Aspexia Rugatonn: "I think that Hell effectively keeps its secrets on such matters, including from the likes of Carissa Sevar; and serves Asmodeus well in all that we cannot see."

Abrogail: "Hell has carefully engineered the impressions we hold of it, without ever making us any promises.  It carefully manages what mortals see on their trips to Hell, if they've any prospect of returning, and never swears us any oaths.  Of course I trust Sevar's sworn probability estimates above that.  Any sensible person would." 

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Sevar is not privy to Hell's hidden truths, nor can they be bought, nor scried.  For Sevar to swear that she's guessed a thing is still nothing more than guessing, even if she dresses it up in numbers."

Abrogail: Rugatonn surely does not think that Abrogail can be unbrainwashed upon the spot; or if she's modeling Sevar accurately, knows that Sevar would not have sent Abrogail here in a persuadable state.  And Abrogail knows that Aspexia Rugatonn cannot be turned from her own course.  Least of all could any debate move Gorthoklek.

What Rugatonn must be contesting, then, are the opinions of the high officials and palace Security wizards uneasily watching all this.

This handful of Chelish powers cannot decide any large military-civil conflict, they have not the numbers or combined potency.  But they are informative; the next batch of Chelish powers might not arrive to any different opinion, if these few backed Abrogail here, or Rugatonn.

"Carissa Sevar has now reached INT 29, and mastered every scrap of Law that an INT 18 child could contain out of another world, and extended it.  If Sevar is not yet a god, she is close enough that the likes of us cannot predict in which direction she'll be mistaken relative to a god."

"But you're worried that Sevar's sworn guesses are wrong, for all that you say you don't know Hell's truth yourself?  Or you think yourself sure that an INT 29 ilani is making errors and in a particular direction?  Fine enough, then, Gorthoklek is right there.  He can give us his own oath about anything I say that happens to be false."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Hell decides for itself what to say, or not say, and to be moved by such a taunt is beneath a pit fiend's pride.  So I answer on Gorthoklek's behalf, for if he answered at all it might be to destroy you."

Abrogail: "You need hardly be INT 29 to understand that Hell makes the decision of what to keep from us for reasons that include leaving the pathetic deluded mortals to their delusions, when those delusions lead them to serving Hell more eagerly than they'd serve if they knew the truth."  Abrogail's voice is clear now and cold.  "Matters of Evil and pride may proceed of Asmodeus, but matters of truth and reality are of Law.  It was stupid in the first place for the mortals of Cheliax to trust to their fates in Hell while only guessing what those fates were.  It was not a sane or Lawful arrangement.  If our dues in Hell are to be the foundations of our loyalty and the Chelish state, if we're to work all our lives to improve our fates, let those fates be known to us and not guessed."

"If Sevar is wrong about that, let Gorthoklek swear that Hell originally decided to not swear to us regarding our fate in Hell, for a primary and decisive reason other than that we mortals were thereby too optimistic, and more eager than we would have been.  That ought not injure his pride by much, if Hell has any legitimate reason for secrecy."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "That rather sounds like Keltham's style of reasoning -"

Abrogail: "I mark that attempted change of topic, and that Gorthoklek remains silent."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Is there even anything left of Abrogail Thrune, or am I only speaking with what Sevar put into this flesh after it was put into her by Keltham?"

Abrogail: "Carissa Sevar was Chosen of Irori, you know, as I was Chosen of Asmodeus.  Irori doesn't really go for that sort of thing.  I am given this because it made me stronger."

"And also, I'm afraid you're worried about the wrong puppetmaster, Aspexia."  Abrogail looks down at the Crown of Infernal Majesty with entirely-honest wistful regret.  "The other reason I haven't put on this Crown is that, if we do come to an agreement, the Keepers of Asmodeus will need this overpriced headband more than I do, for their training."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "You've gone over to Snack Service."  None of the absolute horror in Aspexia Rugatonn's voice is the tiniest bit feigned.  As promising as Asmodeus's Keepers seem, she's never forgotten for one second whose project that was.

Abrogail: "I understand that Sevar's come to some arrangement with that alliance's representative, yes.  I'm not intelligent enough, Lawful enough, or trusted enough myself to know the details."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "And is Sevar on Asmodeus's side, in this?"

Abrogail: "Don't be absurd.  Sevar is on her own side, as is the way of Lawful Evil.  And I'm on my own side; it's just been shown to me that my best interests lie with her."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "She tortured you until you -"

Abrogail: "Of course.  She is Lawful Evil, not Lawful Neutral.  But she didn't break me in any way she couldn't repair afterwards, because she isn't your kind of Asmodean."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "My kind of Asmodean?  I am the one who defines -"

Abrogail: "It's only heresy until it becomes orthodoxy, Rugatonn, and remember that you too will come to Hell in time."

"Enough of this.  You don't know the true stakes on this gameboard - and neither do I.  So let's negotiate about the parts our lesser minds can understand."

"Gorthoklek might have been destroyed by an ilani weapon, and upon my being resurrected I could have taken Cheliax from Hell, though with great strife and loss.  And then I'd give Cheliax into Sevar's hands, to rule in Hell's name again; and souls here who cry her name would be hers to own, in Hell after Her ascension.  Except," Abrogail turns now to look deliberately at the watching royal guards, "those already soul-sold to Hell, who are excluded from Sevar's compact with Asmodeus.  Whom Sevar has separately compacted with Dispater to be able to buy from their current owners in Dis, with the approval of Crown and Church."

"So as an alternative to the road that needlessly costs Hell - Cheliax could submit itself to Carissa Sevar as its Empress, with myself as her viceroy, styling myself Directrix.  The worship of Sevar, as a destined future goddess of Hell under Asmodeus, will be legalized and encouraged by the state if perhaps not the Church.  Those worthy in Cheliax will still go to Sevar in due time.  Perhaps through emigration to Wanshou; perhaps after She's taken three-quarters of Avistan in Hell's name, backed by an unweakened Cheliax.  The Church will give its approval to Sevar's buying of those who've already sold themselves to Hell, if they please her or seem to hold promise."

"Neither Church nor Hell shall try to interfere with Sevar's rulership of Cheliax for three years, so long as it stays within the bounds of reformed Asmodeanism; nor will the Church protest certain changes away from the more wasteful and self-destructive of Cheliax's current policies.  On Sevar's own oath that she expects all those changes together to increase the number of souls that come to Hell eventually, compared to what would have come about if she did nothing at all."

"You do not trust me, of course, and I do not trust you.  But we both aspire to Lawfulness, and Gorthoklek actually is Lawful, and neither of us wishes to expend Cheliax's strength in a conflict between us.  Lawful beings need not waste their strength so, if they both prefer doing something else.  That we do not trust one another, that we do not have the same goals, these are obstacles that we are both incentivized to pay some little costs to overcome.  It isn't even hard, for us, being Lawful and knowing one another for Lawful.  We'll set up cutouts in Cheliax's command structure whereby I or Sevar cannot just betray the country to Good, or whatever it is you fear we'll do with it; and your and Gorthoklek's oaths, somewhat severer than those you've made before, will properly forbid the Church to use those cutouts to take away our country."

"It's an offer that works for everyone, really.  You should all be grateful that Sevar is the sort of Lawful Evil who'll give you the chance at it."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Mmhm.  And the coming war with Osirion?"

Abrogail: "In a word, no.  Those preparations will prove useful, but we'll conquer where the Empress says we conquer, and Sevar will take care of talking it through with Keltham first.  I am not going to tell you any details of what would happen to us otherwise; you might not believe the plain truth about what They can do... before seeing evidence that will be demonstrated in some little time."

Chelish Throne Room: There are many uneasy glances, then, among the sort of Chelish powers present who are not mainly thinking about running away.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Snack Service made mention of the Keepers of Asmodeus needing to be ready before we attacked Osirion."

