not about her, a gaping hole in place of what is, at eighth circle, more a part of herself than her own hands -

- schedule.  Devil talking to her.  She's dead.  Being dead... wasn't on her schedule?  That doesn't sound right.  Aspexia was just worried that she hadn't been assassinated -

Keltham.

Keltham killed her.

She doesn't even know how.  Didn't feel it.  She was in her own palace.

Clever boy, thinks the part of herself that, without a whole coherent mind in control of it, thinks such things, remembered condescension mixing with a touch of actual admiration.

But does that count as it being on her schedule?

"It's complicated," her mouth says regally.

lintamande: "Tedious mortal complicated, or is there something in your latest complications of interest to Hell? - actually, think of that but don't speak."

Someone's attempting to scry them. It is trivial enough for a devil to shut down a scry on his own person or his own slave, but not obvious he'd care to; perhaps these are Abrogail's allies, and serve Hell, and if not, well - Abrogail's enemies can see her in Hell, if they like, and if they look again next week and she hasn't been resurrected, what they see will be a great deal more fun.

Abrogail Thrune II: Interest to - Hell?  Her life has been so enormously complicated that she doesn't know where to start (isn't prioritizing in this scrambled state), with 6 INT missing from herself all the endless complications feel like a ruined tower collapsing down into a heap of stones.  Her mind goes to the most-recent complications, possible layers of what Keltham could be trying to trick her into believing, about whether he leveled from his fight with a thing from the Dark Tapestry, about diamonds and the City of Brass (no, Hell already knows about that, Hell was first to inform Cheliax), she's not supposed to think about hopeful plans because then they can't come to pass the way she hoped them, only that - somehow seems much stupider, in her own stupid state, Aspexia can't be right about that, she suddenly feels -

lintamande: He takes her hand, then, and crushes it within his own until he can feel the bones break, but with his expression focused. "I am your custodian; you have been commanded to think."

Abrogail Thrune II: It helps.

But not instantly.

Seconds go on ticking while she focuses on the pain, lets it wash through her and remind her that she is failing to impress; one second, two seconds, half a round, her thoughts collect -

Aspexia Rugatonn was there, is she dead too, yes because the attack wouldn't have been timed like that otherwise, does Keltham have something planned to stop Aspexia's Resurrection and her own -

If all Keltham wanted was to see his child dead, she should be resurrected soon.  Minutes, though, not rounds, because with both her and Aspexia dead, the protocol calls for resurrecting Rugatonn first.  Not as a power struggle between Church and Crown - well, of course there's always a power struggle, but in this case it works out to a common-sense answer and a tiny flow of political capital - Aspexia can cast True Resurrection herself, if she happens to have it prepped, it might save a scroll -

Security: Let's take this moment in time to talk (as one often does) about the theory and practice of counterassassination security in Cheliax.

In Golarion generally, the vast majority of heads-of-state are defended primarily by custom, by inertia, by the country's sovereign not actually being important enough to be worth defending against the equivalent of one person with a distance-targetable projectile weapon.  Security-through-nobody-actually-bothering-to-attack-you-all-that-hard-or-creatively is the most popular kind of security.

The Queen of Cheliax, Abrogail Thrune II, is one of the rare exceptions to this rule.  From the standpoint of, say, the Church of Iomedae, Abrogail Thrune makes Golarion significantly worse just by existing, and if she stopped ruling Cheliax her replacement would probably not be equally creative and dynamic.  Iomedae's Church would pay a lot of money to any creative person who managed to kill Abrogail Thrune in a way where she didn't come back; or, better yet, to anyone who could take the Crown of Infernal Majesty permanently off the board.

So Abrogail Thrune's personal security model centers around the presumption that the attacker's primary goals, and the primary negative outcomes that Cheliax wants to avoid, are:1)  Somebody taking Abrogail Thrune down in a way that True Resurrection, or at ultimate need Miracles and Wishes, cannot fix.  Soul Bind, most obviously, and then getting away with the soul-gem.  Just having a daemon-worshipper Maledict her to Abaddon would not suffice; if you are willing to pay enough you can Wish back a Maledicted soul.  If the body was destroyed, you can Wish up another body first.  You'd need to do that before her soul was eaten, but unless you are really dawdling about this there will likely be time.  Similarly, to have a daemon consume Abrogail Thrune in the process of an assassination would require quite a lot of time during which Cheliax had not caught up with you.  Still, it wouldn't do to let Abrogail Thrune - or her soul gem - get Teleported onto the front doorstep of the House of Oblivion.

