"I...didn't know we make deals with the Chaotic Good gods." On account of how they're incredibly stupid.

"Our Lord is the Lord of compacts.  Asmodeus will deal with anyone that deals with Him.  Though, in that case, He might have demanded to be paid before and not after."

Nod.

"And so the ultimate factor controlling my decision is simple.  Our Lord is known to be continuing to intervene.  We may hope, though with fear in our hearts, that He is actively monitoring this situation.  These events are obviously not Asmodeus's handiwork, but He is known to be bargaining and to be receiving things that He desires enough to pay for them.  It may be that much is hidden from His sight, it may be that it is not."

"It may be that our Lord would will these events to continue if He knew of them, it may be that He would have them stop.  If it is to my Lord's interests that these intricate events He could not have arranged Himself, continue to occur, then I can only work His will, in that case, by not disturbing them.  If I disturb them against His will, He will be realistically unable to tell me how to put them back on track even with a hundred visions and a thousand messages from Hell."

"If He wants it all shut down, one vision or one communication from Hell would suffice.  I would not ordinarily reason so, for every divine intervention is greatly costly to Him; I dare not imagine what other opportunities He has foregone, in this place or in others, for the sake of all this.  But here - He is intervening over and over."

"To make myself easy to control, across both cases of what my Lord could plausibly desire of me, I will allow this to continue unless my Lord tells me to stop, and pray that He is, indeed, paying that much attention."

"I am not going to refrain from having your feelings corrected at all, especially if it happens in a very predictable and Asmodean way in a particular case.  But having this strange entanglement shut down by hammering those feelings out of you - that I will not do.  Yet."

"Now, Sevar, do you think you are able to know all this, without that tempting you to do ridiculously complicated and unpredictable things in order to, as you imagine it, keep the plans of the gods on the track you imagine they were supposed to be on?"

Why would she be tempted to do ridiculously complicated and unpredictable things that would make it harder for Asmodeus to follow what's going on?

...probably what the Grand High Priestess means is that many normal human things are ridiculously complicated and unpredictable to Asmodeus so by default she'll be ridiculously complicated and unpredictable if she hasn't had explicit training in how to narrow her actions to the set that don't have that property. Evil dath ilani are probably so good at this. 

Without having had that training -

- what examples does she have of things that are complicated and unpredictable. Humor. Hives of ridiculous rumormongering. Keltham's experiments being deployed in the world. Sending Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune to the Worldwound because it'd be good for him. (She wasn't really going to do that, though, she just had fun thinking of it.) All of those feel too obvious, all of those would also be hard to predict for a human overseeing the project.....

"What errors will I make, what ways of clouding things for Asmodeus will I fall into, if I am only trying to avoid doing things that'd be surprising or unpredictable to you and failing to take into account the ways in which Asmodeus is in predicting me more limited?"

"I don't think you're supposed to do even that, at this point.  You are working to somebody else's plan and they have, if not prophecy, then something like a last shattered fragment of it."

"And Sevar.  Trying to be predictable on purpose can make you less predictable to our Lord, or even to me, because most people are not trying to be predictable when they make decisions, just deciding them.  Thinking like that makes you less like most of the mortals our Lord has observed before.  And if you are new to the work you will make new entertaining errors in what it means to be predictable, which I will not have time to correct.  Or the whole way in which it is one more thing you are trying to do, tinkering and steering the way in which you imagine your thought processes should work, complicates those processes in a way that, again, our Lord may find harder to understand -"

"I don't suppose I'm making any sense to you at all, yet.  I pray that it is 'yet' and not 'ever'.  You have no idea how much I am praying for it.  Meanwhile, don't try to do any incredibly complicated new things inside your mind, in order to make yourself more predictable, is that a simple enough instruction for you to understand?"

"Yes, Most High."

Keltham would understand more than that. Dath ilan would understand more than that. She's suddenly sure of it.

"Good.  I have come to a conclusion about what level of intelligence in you best suits our Lord."

"Give me your headband."

What if instead they just torture her until she's incapable of feelings??

She hands it over. The Fox's Cunning hasn't quite worn off so she doesn't feel the absence, yet. 

Aspexia reaches into her desk, takes out what is obviously a +4 intelligence headband, hands it back.

"I am pleased to see you more reasonable than some wizards," she says.

She puts it on. 

Is she more reasonable than some wizards. Are there wizards who'd actually refuse to give the Grand High Priestess their headband if in her judgment they shouldn't have it. If it serves Hell for Carissa to be turned into a slug then she wouldn't refuse, even if it's obviously worse than thousands of years of torture.