Abrogail: "It would have been truthful given what It knew, expected, at the time.  Carissa Sevar has altered Cayden Cailean's plan; let Him pray that she does not alter it any further."

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I frankly fail to see how any of this benefits you.  Asmodeus would still own your soul, and He seems unlikely to be pleased with your concept of loyalty.  Dispater Himself could not sell you to Sevar even if He wanted to.  You will never come to her hands in death."

Abrogail: "Carissa promised me she'd make a reasonable effort to do something about that, and said she thought she could, though she said I couldn't know the details."

Chelish Throne Room: For a second there's just sheer disbelieving silence in the throne hall of Cheliax.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "I thought you stronger than to have been that brainwashed, that quickly, if you can still talk this coherently at all."

Abrogail: "I'd have believed her even if she hadn't sworn to me that she didn't expect that my own expectations were too optimistic, and that she wasn't concealing those details primarily in hopes I'd make a mistake that benefited her.  She's Carissa Sevar, not Asmodeus, and soon all Golarion will learn what that means."

"Now let us be about our necessary business, Most High, for I have a great deal of work to do.  And a planar binding to perform on one of Hell's most recent petitioners."  Abrogail nudges the decapitated head of the former 'Terthule II' with one foot.  "This isn't, actually, escaping me that easily."

Cheliax: And by the end of that day, in near-competition with how fast spies and rumors can spread news across Golarion, the country of Cheliax will send out messages, by ambassador and also by other means, to announce the peaceful annexation of Cheliax into the Sevarian Empire.

The Sevarian Empire realizes this trend might worry other countries.  The Sevarian Empire strongly suggests that the delegates of many countries come together to negotiate a new, more stable international order.  The Sevarian Empire is eager to engage in peaceful and lawful negotiations with such countries as may know Law, in order to achieve more mutually beneficial outcomes for both parties than might have been achieved without such negotiations.

That said, the Sevarian Empire is Lawful Evil and fully intends to conquer weak and vulnerable territories like Wanshou used to be.  The Empire may annex any countries which don't negotiate a guaranteed place in the new world order, including aspects like contributing to Worldwound defense; and including satisfactory guarantees on points like exit rights for their citizens if they want to move to a Sevarian country instead.  Nidal is a fair example of who might've been next if Cheliax weren't already busy digesting them.

This arrangement is the product of negotiations between Carissa Sevar and Keltham of Elsewhere.  Keltham's own part in that arrangement is that he will not protect countries that do not come to the negotiating table and negotiate reasonably there.  Pilar Pineda's part can come as a surprise to anyone who insists on being silly.

As a good-faith gesture of their own cordial participation in the new international equilibrium to be negotiated, the new Cheliax is voluntarily adopting a temporary moratorium on Maledictions pending other negotations.

Golarion: ...absorbing Cheliax into the "Sevarian Empire" is going to get a LOT of entities paying attention who were not paying quite that much attention to the earlier fight in Wanshou, and who'd dismissed the "Scientific Revolution" as a one-off import of extraplanar knowledge about spellsilver alchemy.

One might, possibly, worry that a public takeover of Cheliax was a risky move for Keltham to allow Carissa Sevar to make.  Most attention will be aimed at Carissa Sevar, but it's also going to get a lot of people - and liches, and ancient dragons, and gods - taking Keltham more seriously than before...

Pilar : It was ultimately more an intuition than anything else, by which Pilar made that call: that they were entering an endgame unseen by Nethys, and that the game's nature was not to be winnable by timid play.

That it mattered to have it be seen, and also mattered to have it be true, that Cheliax on the eve of war suddenly turned its sword's aim from opposing Good to opposing Evils, and ceased from the worst of its cruelties.

That it was worth doing, above all, for the sake of that thread of painful disbelieving hope that would run through Golarion like a hitch in the world's breath.

But exposing so much capability does involve, unavoidably, a chance that a certain deity will finally have enough information to figure out the plot.  And then -

Asmodeus: Carissa Sevar now definitely has His personal attention, yes.  Annoyingly, that doesn't give Him very much information, in this case.  He compacted not to peek through Otolmens's veil; and if a mortal stays Mind-Blanked outside that veil, even her having sold her soul to Dispater does not allow Dispater to read out her thoughts without more effort than Asmodeus cares to pay Dispater to exercise.

But it's obvious enough that Carissa Sevar is playing this game on her own behalf, as is not wholly to Dispater's benefit, who in turn is not entirely aligned to Asmodeus...

...and that's entirely fine, as Asmodeus considers His aesthetics.  But Carissa Sevar had better be benefiting the tyranny in all this.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn will carefully scrutinize, with the aid of Gorthoklek, every significant order that Abrogail Thrune conveys.  Sevar is not weakening Cheliax in any drastic respect except that Osirion's Scientific Revolution is gaining steam while it prances about uninvaded; and Sevar has promised clear evidence to be delivered shortly that Keltham had the capability to defeat Cheliax's military if that invasion had actually been carried out.

Sevar has also promised, and begun maneuvering for, negotiations whereby the Keepers of Asmodeus will be placed in power and responsibility over all greater ilani weapons, as those inventions are inevitably discovered - though the Keepers will swear to carry out Otolmens's purposes alone, when they act in that capacity, without tricks or favoritism or any manner of shenanigans whatsoever.  It will be argued, truthfully, that only Asmodeus's rigors can suffice to train those who could actually be entrusted with such a duty, among those very few mortals well-suited to Asmodean rigor.

Gorthoklek: There is an equilibrium implied by the existence of truly deadly weapons, which Hell's elite understands better than Golarion's mortals have previously needed to know.  On Gorthoklek's own analysis, Cheliax is not being maneuvered into a position that will cripple its ability to serve Hell later.  Sevar is executing some non-obvious correct maneuvers to position Cheliax for that long game, which Gorthoklek would not have been permitted to reveal if Sevar had not made them.

Which isn't to say that they ought to trust Carissa Sevar for that reason.  Carissa Sevar is obviously - this is blatant from Gorthoklek's viewpoint - playing some game against intelligences of divine level, which is to say, against Cayden Cailean or Asmodeus or both.  Sevar is playing that game competently, and has honed her policy to yield no evidence that she is breaking with either Good or Evil - and as for whether it's Evil or Good from which Sevar is trying to hide her allegiances, all not privy to her purposes are left with their prior odds.

Most probably, if Gorthoklek takes obvious inferences at their face value, Sevar is not committing herself fully to Good or Evil; she is waiting to demand a further compact with Hell that she deems her fair share of Evil's gains, and will demand more of her desiderata, possibly sentimental ones, at that time.

Or Sevar may know well that she's irrevocably cast her soul's fate with Hell; but could be trying to deceive Hell's other minions about whether that threat has power to move her, in hopes they'll tread more cautiously and generously around her.

Aspexia Rugatonn: It's an analysis that would be more reassuring if the new Carissa Sevar were not 3 INT ahead of Gorthoklek - though even in the worst case of ilani transmuting diamonds, Sevar must be much less Wise.  But still.

Aspexia doesn't like the part with suspending Maledictions.

It really comes down to that, in the end.  All of Aspexia's instincts are shrieking to her that ending Maledictions is much more something that Good people invent clever lies about when they're pretending to be Evil than that Evil people think of doing to deceive Good, and if that's a ploy by Carissa Sevar to fool somebody else then it's also working on Aspexia Rugatonn.

Asmodeus: The aspect of Asmodeus paying attention is not quite able to understand all that his most favored squirrel is thinking.  But He understands of Gorthoklek that Carissa Sevar is not being allowed to play Cheliax into an untenable position, that Cheliax can be taken back from her if she oversteps herself, and that's most of what He cares about right now - that if Sevar betrays Hell, it is her and not Cheliax who will regret it more.