2)  Getting the Crown of Infernal Majesty permanently out of Cheliax's reach, presumably out of the reach of Hell and Asmodeus.  This isn't going to be easy; Asmodeus can definitely see the Crown wherever it goes.  Putting the Crown into a bag of holding and tossing the bag into a portable hole, which usually suffices to lose a thing forever in the far distant Astral Plane, is not nearly going to suffice here.  But if you can get the Crown to Heaven - that might do it.  Even if Asmodeus could pay Heaven to get it back, the payment would be huge enough that the injury to Evil would be vast; paladins would offer their souls for it; and in the aftermath Abrogail Thrune would no longer be Queen, or much of anything at all.

All of this points to a security model that centers on keeping Abrogail Thrune where she is rather than alive.  The Queen is not without her defenses, over and above the crazy levels of protection from the Crown of Infernal Majesty; but this is because while the Queen is alive she can better stay in one place, and defend her Crown and her soul.  Defending the Queen's life isn't the point the same way.  That's a Raise Dead issue, or at worst a True Resurrection, or at real worst a matter of Wish and Miracle.  So long as she's not inside a gemstone.

Security: If the assassination is taking place outside the Palace, the threat model, then, is an attacker who has a plan for making off with a gem containing Abrogail Thrune's soul, or with the Crown of Infernal Majesty, or less likely kidnapping her living body.

The full details of Abrogail Thrune's security entourages outside the Palace would be lengthy; and, of course, heavily classified.

But a primary element of her personal Security is that Abrogail Thrune's entourage will be decorated with Telepathic Bonds and Status spells.  Someone on the other end of those will be in telepathic range of Gorthoklek, who will promptly Greater Teleport in - not to that exact location, as will obviously be Teleport Trapped by at least one side of the security game; Gorthoklek will Teleport in above and dive quickly.

(Abrogail Thrune does sometimes appear in a place without heavy Security - life would be less fun for her, otherwise - but when she does, she goes Mind Blanked and never ever lets it form anything resembling a predictable pattern.  The one Competent Security on her personal guard invariably tears her hair out anyways.)

Security: Abrogail Thrune's counterassassination security model has also obviously considered an attack on the Queen inside her Palace's Forbiddance; there's just way too much weird shit in Golarion for it to be realistically possible to keep everyone out of a place.

The advantage to the attacker, in this case, will be that Abrogail Thrune will be less prepared than when she ventures outside, without a dozen protective spells that are too bothersome or too expensive to constantly redo.  She also will not be able to immediately Dimension Door or Teleport away, because of the Palace's Forbiddance.  Gorthoklek cannot immediately Greater Teleport to her side.

The attacker's primary disadvantage is the Forbiddance; and the security model assumes that the attacker's primary goal is getting outside of the Forbiddance, carrying a gem with the Queen's soul or her head still wearing the Crown (or both).

Permanent walls of force are Very Expensive.  One-time walls of force, rather less.  If the Queen's Status indicates that she is severely injured or dead while inside the Palace, multiple layered walls of force and several other complicated measures will spring up to enclose the Palace Forbiddance almost immediately.  Other security measures are then invoked with the aim of sweeping the enclosed volume inside the countermeasures before they run out of time and come down; against an attacker determined to hide and ride out Cheliax's supply of temporary enclosures.  (An attacker trying to hide probably has the Queen's soul gem; the Crown should be impossible to hide.)

Of course Security has not failed to consider the possibility of the Forbiddance itself being taken down, by a Dispel from Nefreti Clepati or a Mage's Disjunction.  Could the attacker also have cast a Teleport Trap before then, in case Abrogail Thrune tries to just Teleport right out?  If it was some other sovereign being targeted, then maybe, but a Teleport Trap allows both a Will save and Spell Resistance; an 8th-circle sorcerer wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty is probably fine here.

Again the details of measure and countermeasure would be lengthy; but one very pragmatic countermeasure is that if the Palace Forbiddance goes down while the Queen is inside it, Gorthoklek teleports to her location and then scries for Aspexia Rugatonn.

Security: Wishnapping is a whole entire other class of threat.  Almost nobody besides Abrogail Thrune needs to worry about it.  It's just too expensive.

If you are Abrogail Thrune, or somebody else worth well more than a hundred thousand gold pieces to kidnap, the first elementary precaution is to be Mind Blanked whenever you're out of a Forbiddance.

But as for a Mage's Disjunction or a Nefreti Clepati Dispel being levied on a Forbiddance, while you're inside it, and a Wish following immediately after -

Well, then, if you're Abrogail Thrune, you laugh.  Involuntary Wish-movement allows both Will-saves and Spell Resistance, and Abrogail Thrune wearing the Crown has plenty of both.  Even without the Crown an 8th-circle sorcerer still gets a heck of a Will save, and Abrogail Thrune's luxuriously spoiled aristocratic upbringing has granted her something of an extra-strong Will save on top of that.  A circle of a hundred noble Efreet could all Wish for her to be moved, one after another, and Abrogail Thrune would not move did she choose to stay; the Efreet are not such mighty casters, after all, even if they have a strange affinity for Wishes.  You'd have to render her unconscious outside a Forbiddance and take off her Crown, and if you can do either of those things, you can just take the Crown.