"They wouldn't have refused outright, but they might have tried to argue and plead before doing it, or, if they were wise enough to obey immediately, would at once start whining why it was the wrong decision and they should have it back."  It is again not clear whether Rugatonn actually needs to be reading Carissa's mind, or even her face, to know what she is thinking here.

"Now, what matter is it that actually brought you here today?  I have a certain guess, but I am not, as mentioned, infallible."

"I want to request command of Project Lawful, Most High, and ask you about a directive that is heretical and that I think will make the people on it better at their jobs."

"Mm.  Some might consider it insubordinate, very extremely insubordinate, un-Asmodean even, to react to a superior's refusal of their brilliant suggestion by going over his head, all the way up to the Grand High Priestess's office, storming in to demand not only that he be overruled but also that she herself be in charge from then on."

Carissa thinks it is against the written rules, and also there are unwritten rules, and whether it is against them is more complicated. She doesn't wholly approve of this; it's obviously the same principle by which Thrunes are allowed to gossip, and it seems to her that it'd be better for Cheliax if they weren't, but she must be wrong about that, that's all there is to it, and if there are unwritten rules, then here they bring her.

"Do you consider it so, Most High."

"It is certainly a transgression.  Some such are excusable depending on circumstances.  Some such are beneficial but still punished."

And she is pretty sure this is one of those, but she doesn't know which, and isn't sure it matters for what she ought to have done.

She hands over both pieces of paper she has. 

Aspexia does smile sometimes.  She is smiling right now.  "I seem to be looking at a piece of paper you wrote, signed by Ferrer Maillol, saying that you have business for the Grand High Priestess, and another piece of paper in his own hand, indicating that Maillol is not confident in his vision and unable to judge yours.  That, I admit, is not exactly what I expected to see.  Does Maillol know you are also requesting command of his project, Sevar?"

It actually hadn't occurred to her that Aspexia Rugatonn might not have known that, despite all her own disclaimers of non-omniscience and also the fact that there's no way she would have. 

"Yes, he does. He said I can have it if I can convince someone to give it to me."

"This really has been an unusually good day," says Aspexia Rugatonn.  "A god-war ended, an Otolmens event that is much more helpful to us than usual, Abrogail learning a valuable lesson, Keltham significantly corrupted, and now this.  No transgression, then, and no punishment.  Either Maillol is weaker in his will than I thought, or stronger in his loyalty to our Lord's interests, or you got some unexpected leverage over him to force him to do this.  And no, I won't inquire which was the case, they are all Asmodean enough."

"And this heretical directive, the vision that Maillol could not judge?"

"I think that punishments as presently implemented in Cheliax are in the short term bad for the sort of acuity required for this project. I know that finding an approach to punishment which doesn't have that problem is probably among the most important priorities of building Evil dath ilanism. Until it's figured out I want punishments beyond those issued in Taldor to go through me, to be approved if I think they'll make people better at the project and not otherwise, with exceptions for me, Pilar, and one randomly chosen further student, who will be subject to punishment normally."

"That will be hard on the random student, if they must suffer so unfairly.  It's not that I don't think it's funny, but I assume you have some other reason than that?"

"It's how Evil dath ilan would do it. To check if I'm right that the punishments are making the students worse. If that one performs notably well, then I was wrong, and we can resume punishing everyone; if that one underperforms, then I have more reason to think I'm right. Eyes everywhere. If you want to know something the first thing to try is checking it."

"Encouraging."

"...you have absolutely no idea how much I wish - I maybe shouldn't even think this, it is giving him too much information about Golarion, it feels intuitively dangerous in ways I don't know how to - but if Keltham could have explained to him, some cases of when our Lord tried to give guidance and mortals ruined it, disguised and changed in the details, and asked to discourse to you all upon the Law of obeying a commander who is having trouble seeing you clearly and can talk to you almost not at all -"

"I do not think you are supposed to do anything about this wish.  I think it is too dangerous, I'm not even sure why, but I feel that it must be, somehow.  Do not try to do anything about it without consulting me."

"But, remember the thought."

Aspexia Rugatonn takes out an already-written parchment, makes some swift corrections, signs it, and hands it across the desk.

The parchment grants Carissa Sevar authority and responsibility over Project Pet Outsider Project Lawful, with Ferrer Maillol answering to her as chief operations officer and commanding if she cannot, with Sevar herself answerable to a seventh-circle priest of Asmodeus who will reside on-site.

At the bottom are also some rather severe punishment codes for Carissa Sevar, not to be undergone for at least a week and delayable for up until two months after that.  Those however have now been crossed out, in the same ink that wrote the signature.