His position has fluctuated wildly, these past months, but it still appears to be notably ahead of where it started - namely, with Cheliax facing down Galt and Andoran as serious opponents and trying to hold on to the remainder of its diminished territory, and Zon-Kuthon as an ancient rival for Lawful Evil's final throne.

Pilar : Asmodeus isn't going to get this one; even if a larger fragment of Him is paying more attention, the matter is too contrary to His nature.

The truth is not in Sarenrae's nature, or Desna's, or Abadar's, for Them to read through from only glances.

But there's one non-allied god whose nature it matches all too well -

Iomedae: Iomedae was already paying attention; not literally as much attention as She can, but as much as She can afford.

Iomedae has been paying attention since the start of a godwar under mysterious circumstances, in which Zon-Kuthon ended up sealed and Iomedae obtained His vault's key.

She paid more attention after Cayden Cailean's anomalous actions against Her intelligence network in Cheliax - actions by one Good god against another, at the behest of Nethys.

When Peranza called out to Her, Iomedae learned that Keltham, a mortal from outside Creation bearing precious knowledge, was the trigger to set all those events in motion. She coalesced Herself then, and considered many possibilities. Then Her greater self set out conditional response patterns for Her splinters, abstract reflexes wiser in many ways than a mortal's full deliberations.

Iarwain: (A more knowledgeable civilization might have the metaphor of a not-overly-deep function approximator, trained on a dataset that was itself produced by something greater and smarter than a mortal.  A god-splinter can predict and act with insight greater than any mortal; but only if it is, in some sense, usual insight, as seen from an inhumanly broad perspective on what is high-probability.  A god-splinter's performance degrades as events go out-of-distribution; there's a certain sense in which a god-splinter is not ultimately as smart as a very smart mortal - though even then, there are kinds of classic mortal errors that a god-splinter just doesn't make.)

Iomedae: When Keltham left Cheliax for Osirion, Iomedae's fragment spoke to him at Abadar's behest; and caught more detailed sight of Keltham than She has of most of Her own paladins. Mostly, because She expended the energy to see him; but also because Keltham had, even as he spoke to Her, decided that the Evil afterlives would stop existing.

There is a way of thinking like that, which is not a grand speech to convince an audience, nor a performance of certainty to convince yourself, but only the decision to walk those possible roads through time. Iomedae sometimes tries to gesture at this concept to mortals through the doctrine "Iomedae is the goddess not of fighting against Evil, but of victory over Evil", even though you can't get victory just by declaring yourself in favor of winning.

Keltham?: It was the most visible to Her that Keltham would ever be again.  Shortly afterward he severed himself from Abadar, and donned magic items that made him more expensive to read.  Gods can read through those anyways, with an effort; it does not mean that a young god like Iomedae can spare the cost.

And had any greater god paid the price of a lesser peek at Keltham's surface thoughts, during the month after he arrived in Osirion, They would have found that his thoughts were mostly on the details of the Scientific Revolution, on what he needed to teach to pay back Abadar's investment in him.  Even when Keltham dealt with Lawful Evil sellers, to buy scrolls and items, he thought only in quickly-suppressed flickers about why, having already decided what; like a fragment of a god, set on course by a greater self.

Golarion: (It was a needless precaution, in the end; reading a mortal mind really is not a routine activity for a god.  The ancient gods have a hard time understanding mortal minds unless the mortal's thought lies very squarely within Their domain.  It's easier for once-mortal gods, but those can rarely afford the energy.  Even had Keltham been thinking to himself openly, no one would have seen -

- except Nethys, of course.  Or any other god that Nethys-fragment chose to inform, if that part of Himself had the sanity for that.)

Keltham?: And then, from Osirion, Keltham went to Ostenso, a place where gods were forbidden to intervene.  And within Ostenso, a further smaller fortress, about which Otolmens set a protective veil to lure the understandably skittish anomaly back into containment (as Otolmens saw those matters).  For most gods to peer past that veil, They would have needed to spend great efforts; and a younger god would've needed to coalesce and go in person, meaning the god would need to be suicidal.

Iomedae: She did spend noticeably less effort on thinking about Keltham, after that, since there was a decreased probability that She would be able to do anything about him or for him. She focused more of Her attention on managing his impacts.

Keltham?: Then Keltham gifted some blurrily-perceived vast amount of wealth/power/potentiality-for-Good to three high-leveled wizard followers of Iomedae, on behalf of Her church; who were temporarily forbidden to tell the rest of Her church or pray about it to Iomedae.

Iomedae: It wasn't, actually, sufficient precaution to prevent Iomedae from perceiving the event, when some of Her faithful thought that Keltham had given them the key to victory over Evil in Golarion and maybe even many planets beyond. Trying to suppress your emotions, and not think too excitedly about that prospect, doesn't actually avert Iomedae's attention. She's not the goddess of being excited about victory over Evil. If you're just going to do it and not get excited about it, that counts too.

But Iomedae is being careful in how She updates on that leaked observation. If Keltham is honestly trying to give Her church a great aid in its purpose, despite what he sees as a risk of that act triggering Iomedae to some unwanted-by-him action or realization - but he is daring to help anyways for Goodness's sake - then Iomedae will... just let Keltham give Her people that gift? And not let that trigger any adverse actions by Her, unless She'd have arrived at the same conclusion by another pathway, so that Keltham is not disadvantaged by his goodness? It's frustrating to Her how often Good seems to feel the need to treat adversarially with Good, but She at least knows better.

Her splinter doesn't fail to note that Keltham's attempted concealment of his gift seems possibly related to Cayden Cailean shutting down Iomedae's spying apparatus in Cheliax. But even having observed this, it doesn't fall into an obvious greater abstract pattern for why. Why would Good fight Good instead of negotiating?

Keltham: The Keltham from her vision was dealing with pain, loss, confusion, doubts about whether anything around him was real. Those are major predictors, in mortals, large parts of who they are and how they choose. Where righteous conviction guides mortals to try to discard those parts of them, it tends to guide them very badly. And so those are worrying, where she saw them in Keltham, no matter how much skill she also saw entrained about evaluating what-are-the-consequences independently of how he feels at the time.

Iomedae: Iomedae has seen previous cases of people who were previously more congruent to Her, becoming less congruent as they decide that Her church is not doing enough - that Lawful Good is inconvenienced too much by its binds of Law and Goodness - whereupon they go off to do things that don’t work, to do things that trade badly between resources-now and resources-later, to make it harder for Good to cooperate with Good. That is a known pattern to Her, and pain and loss can trigger it.

But to give the church of Iomedae some great gift, is not usually what former-Iomedaens do if the need to defeat Evil drives them to break with Her church. It does sometimes happen that somebody driven to extremes keeps enough Good or Law to mitigate his own harms if he can. But more usually, when former followers of Iomedae turn against Her or Her church, for having thought too much on Hell, they turn more dramatically against their former companions. Or the rarer ones who'd still give some vast wealth they'd come across to Iomedae's Church, wouldn't try to hide the fact from Iomedae; they'd be sharp about it in Her direction.

Iomedae: The other explanation of Keltham’s behavior is that he thinks that the matter in which he is engaged is one in which She cannot or will not aid him, and he prefers for some reason not to negotiate about that. And…it is not impossible that he has evaluated that correctly. It’s not a matter about which a mortal would usually be correct, but the Keltham she spoke to, shaped as he was by his anguish, was in fact also thinking clearly about whether he could destroy the Evil afterlives, had a habit of trying to think-clearly on factual questions even if they touched dearly on things that mattered to him.

Iomedae: Soul-structures like that lie close to the heart of Her domain; the smallest fragment of Herself would see it and also know the consequences. People like that can potentially be great allies to Good. But somebody close to Iomedae's own way of thinking, in that regard, is also potentially much more dangerous than a typical cleric of Abadar. Thinking efficiently is close in thought-space to thinking lethally efficiently.