Security: With all that said, it isn't realistically possible to prevent anybody from ever killing the Queen.  The primary pillar of security there is that resurrection is in fact a thing.  For this reason did Abrogail and Aspexia believe that Keltham ought to not have too much trouble assassinating the Queen, so long as Abrogail occasionally appeared outside the Palace at a predictable place and time, no matter how much Security she brought with her and even if they were not instructed to leave gaps.

...Of course, then, another obvious thought is that you could first assassinate Abrogail Thrune in a very normal way, and then hire a Lawful Evil spellcaster to resurrect her; or even with some work and the right set of lies, get an Asmodean to cast True Resurrection from scroll, aimed at Abrogail Thrune while she was vulnerable in Hell.

To prevent Abrogail from giving her consent for resurrection unwittingly - or her asking the devil who holds custody of her soul to do the same - there's an obvious sort of setup that involves a Greater Scry spell and a Message through that scry (as can be enacted much more swiftly than Sending), containing a password telling Abrogail that the upcoming resurrection is an authorized one, and naming a randomized exact number of rounds before that resurrection.

Depending on how badly things got fucked up when the Queen died, and especially if Aspexia Rugatonn is also dead or if there's an ongoing Security penetration, their True Resurrections may take place within the sort of tiny unambitious demiplane that isn't too insanely expensive to stabilize with a Permanency.

That resurrection isn't the priority, though, the priority is securing the Crown of Infernal Majesty - and oh there's all sorts of complications involved in Abrogail Thrune trying to prevent anybody else from putting on the Crown during that process!  Especially if they happen to have maybe executed a compact with Asmodeus, or if they're a Thrune; or maybe a Thrune in disguise who's secretly executed a compact... 

The only reason why that resurrection should happen shortly, if nothing has gone wrong, is that the resurrection process doesn't depend on the Crown-securing process.  The rez can proceed in parallel as soon as the process for trying to get Aspexia Rugatonn to do it fails, and the find-Rugatonn process is on a sharp time-bound.

Abrogail Thrune II: - but if all Keltham wanted was to still his child - he would not have tried, probably succeeded, in killing Rugatonn at the same time.  That's - Abrogail doesn't see it yet, the reason, but there must have been a plan -

A flash of disoriented horror and dismay, would Keltham take the Crown - to cast into Heaven, or wear himself - no that's madness, it would have been Carissa, obviously Carissa, surely Carissa, as the motive power, she'd never let the Crown be thrown into Heaven like garbage.  If, with Abrogail dead, Carissa compacted of Asmodeus can lay her own hands upon the Crown of Infernal Majesty - then Carissa wins, obviously, if she can prove her continuing Asmodean loyalties to the Most High beyond all doubt, and has strength enough to force skeptical eighth-circle wizards to kneel to her.  And otherwise there will be a horrific mess -

lintamande: None of this is very interesting, if you are a devil; mortals can have their mortal power struggles. He dismisses the scry with an irritated flick of his tail; whether it is Abrogail's allies or her enemies, they've seen enough, and squeezes her hand further as it seems to be salutary so far. "You may speak aloud," he says. Sometimes mortals can think more clearly that way.

Abrogail Thrune II: And then suddenly, Abrogail Thrune is somewhere else!

Iarwain: Wishes don't obey all the usual rules for resurrections, which is why they can beat Maledictions and in some cases temporarily infernal contracts (if the contracted didn't die of old age).

But Wishes do get Will saves, if they try to resurrect you without consent.  Even in death, some pissant Efreeti cannot just yank Abrogail Thrune back to life against her will.

And a petitioner in the afterlife who does not consent might also be assisted by the authority of that plane in resisting.  Usually would be, if that plane wants to keep that petitioner.  Hell can't go around Wishing its enemies out of Heaven for funsies, or vice versa.

Iarwain: But there were three Wishes remaining, of fifteen Wishes bought with a soul; and if you are a damned petitioner making a Will save against a pit fiend, the usual rule is that the pit fiend wins.

Abrogail Thrune II: Abrogail Thrune is currently looking up at an expressionless pit fiend towering over her!

And alive!

Keltham+: And Greater Cursed.

Abrogail Thrune II: He can't just do that!!  Abrogail gets a Will save!  She should've gotten a Will save!

And why can't she move - why can't she cast - why does her mind suddenly have this awful hollow empty feeling where her drive, her core, should be, to call down flame and ice -

Iarwain: The procedure for revival via Wish, if you need to beat some unusual impediment to resurrection using a tremendous amount of money, involves using one Wish to recreate the body and a second Wish to revive it.  (Though the first Wish, in this case, could just be carried out in the City of Brass, before going to Hell for the second.)