Iomedae as a mortal paladin of Aroden did not like to kill people, especially not ones who'd go to Evil afterlives, but she was very very good at it when she deemed it necessary.

And though Keltham arrived in Osirion with protective deontologies, he was a kind of mind that would dare to trust himself to recalculate his deontologies if he found himself in a different universe - as would Iomedae herself have so dared, when she was a mortal paladin of Aroden, if she found herself in a sufficiently different place.

It is not lost on Iomedae's fragment that a true Outsider, arrived from a world that knew less Evil, might have set in an emotional and moral equilibrium much more horrified by Evil; and in that case, one simple way to end the Evil afterlives is by destroying Creation, if you can.

Iomedae: She expects that Keltham will not lightly take that option, that he would prefer to ally with Iomedae to save Creation rather than destroy it, if he trusted that alliance to succeed. Iomedae would also destroy some imaginable universes, if She could, and didn't have better options for fixing them. But Keltham, in her estimation, would take the destructive option more readily than She would, destroy universes that She would try to save. It is a parameter that also varies within Her paladins, and between those who can and cannot become Her paladins.

If Keltham makes a pact with Ahriman or Charon - if he seeks to travel into the deeper Abyss to treat with the qlippoth - if he becomes harder to see in the ways of those touched by the Outer Gods - or if Keltham chooses some not-really-evil way to make himself Evil or Chaotic, moves within one alignment step of Rovagug - then the splinter of Iomedae will know at once what that means and why. It is a cache hit for Her; there have been times before when people broke with Her and tried the obvious paths for destroying Creation.

The Iomedae-splinter has done Her planning for that contigency in advance. She estimates from vision that Keltham, if he decides Creation must end, will not be happy; it will set pieces of himself at war within himself. One doesn't need to be broken by pain, in order to coalesce around that pain in a way that's high-tension, that might reconsider its choices if it found happiness; not necessarily in the way of having made a mistake, but in the way of mortals being able to coalesce around their feelings in more than one possible way.

So an obvious strategy would be to lay a trap for Keltham outside of his veiled fortress, put him into a position where Her followers could clearly otherwise destroy him, as would then be in Her own interests; and accept instead Keltham's oathbound parole, probably given with his own desperate relief, to work with Her instead all his days. Iomedae has done that before, very rarely, with mortals valuable enough that She can allow Herself the effort to save them.

Iomedae: She mostly does not expect this to happen. The thing about the class of possibilities where Keltham tries to destroy Creation is that, in the Iomedae-splinter's estimation, they require Keltham to be an idiot.

Her splinter's usage of the concept is precise, not the derogatory mortal form; She does not think 'idiot' just when some mortal is doing something She doesn't like. Keltham, in this hypothetical scenario, would be an idiot in the sense of pursuing a clearly suboptimal strategy, where Her vision suggested he had adequate intelligence and mental skills to know better. Keltham has invited one of Her followers into his veiled fortress, like some sort of sensible person who wants to check what Iomedans have to advise about things; and one of Her followers would definitely know better.

People have made pacts with Ahriman and Charon before. They've traveled into the deep Abyss to treat with qlippoth before. They've made pacts with Outer Gods before. Ninth-circle wizards have tried all that, and Creation is still there.

Prophecy's recent breaking increases Golarion's danger-density by two or three orders of magnitude, maybe, but not enough to compete with all the rest of Creation since its founding. In the great beyond there are obscure planes with obscure dwellers, gods in whose domain lies secrecy, div lords and daemon harbingers with their own fragments of foresight, ninth-circles with demiplanes they've put outside of time and prophecy's usual flow, who might want to destroy Creation - if Creation was that easy to destroy.

Iomedae: The way that pain and loss at times leads ex-Iomedaens to try to destroy Creation, is that they start thinking that, if you turn from Good to Evil, from Law to Chaos, if you throw away all your scruples, so great and dramatic a sacrifice must negate everything common sense says about why that plan wouldn't turn out well in real life. It has to work, if you sacrifice enough; if you do something as dramatic as throwing away your Goodness or your Law, reality has to see your pain and determination and be moved somehow; it has to be worth something, after you paid so much. Mortals sometimes think like that, when they break with Her.

The Keltham that She saw in vision would not break in that direction. The Keltham that She saw, if he had devised some standard mad wizard-scheme scheme to end Creation, would pause and ask himself "Why is Creation still here if it's that easy?", and do more research first. Even if he couldn't rule out every slivered chance at success, he wouldn't chase futilely after tiny chances. Taking into account that later-Keltham made gift to her Church, the Iomedae-splinter strongly estimates that later-Keltham would ask "If all the people like me joined forces with the Church of Iomedae instead and accumulated our efforts over the years, instead of dying futilely and individually in the pursuit of some tiny chance of destroying Creation, would this in realistic expectation lead to a better outcome?" and notice that the answer was "yes". Obstacles to asking yourself questions like that are also obstacles toward donating vast wealth-power-potency to the Church of Iomedae.

The Keltham that She saw, even if he decided that he preferred that Creation not exist, would only try to destroy Creation if he thought he could actually pull that off.

The splinter of Iomedae has cached that destroying Creation is difficult, and has cached that even mad-wizard negative utilitarians know it's difficult if they're thinking at all clearly.

The present time in Golarion is unique, among planets, for that Golarion contains Rovagug and that prophecy about it is shattered. But the splinter of Iomedae concerning Herself with these matters puts very low probability that Keltham would try to unleash Rovagug. Losing the one planet where prophecy doesn't function, and where conditions have conspired to enable an unusual number of mortal-descended gods, would be unfathomably costly to Good, and to the inferred interests of Keltham. It wouldn't work to destroy Creation, unless Asmodeus or some equally powerful coalition backed Rovagug...

Keltham: ...and the Keltham that She saw would not accept partially destroying Creation, if he went down that road.  A partial destruction that leaves large sections of Creation and Hell intact, would not be victory; and that is something the Keltham she saw would not lose track of, not for any amount of desperation.  If he commits to a drastic action he will estimate that actual victory lies at the end of it, and his desperation and sacrifice will not have figured into that estimation process as positive factors.  His deontology is not for sale at the price point of failure.

Iomedae: So, even conditioning on the line of possibility where Keltham would prefer to destroy Creation, the most likely outcome in the Iomedae-fragment's current evaluation of that broad class of possibilities is this:

That if Keltham decided that he preferred Creation gone, Keltham then retreated to his fortress while he looked for ways to destroy all of Creation, ways that would actually work in real life; and so far, Keltham correctly assesses that he hasn't found any pathways like that; and when he finishes out that due diligence, he'll join with the Iomedans on fixing Creation instead of destroying it; and be less at war within himself, and be happier.

A generalization of this scenario is in fact the Iomedae-splinter's primary guess: Keltham has retreated to his fortress - after making sure Osirion was boosted enough to prevent Cheliax from taking over Golarion immediately - in order to properly verify all he's been told is happening, and orient to Golarion, and do something like due diligence on literally everything; and until that's done, Keltham isn't trusting anything whatsoever this time, and doesn't want any gods able to mess with him in any way.

To the Iomedae-splinter's way of thinking, this would be an incredibly reasonable thing to do. The boy She glimpsed in Osirion could easily be one Owl's Wisdom or Fox's Cunning away from thinking it. Iomedae-the-mortal spent years investigating Aroden before committing herself completely to His service.

Iomedae: The true and Greater Iomedae would have guessed better. It is not actually a puzzle that would stump a god coalesced.

Had Iomedae seen Keltham in vision, before coalescing into Her full self, that added knowledge during Her coalescence would have been enough for Her full self to figure out everything - for the exponential thicket of possibilities to collapse and one possibility to stand out - not just Keltham's psychology, but the existence of an alien web of not-prophecy surrounding him.

Even the earlier moment (of which She also caught sight, there having been no effort or oath to conceal it from Her) where Keltham tried to work out Wish-wordings with one of Her clerics for destroying all of Cheliax, would have been enough for Greater Iomedae to consider explicitly whether Keltham held other and greater destructive secrets, knew truths that should be permitted only to Pharasma and Otolmens.

Golarion: Gods are able deducers, but not superb observers of the Material; many truths of physics are gated behind microscopic observations that no mortal has yet devised instruments to capture.  So gods would not know those truths automatically, without an effort; and being visibly the sort of god who makes that effort might get Them killed.

(Some fragments of Nethys have come to know, and the rest of Nethys dissipated much of His power and sanity on restraining those.)

Iomedae: So then for Iomedae's splinter, the guess that Keltham might possess truly deadly knowledge is not something that would follow from his being observed to improve spellsilver refining. It is not a usual element of a cached pattern. Nothing about Keltham's arrival and subsequent events, seen only from the Iomedae-splinter's angle, suggests this situation could have an unprecedented impact upon all Creation. It is not transparent to Her, not much suggested by those events, that Keltham's arrival in Golarion constitutes rolling a new kind of dice that have never been rolled in Creation ever before.

...also you'd expect that Otolmens would notice, and destroy in body and soul, any mortal working out detailed mathematics for how to destroy Creation; that Otolmens's own veil wouldn't block Her own sight; that She was more than powerful enough to peer through a Mind Blank. Iomedae's splinter doesn't know that any such mathematical insight is possible; but Her cache-hit on that general class of internal question is that, if it were possible for a mortal to destroy all of Creation just by being very clever, it would be Otolmens's domain to notice the mortal in the process of being that clever and squash them.

Her greater self might have spotted the flaw in that cached answer with respect to Keltham, but her lesser self has not. From the perspective of the greater self which laid down those cached answers, that violation would come at the end of improbability layered on improbability, inside an exponentially vast space of other improbabilities that aren't any less probable than that.

Iomedae: ...and so Iomedae has not coalesced again.

Her previous ten minutes of coalescence were vastly expensive to Her interests, and not only in Golarion. Iomedae's will and Her care was temporarily withdrawn from many places, more worlds than a young god should really be trying to help; there are countries, small ones, on little planets that don't amount to much, which now stand in danger of falling to Evil as the price of those ten minutes of real thinking. There's a reason She hadn't done it in a century. Greater Iomedae updated many of Her policies, in those expensive ten minutes, not just Keltham-related ones. So the expected utility of pulling Herself together again, so soon after, is much less.

Iarwain: And so Iomedae's decision, to not pay the costs to think really hard about the question - as understandable, as predictable as that decision may be - is the only decision that ends up -

Golarion: New update!  Iomedae's most powerful followers are praying to Her, asking if She wants to commend them to any particular path about... you know... this entire Cheliax thing.

Should they be, like... backing Carissa Sevar, here, so she can become a new Lawful Evil god of a less awful section of Hell.  Or should they be negotiating in good faith with the new Cheliax, which has voluntarily proposed a regularly updated reassessment of Worldwound contributions that will automatically take into account Cheliax's newfound wealth of spellsilver?  Or should Good be backing factions from out of the old Cheliax, in order to foment internal strife and stop Carissa Sevar from conquering all the parts of Golarion that don't negotiate treaties with her?

They know Iomedae almost certainly can't afford to answer them, but, nonetheless, they have so many questions.

Iomedae: Her second reaction:

Iomedae is not as encouraged as a mortal might be, by how Cheliax is potentially positioning itself for positive changes, or at the stay order on Maledictions. It looks overtly Good, better than the mortals realize, probably better than Hell's local emissaries realize; but minds at Carissa Sevar's Intelligence level can play effective games of deception against gods. Past a certain threshold level of intellect, the masquerade is just correct and even a substantially smarter mind can't pierce through it.

And that leaves you with your priors. It's not lost on Iomedae that Carissa Sevar would be a probable improvement as a new Lawful Evil god, but Iomedae cannot see a plausible pathway for Carissa Sevar to fulfill her cult's announcements and promises.

The Church of Iomedae will be instructed to treat Carissa Sevar as no more trustworthy than Asmodeus, and to relax no vigilance against Cheliax, unless and until Lawful oaths about shared purposes and straightforward coordination are offered them. If Carissa Sevar wants to work with Good on anything she can say so to Good directly, INT 29 should really be enough to figure that out.

...even a fragment of Iomedae splintered, however, will not fail to notice that She is incredibly confused about how this Cheliax situation could have developed out of the Keltham situation. That trajectory is not a short sentence in the language of paladins, probably not in anyone's language. This is not how probability is supposed to work.

Her first reaction: WHAT.

Cayden Cailean: Okay, but is Iomedae about to coalesce?  How close is She to deciding to coalesce?  Even if She doesn't do it now, if She was nearly on the verge of it here, this won't be the last startling news that She gets -

Nethys: ...

Nethys: Nethys says "Pretty butterflies?"

Nethys: (Nethys did not expect to have to hold Himself together this long, did not expect He'd have to hazard His mental stamina for so long a march.  Some element of the web of Nethys-fragments meant to spy on Iomedae's thoughts and convey those legibly to the Alliance has lost focus.)

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn is permitting herself to stay awake too long in her vast bed of Asmodean grandeur, thinking about how much she doesn't like all this, instead of just ordering her own mind sharply to behave.  She also has an instinct that it will be dangerous to order her own mind to stop thinking about this.

She really doesn't like the moratorium on Maledictions.

Aspexia sees the rationalization.  She sees the excuse.  Pushing Cheliax in the direction of some cheap Goodness will assist in the spread of Sevar's legend and cult and her eventual ascension.  Which, yes, serves Sevar more than Hell, but Sevar no longer lawfully answers to Rugatonn about that; only Dispater can bid her otherwise...

Swearing off Maledictions is undeniably an efficient way of producing a public shift in the perception of Cheliax under the Sevarian Empire.  It gets them to maybe consider that Cheliax might be starting over, that Carissa Sevar is on their side, to want that to be true.  It lets people hope...

Just like Aspexia Rugatonn is being allowed to hope, herself, that their hope is a lie.

Aspexia Rugatonn: And Aspexia Rugatonn realizes, then, why she is afraid.

If Aspexia's wavering grasp of 'tropes' is at all correct, then neither of those obvious hopes can be realized in the form that they are hoped.  Not Aspexia's own hope that Sevar remains aligned to Hell's interests, nor the hopes of Good people everywhere in Golarion that Sevar has brought Cheliax's Evil to heel.

So the hope can't be real, nor can it be a lie, either one.

And that's a contradiction.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Which means that the whole appearance of Carissa Sevar playing a game for her overlordship and divinity, serving or betraying Hell to that end, with Cheliax as her playing-piece...

Aspexia Rugatonn: "This is also not reality," Aspexia Rugatonn murmurs to herself.  And even as she says it, she knows deep down that this is so.

But she is not an ilani, and she does not know what to do after she says that.

Iarwain: The part that isn't real is, in its own way, very straightforward; and the mask over it is being done correctly, such that the only way to guess it would be on pure priors.

Iarwain: If you looked at that complicated situation developing around Cheliax and trusted your lying eyes, you would get the impression that Carissa Sevar was playing a close and clever and complicated game, concealing her real intentions from at least your side and possibly all the sides, setting in motion some very long-term strategies - strategies spanning a timescale of months, maybe even years.

Iarwain: You would think you had that much time to think, that much time to plan.

Iarwain: Anyone who made that mistake and took their leisure would have no chance to act at all before the endgame began.

Iarwain: And then, it begins.