Thinking about it, this implies a phase of the process where a lifeless Abrogail Thrune body is just lying there all vulnerable-like.

Before revival her lifeless body was bound in fetching-looking chains of magical steel, and also this new body comes pre-equipped with the following magic items:

Amulet of Held Person:  Casts Hold Person on the wearer.  Prerequisites:  Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Craft Wondrous Item.

Crown of Splendourlessness:  -12 to Splendour, as if subjected to Greater Bestow Curse.  Prerequisites:  Greater Bestow Curse, Craft Wondrous Item.

Tiny Sword of Will Save Failure:  -10 to all Will saves.  Prerequisites:  Greater Bestow Curse, Craft Magical Arms and Armor.

(Note:  Missing prerequisites can be bypassed with an increase in crafting DC that is beneath INT 29 Carissa Sevar's dignity to acknowledge in any way.)

Keltham+: Keltham, who does not seem to be bothering to speak to her paralyzed form - nor to the pit fiend - unceremoniously picks her up with obviously augmented Strength; slings her over his shoulder; and hauls her quickly out of the iron room, exiting from there to what's clearly Avernus, the first layer of Hell.  His moves are Hasted, not in the fashion of somebody who fears the consequence otherwise, just someone who doesn't want to waste time.

Abrogail Thrune II: It is hard to think, in this state.  She was fifteen years old the last time anyone trained her to operate with Intelligence, or Wisdom, or Splendour cursed; and then Abrogail was not cursed this terribly.  It is the sort of training that she just did not dare keep up later in life, it would make her just too vulnerable.

Feeling impressed, feeling scared, those are both emotions she should not let herself feel without deciding about it, but there they are and it is much harder than usual to grind down everything that ought not be part of Abrogail Thrune.

Her mind does manage to make the connection, once it sorts out the bodily feeling that she's already wearing a cursed amulet and cursed crown, that Carissa Sevar must be working with Keltham on this or at least fulfilling magic item orders for him.  Abrogail's mind, looking around for anything allowable to think, decides that this means the Crown wouldn't just be given to Heaven; Sevar wouldn't allow it.

Keltham+: He passes through a Gate that opens for him, into what looks like an unfamiliar demiplane; speaks a password, crosses a marked boundary.

Abrogail Thrune II: She can't move.  Can't cast.  Can barely think.

When she looked forward to playing the game of thrones against Carissa, or maybe against a Lawful Evil Keltham someday, she did think it would be later; and that she would get a chance to make a move, in the game, rather than getting no chance to act at all.

(Her mind does not let itself think any thoughts like 'lost the game' or 'not queen of Cheliax anymore'.  There are all kinds of ways that she could still end up being Queen after this.)

(There's no thoughts like that, but an awful sinking pit in her stomach; for Abrogail Thrune hasn't Splendour enough to cast one cantrip, now.)

Keltham+: He casts a second Greater Curse upon her, from scroll, and then a third; duplicating with those Curses the effect of the cursed magic items already on her.

And then a fourth and final Greater Curse, one that would seem nonstandard even to Aspexia Rugatonn; whose purpose Abrogail Thrune simply cannot read, in the gestures he is making to tell the Curse what it should be; casting it over a longer period than ordinary even with gestures Hasted.

Abrogail Thrune II: She would protest, say something, persuade him somehow, maybe ask the seductively frightened question 'What are you doing to me?', if she could speak and had Splendour.

If this doesn't end well, it's all Aspexia's fault for insisting that Abrogail wait paralyzed and frightened in her palace instead of playing the game like a sane person.

Keltham+: Keltham lays that final curse upon her, as she lies helpless to resist.

He then moves out of her field of vision, leaving her bound and paralyzed upon the flat surface of what appears to be a gray-lighted simple demiplane; though to be sure, in Abrogail's state, she could not see through an illusion maybe even of an ordinary wizard, and never mind one cast from INT 29.

Abrogail Thrune II: She could not feel herself failing her Will save, cannot tell what the curse is doing to her, she feels no more stupid or crippled than before.

But even with 6 less INT than usual, even with an utterly crippling 18 less Splendour than usual, Abrogail Thrune is not hollowed-out enough not to wonder why they're leaving her conscious at all, nor fail to question whether she's actually unattended -

Iarwain: The Hold Person from the Amulet wears off, though she's still chained.

Abrogail Thrune II: Okay haha no she's not stupid enough not to think that they'd hold her in such disregard as to leave her conscious and unparalyzed just to show Hellish contempt; it'd be an unnecessary risk.

Abrogail Thrune II: ...Detect Thoughts.  They've left her alone to see if she thinks anything interesting once she thinks she's alone.