Absalom: Turn now to regard the city of Absalom (in this age called also the City of Lost Omens), on the southeast coast of the Isle of Kortos, where the Starstone was raised up from the sea and closed up in the impenetrable magical fortress of the Starstone Cathedral...

Golarion: Of which it is said that the alghollthus called down a poisonous remnant of an unborn world, meant to strike upon the rival human civilization of Azlant; the ancient moon-goddess Acavna moved Golarion's moon into position to intercept the missile; but instead the missile shattered into thousands of pieces while continuing toward Golarion; and the missile's fragments pierced Acavna and killed Her; and then Her brother Amaznen, god of knowledge and magic, sacrificed Himself to neutralize the alghollthu magic upon those fragments and prevent them from destroying all Golarion; and the fragment now called Starstone fell into the sea; and eventually Aroden found that fragment, and it turned Him and several other people into gods.

dath ilan: Ah, Golarion?

Golarion: Yes, dath ilan?

dath ilan: There are elements of this story that make less than total sense to someone isekaied in from a physicalist civilization, trying to visualize out the entire process, step by step...

dath ilan: Actually, no.  That's understating the case.

If something that strange was written in dath ilan, it would be inside a children's-book; and you would realize that the real answer was meant to be sought out by young adults, when you were old enough to notice Problems with what had been claimed by the children's-book in your bedroom.

dath ilan: (The children's-books of dath ilan are not visibly author-signed, and never attested-to by any specific grownup, nor gifted to you by specific adults; they're just there in your bedroom, when you grow up.  And if you ask your parents they'll truthfully tell you that they didn't put the books there.  And your parents never speak to you of anything that you read in a children's-book; for those are children's books, and only children speak of them to each other.

As the saying goes in dath ilan, trying to raise a child on only true books is like trying to train a statistical classifier on only positive examples!

And furthermore - as is so obvious as to hardly need stating after the original proverb - having all the true books be written in a nonfiction voice, while all the untrue books are written in a fiction voice, would be introducing an oversimplified hyperplanar separator that would prevent a simple statistical algorithm from learning subtler features.)

Golarion: ...That's not how things are done in Golarion.

dath ilan: Indeed.  But someone who did grow up in dath ilan sure will notice when the Starstone book story sounds very very odd.

Golarion: So what's wrong with the standard story?

dath ilan: ...It's hard to decide where to start, but one has to start somewhere, so:

Start with the notion that the "remnant of an unborn world", having shattered upon contact with Golarion's moon, which a god had moved into position for interception, was not thereby successfully deflected.

Things that hit a moon hard and break into fragments don't usually stay on the same trajectory after that, narrowly enough to hit a planet.  The width of Golarion in its moon's sky is only 0.01% of that sky's angular area.  You cannot randomly hit a planet, starting from a moon, if the course is at all perturbed.  This story requires the Starstone to be strong enough to blow through the moon, trajectory unperturbed, while shattering into a thousand pieces along the way.

dath ilan: One would also normally think a space missile could be deflected more easily than by moving a moon to intercept it, even if some goddess has an especially easy time moving around moons.  If a ballistic space-missile is coming from far enough away that you have time to move a moon into place for interception, at any reasonable speed a moon should attain, you could apply a much lighter deflection earlier in that missile's trajectory.

dath ilan: Isekai protagonists from science-worlds likewise know what happens when planets fail to be born.  You end up with asteroids.  They aren't especially poisonous.

dath ilan: Then there's the notion that Acavna waited around in place near the missile collision site, or missile exit site, to be hit by fragments large enough or fast enough to kill a goddess, which She didn't see coming and dodge.  Again as science protagonists know, when you are dealing with moving moons around, and distances on the scale of planets, it is really hard for anything to hit anything by accident.

dath ilan: Possibly there was an original missile approaching at near-lightspeed; and when it collided with the moon, that sprayed up so many massive fragments that 0.01% of them hitting Golarion would still have ended life on the surface...

But that doesn't square with Amaznen needing to sacrifice Himself to neutralize magic on those fragments.  If secondary ejecta had been the primary threat to Golarion, they'd have been an unmagical threat.

dath ilan: You'd furthermore think that the alghollthus, if they were able to steer such a hypothetical hyperkinetic missile at all, would have known a missile at that energy would utterly destroy Golarion's crust including themselves if not intercepted.

dath ilan: Also if the alghollthu magic upon the fragments was potent enough to lay Golarion waste in its own right, apart from the fragments' kinetic energy, and required Amaznen's self-sacrifice to neutralize - then why should the alghollthus not lay that lethal magic directly about Azlant?  Why put it on a distant incoming asteroid first?

dath ilan: And furthermore - though this is not a physicalist area of expertise, it comes up if you just visualize out events and think about them - supposedly Acavna's divinity stuck to those fragments that killed Her, one of which was the Starstone, which then reached Golarion and became individually able to create gods on the order of Aroden.

Aroden was the strongest of mortal-ascended gods.  Hitting Acavna should not create thousands of fragments all of which could then create Arodens.

dath ilan: Arguendo:  Possibly all of Acavna's divinity stuck to the Starstone and not to any other fragments that killed Her?  Maybe it was that exact fragment that struck the final blow?

Counterarguendo:  Maybe, but then that's another weight of burdensome improbability required to make the whole story work.  One also notes, as an isekai protagonist reading through other stories of gods' deaths, that it is not usually said that the weapon that kills them retains their divinity.

dath ilan: Also also, if either of Amaznen or Acavna did willingly sacrifice themselves to meliorate the blow - why did They do that?  To briefly extend the lives of those mortals living upon one planet, until they came to Pharasma slightly later?  It's a strange trade for an ancient god to make, and Amaznen and Acavna are said to have been Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral respectively; neither Good.

Golarion: ...Anything else?

dath ilan: Oh, all kinds of things, if dath ilan were to list out everything unusual whether or not the improbability is obviously relevant.  For example, it's said that Iomedae's helmet melted during Her ascension but remained intact enough to become a major artifact, the Thorncrown of Iomedae.  There's no artifacts like that said to be tied to Nethys's or Irori's ascension.  This doesn't obviously tie into any other anomalies, and doesn't seem intuitively shocking given the basic premise that the Starstone ascends things that get physically close to it, and dath ilan is not actually going anywhere with this observation; but if you're trying to actually think about a puzzle you will write everything like this down in one place.  If dath ilan forced itself to make up a guess about this random possibly anomalous fact - something something Starstone treats divinity in a way that makes spatial proximity matter to an unusual degree?

Any real scientific puzzle will contain a large number of extra pieces - and in advance of the solution, you don't know which pieces are extra.

Golarion: So what does dath ilan think actually happened?

dath ilan: Lacking direct observation, you would probably have too many hypotheses and too little evidence to narrow them down.

You might speculate that the currently-known Starstone was the whole original 'poisonous remnant' rather than just a fragment.  If there were fragments, they might have been from pieces of moon, blown outward along a similar trajectory after the original Starstone blasted straight through the moon at high velocity.

You could theorize that the Starstone was aimed from the beginning to pierce through Golarion's moon toward Golarion - rather than Acavna moving the moon into place, and in futile error - and that the Starstone killed Acavna through Her connection to that moon.  Possibly Amaznen tried to save His sister-deity and the Starstone sucked the power out of Him and killed Him too.

Golarion: This hardly seems certain.

dath ilan: Yes yes, it's admitted speculation; but it's often wise to start by trying to develop any consistent speculative model at all, if you're trained and confident in your own ability to throw out any pieces or wholes in which you later spot a problem.

Golarion: Mmhm.  Well, keep speculating, then.

dath ilan: Maybe the alghollthus tried to catalyze the Starstone's 'poison' with their magic rather than having the power to create a weapon like that from scratch.

Or maybe, the alghollthus had nothing to do with the entire matter and were only blamed afterwards.

...Or maybe it wasn't the whole alghollthu civilization, but a particular band of alghollthu mages influenced by Rovagug, like how Rovagug is said to have infected a Sarenrite city built far above the Dead Vault.

Golarion: Why blame Rovagug?

dath ilan: Abadar was taken by surprise at how the Age of Darkness ended Zon-Kuthon's exile, so some prophecy-breaking force was involved at some point.  And if Amaznen and Acavna did willingly sacrifice themselves, maybe it wasn't to save mortal lives; maybe it had more to do with Golarion being Rovagug's cage.

That in turn suggests that an unmeliorated Starstone strike would have benefited Rovagug, or that the gods feared it would.  Maybe the missile was 'accidentally' aimed at the Dead Vault?

dath ilan: ...But the main point is just that the thing that is written in most books, can't possibly be the true story; and that's obvious as soon as you try to visualize the process step-by-step.

And you might also suspect, if what was written in books seemed obviously wrong, that there was some reason the real answer was hidden - though the general state of disrepair in Golarion epistemology, from the standpoint of the isekaied physicalist, is such that even this guess is very tentative!  The myth-composers could just be that invalid.  But still, you'll go looking for truths that are not only overlooked but concealed within the Starstone, faced with a story like that.

Absalom: It begins in the City of Lost Omens, with a casting of the spell Mage's Decree, by which a wizard can make themselves heard for miles around, all through a city...

Ione Sala: "This is Ione Sala, oracle of Nethys, apprentice to Nefreti Clepati.  Stand by for extremely urgent instructions in three hours; prepare to convey or translate those immediately."

Absalom: A lot of predictable ruckus follows!  Those who didn't understand the original words (in the language there named Taldan, called also Common in Absalom) shout for translations.  People who've lived their life well enough to stay ignorant of wild rumors are even more confused, and inquire after context.

Many wise and proactive people will panic early, to avoid any later rush; and start heading away from the Starstone, since earlier rumor held that's where shit would go down.

Certain others, however -

lintamande: “- that’s illegal, eighty thousand pounds in fines, she can bargain it down if she talks to the Primarch,” says Cassdra Eliomole instantly. The nice thing about violations of this specific city statute is that you can’t really contest that they happened. (Guilty parties can of course teleport out, but it’s the rare high-level wizard who will accept being permanently blacklisted from Absalom’s shops and libraries and mage academies.)

The nice thing about this specific violation is that the wizard even named themselves, unless they are naming their ex-girlfriend to get her in trouble, which is the sort of thing wizards frequently come up with, thinking themselves cleverer than they are.

  “- do you suppose it’s true, though,” says Mesich Aspexxon, her secretary, who has cooperatively gotten out the paperwork to be delivered to Sala issuing the fine and explaining how she can contest it, and is now filling it out with today’s date, the time, the investigating authority, the statute violated, and the source of the information by which Sala was identified as a suspect (“testimony to all Absalom”).

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I mean, there’s the prophecy, right, and Ione Sala’s that Chelish Nethysian. She might know if the prophecy’s true, and the city to be devoured.”

“You can’t trust a Chelish person, and you can’t trust a Nethysian,” says Cassdra, with absolute surety. “So any sound a Chelish Nethyisan makes is just so much wind whistling through the streets, and we’re going to fine her for it.”

  “Well at minimum,” says Mesich, “I think we’ve got to think of who’s delivering the notice, you know, if she’s in a fighting mood, considering that you can’t trust Chelish Nethysians.”

…that is a complication. Cassdra bites the end of her pen.

lintamande: The Office of The Public Interest, which handles the frequent and often impressive misconduct gotten up to by the high-level adventurers of Absalom – anything not appropriately handled by the city watch and the option of dumping some idiot in the drunk tank or the gaol – is the province of the First Spell Lord of Absalom, who is responsible for regulating the Arcanamirium and ultimately all spells cast within the city.  However, the position of First Spell Lord is currently held by Lord Gyr, of House Gixx, the Primarch of Absalom, who's not in fact a caster, but assigned himself that position anyways.  He's not in Absalom right this second.

The next most obvious person to storm in, given the implied threat to Absalom, is the Second Spell Lord charged with Absalom's magical defense:  Lady Darchana, of House Madinani, who also happens to be archdean of the Arcanamirium (though at seventh-circle she's not actually the most powerful arcanist there).  But Lady Darchana has long been on fragile terms with Primarch Gyr, both as his obvious rival for the true mastery of Absalom, and also about the snub of her not being named First Spell Lord.

lintamande:     Mesich finishes the paperwork. “- Darchana?” he asks quietly.

“No, we can’t,” says Cassdra. “Gyr will rightly consider that entirely inappropriate - and think, she might declare that this represents a real threat to the city, which she of course will vanquish in his absence -”

      “Then you’ve got to contact him!”

“I am doing that!” Cassdra is applying his seal to her incident report at this very moment. Gyr resents, and is usually shielded against, Sendings, but he has some astoundingly fast carrier pigeons. He’ll hear of the problem in plenty of time.

—----

lintamande: “I should really do something,” says the Lady Darchana, contemplatively, to her familiar, a specialty pug named Tiffany. “Why, the girl implies a threat to the whole city exists, and I can’t imagine the Primarch competent to handle it alone!”

  “And yet,” Tiffany says, “one imagines he will hesitate to ask the Arcanamirium for the help he so obviously requires of it.”

“Well, he’s going to have to bestir himself to request our aid sooner, rather than later.” She fixes her hat in her reflection in her bedroom window. Through it there’s a courtyard visible. The wizards of the Arcanamirium are, well, Teleporting. Out. It’s not that they won’t come to Absalom’s defense if necessary, but one can come to Absalom’s defense just as well from several hundred miles away, and, well, there is the prophecy, and even if one puts no store in the prophecy there are panicked people who do and will suddenly pay very well for a ride out. “I heard he’s out of town.”

  “He has that house in the country,” Tiffany agrees cheerfully.

“You know, I think it speaks very poorly of him, that he didn’t delegate the defense of the city to me in his absence, in light of recent events.”

A servant timidly sticks her head around a corner. “Yes?” says the Lady, graciously.

    “My lady, are we - leaving?”

“Us? Why, no. The Primarch may leave the city to incompetents while he vacations in the country, but the Arcanamirium remembers its duties, and doesn’t fear them. Why, I’m going to go apprehend that troublemaking Sala myself, as soon as the Primarch asks it of me.

There’s a demiplane we evacuate to in the case of threats to the city, with an access point under the wine cellars. You can get your family, if you’d like, so long as it’s clear you’re being very silly and that I’m not perturbed in the slightest. ”

    “Yes, my lady.”

“And so long as you are sure to repeat everything you overheard about the Primarch.”

    “ - yes, my lady.”

lintamande: Cassdra presses her paperwork on the process-server for Public Interest, once the carrier pigeon has taken wing. “Do go and serve her notice at once, if she’s still in the city. I’ve raised the fine to three hundred thousand pounds, on the grounds that she caused mass panic and probably dozens of deaths of trampling down by the docks.”

  “You can take the Asmodeanism out of them, but not the Evil,” Mesich says gravely.

He shouldn’t’ve said it in front of the notice-server, who is blinking very rapidly now. “She’s not a murderer,” Cassdra says impatiently. “She’s not even a renowned adventurer. She’s a self-important vandal with one sixth-circle scroll. A dime a dozen, really. By the time the Primarch sees her she’ll be very apologetic, I don’t doubt, and in any event all you’ve got to do is serve the notice.”

Ione Sala: Ione Sala can be located readily enough, if Office of Public Interest has magic that can do that, or if they correctly guess Iona Sala would be near the Ascendant Court and ask around if anyone's seen her.

The young woman in question can be found grimly vanishing away whole bookshelves of books from a library in Iomedae's Temple in the Ascendant Court near the Starstone Cathedral.  Ione Sala reads Neutral Good, and she's sworn an oath to Nethys to give back all the books that she's now taking into her protection.

Acolytes are rushing about her, in the way of people who are trying to get everything valuable out of a temple.  Priests and paladins are nowhere to be seen.

Ione Sala will accept the fine notice without blinking, fish a correspondingly large diamond out of her pocket, hand it over, and tell this minor functionary that she's extremely busy and he needs to get out of everyone's way NOW.

lintamande: He departs as rapidly as possible, thinking uncomplimentary but not false things about wizards, Nethysians, and Chelish people, desperately trying not to lose the diamond or be observably in possession of the diamond.

lintamande: "I think we ought to give due consideration to the theory this has something to do with the prophecy," Afsel Kellaris says, in the emergency meeting convened to discuss Ione Sala's actions.

"I was worried someone was going to waste our time with that," Jepata Eres, his immediate superior, says. "Of course it's related. Sala made it up for attention a while ago, and is escalating now. But the first wasn't true prophecy, which every schoolchild knows is broken, and the new one isn't either."

"It could still be, you know. Not prophecy. Prediction."

"But why, I ask, didn't you say 'prediction'? Because it doesn't sound as dramatic as prophecy. Ione Sala predicted and then caused panic and mass death in our city. That's the problem we're facing, and if it were up to me she'd hang for it four or five times."

"The thing I was trying to say was, maybe she knows of, I don't know, some unsealed ancient horror -"

"If she knew anything real and were actually interested in helping us prevent it she'd tell us what she knew. She's an adversary; she doesn't care about this city; nothing she says is trustworthy; nothing she claims merits consideration." Jepata's tone is one of finality. "The thing killing people out there isn't prophecy, it's panic. We need to get the city guard into the streets, impose a curfew, keep people home, or we'll have another trampling incident worse than the Steertrack Races -"

"With all due respect," a man objects from across the room, "you're not going to like desertion rates if you order the guard to their posts right now."

"What's your suggestion, I overlook the desertion and hope they sheepishly return to their posts tomorrow, and let the people trample each other into the bloody mud?"

"No, but you've got to reassure them first! People need to know that we looked into Sala's claims and there's nothing to worry about! We need to get our own counter-message out there, telling people that we've stepped up monitoring of threats to the city and there are no signs of any problems -"

"Oh, are there not?" someone else interjects, relieved -

" - well, I haven't heard of any, and I'm sure it'd have been shouted to the rooftops if there were -"

"You can't ask the Guard to go back to their posts while they're terrified for the lives of their loved ones. You've got to assure them that there's nothing to worry about."

"Yes," Jepata snaps, "someone already said that. I'm working on it. A message to all city watch - the rumors have been examined, they are false, there are no risks to the city, no one in city leadership is departing -"

"Departing is dangerous!" offers Afsel, reorienting to the new priorities. "The ships might be sunk, Sala might be feeding people into the mouths of pirates -"

"Excellent, yes," Jepata agrees. "Departing puts your family in grave danger, what's safe is keeping them home, Sala's claims have been decisively refuted - yes?"

"Yes," everyone agrees.

"The best way for the populace to be safe from the panic is to remain in their homes.  We'll send more of the city guard to the Ascendant Court -"

???: "I'd say it's the Docks district that needs 'em," offers somebody who is not at all suspicious and is totally supposed to be inside this room.  "Some people are fleeing the Ascendant Court, but that's their own foolishness and it'd serve them right to return and find their homes robbed.  It's the docks where there's fighting, fighting that might spread -"

lintamande: It takes them half an hour to draft and authorize an announcement using Mage's Decree, to counter Sala's absurd misbehavior and assure the people of the city that all is well. Most of that time is spent quibbling over wording. They don't get many words, and a number of people want a say in what they are. By then, the city guard has been largely deployed to the docks to manage the masses of people desperately trying to board boats; the rumors that are flying assert that everything from Zon-Kuthon to returning Aroden will be showing up, or maybe that the island will be swallowed into Hell.

But that's not to say that it's too late for the announcement. There are many homes whose residents are bitterly fighting over whether to flee or to stay, many people trying to persuade an entrenched relative or agonizing over whether to spend their entire fortune on a Teleport, many people nervously peeking out into the streets and taking the temperature of things. Many people who want to hear from their city government and know what they should do.

The statement eventually agreed upon is, "Remain in your homes. Sala's claims have been examined and disproven. No danger exists. All deaths have come from panic. Protect your families: stay home."

The minute it is approved, it is passed on to a wizard who was able to prepare the Mage's Decree spell in the last half-hour.

Pilar : As the wizard is in the middle of casting, his spell is disrupted by a pineapple pie being smushed into his face.

lintamande: The Arcanimirium has a higher percentage of fifth circle and above wizards of any wizarding school on the face of Golarion, but that's still only around ten percent; with all of them out selling Teleports or fleeing the country it barely feels less crowded.

No one has dared asked the Lady Darchana what she plans, but people are hovering lest she happen to say it offhandedly.

She's not an idiot. Nethys is playing at something, and Nethys likes big explosions, so whatever Nethys is playing at is plausibly catastrophic. Warning everyone and then doing a big explosion would be in character. The assurances she's heard from the city government are meaningless.

Of course, reacting strongly to warnings of catastrophe is a great way to be easy to manipulate, and to be on the wrong foot for catastrophes coming in from an unexpected direction.

     "My lady?"

"You fear that our deaths are coming and want me to order an evacuation but are perfectly aware it is as likely as not to serve our enemies," she responds without even looking who spoke. "You can stop asking. I don't know what I'll do, but none of you have useful input."

      "Pineda's been spotted. Interfering with the city in their efforts to reduce panic and get everyone to stay home."

"The whole nation of Cheliax should have long since been burned off the face of this benighted world," Lady Darchana says with feeling.

       "Does that mean we're not evacuating? Since they want us to?"

"Would you shut up?"

Iomedae: She is surprised, and dismayed, and even disappointed, when Her priests in Her temple in Absalom ask Her for guidance about the Nethysian demanding that the temple be evacuated. She makes the obvious inferences: Some persons adjacent to Keltham, and maybe Keltham himself, are going to go for the Starstone.

This is good news, because the Starstone isn’t Rovagug. It’s bad news, in that the Starstone also is not ‘Keltham goes to Lastwall, and meets people whose convictions are like his but have settled around them into a shape humans can endure’, and in that Keltham is reasonably likely to die attempting this.  She alone would not be capable of saving him, even if She would, nor does it seem likely that Cayden would be sufficient - but perhaps She’s underestimating Him, or underestimating Keltham. She has seen Keltham in vision; whatever Keltham is doing here, he expects it to succeed despite all obstacles that he knows about. It may still be hugely ill-advised, or worse, intelligently contrary to Her purposes. But Her fragment's guess is that Keltham's purpose is unlikely to be worth expending Her very scarce resources to prevent.

She tells Her people to evacuate civilians, since they’ve gone and conveniently made this a single bit of information to transmit to them and they can probably save enough lives to make it worth it.

And She pays the situation more attention, and watches over it for a time; but in the end She decides not to draw together enough of Herself to participate in a fight when someone touches the Starstone -

Nethys: And that's the last important decision that Iomedae needed to prove She would make.

Milani: Iomedae!  Emergency situation that the fully-informed fragment of You has been apprised about!  This information is given to You under the condition that -

Absalom: ...And so when the time for Ione's second set of instructions comes, Absalom's citizenry is braced for possible panic and significantly pre-fled; while having not really panicked yet, in the way of people who are hoping for news which isn't too bad.

Ione Sala: The first time Ione Sala tries to cast again from a sixth-circle wizard scroll, she cannot do it, for her fingers tremble and the spellform is not unfolding well and it takes all her dexterity to avoid wasting the scroll.