Carissa said from the BEGINNING that they should tell Keltham about Otolmens because they shouldn't be keeping any secrets from him that they don't absolutely have to. But this is over her head, presumably. 

" - are you all right?" she says quietly to Keltham once they're to all appearances alone.

"Not really."  Keltham considers saying how much he doesn't like the thought of having been spied on by this particular non-abstract person while he was with Carissa, and then the thought occurs to him that if this isn't already bothering Carissa, he'd rather not remind her to be bothered by it.  "How - how weird was that, how out of character for reality as you know it, on a scale of zero to twelve?"

" - good question. Uh. There being secret Lawful Neutral gods is not out of character for reality, if I'd had occasion to think about it I'd have thought yeah probably some gods have reason not to tell most mortals they exist. Such a god having taken interest in this project is not out of character for reality. Chelish senior leadership - is people like Contessa Lrilatha, and if I imagine her reacting to a secret Lawful Neutral god representative showing up, probably she would - react cooperatively, we don't want 'big messes' either. Maybe just tell Security he's authorized to be here and to stay out of his way. All of that is - I wouldn't have predicted it but only because there are a hundred things about as predictable and I can't keep track of all of them. 

The guy himself was weird. I don't know how I imagine people who are members of a secret order dedicated to a secret god who go around preventing catastrophes but - but he wasn't how I imagined that. And the fact that your god interfered is weird, I'd expect - usually when gods both want to intervene in opposed ways they hash it out privately and only one intervenes, it's cheaper. You don't visibly see gods at cross-purposes much. But this is much more important than most things and prophecy's broken and it's plausible they aren't at cross-purposes, that it was both necessary for him to be invisible and for him to be caught. So....maybe four or five? On that scale."

Right then.  It was weird, but not the parts he thought were weird.  At least that's not meta-weird, because that's what falling into another world should be like.

"Does our relationship permit me to lean into you and get a hug while we're not otherwise engaged in cuddleroom activities?"

Hug.

Sigh.

"...I still have three more spells," Keltham says after a while.

"....it does not actually make sense for me to feel a sense of doom at that. And yet." 

"Well, we're not going to get any less doomed if we wait.  Find another security officer or wait for the previous one to come back?"

Yeah, that security officer isn't coming back soon, or, in fact, at all.

How many ways is Ferrer Maillol pissed?  Let's count them!  Maillol sure is!

First, the decision to tell Keltham that him being Evil himself wouldn't show up in his own aura.  It has the short-term benefit of not making Keltham wonder about his own apparent Neutrality.  Its disadvantages include that they're going to have to conceal Ione's aura so she doesn't look Lawful Evil; that if they succeed at shifting Keltham more Evil, and then he looks at himself, he's going to spot the lie; and above all, that it is a lie, which Sevar said to hand out sparingly around Keltham and under centralized supervision, and Maillol seems to recall saying that Sevar was now in charge of that.  The wizard didn't even have to make up any answer about that.  He could have just shut up.

Second, volunteering to Keltham that they did already know he was Lawful Neutral.  Maybe no clerics at the villa happened to prepare Aura Sight that day.  Wouldn't that be simpler?  Hm?  Keltham possibly bought the excuse but they sure have been giving him multiple excuses lately, hm?

Third, telling Keltham that they're working to identify the symbol and will inform him as soon as it's known.  Cheliax is now permanently committed to preventing Keltham from getting a glimpse of Abadar's symbol in any context that associates it with Abadar, because it would not have taken that long to identify.  They could have said they were unsure about Osirion and if Keltham would start imitating their treatment of women, which Sevar happens to have spouted on about and which Keltham seemed sympathetic to.  This is partially on Sevar for not thinking fast enough, but it's mostly on the security guard for having wedged Sevar into a bad position by bringing up that they knew it was a Lawful Neutral god at all, which is what required Sevar to come up with instant answers.

Fourth, failing to remember the existence of Otolmens's oracle.  Sevar forgot, yeah, and he's not happy about that either, but Sevar's not the one whose job it is to have combat reflexes and figure out immediately what needs to happen when Keltham starts casting Invisibility Purge.

Any one of these mistakes in isolation could be a blemish on an otherwise acceptable record.

In combination, it means Ferrer Maillol directs three other security wizards to burn this one almost but not quite to death over the course of an hour, and then, rather more injuriously to him, send him back with a request for a replacement security officer and a note that this one is unsuited to complicated deceptions requiring fast reaction times.  Maillol would do it himself, to vent some of his frustrations, but he is more busy than lesser beings can understand.

As for what Keltham is cleared to know about Otolmens?  He's cleared to know the minimal facts the fucking halfling slave more competent than his own security wizards by virtue of talking fucking less and only when spoken to already said, and there's no need to clear him for more than that.

"The last one's an illusion? I am actually not thinking of what it might be. I know a bunch of third-circle wizard illusions - Major Image, which does better adjustable illusions like Minor Image which you already saw, Displacement which makes you appear to be in a slightly different place than you actually are, Invisibility Sphere... Dream, which lets you send short messages to someone in their sleep - probably one of them is also on the cleric spell list and I'm just forgetting that..." 

When it's been a little she steps outside and summons another Security so they can go ahead.

Keltham casts his third-circle cleric illusion spell.

The room around them catches fire. Carissa hisses and starts a spell before realizing it's illusory fire. It stretches on beyond where the walls of the room are, though you can sort of still see them.

It is accompanied by illusory agonized screaming. Most of it is wordless, hoarse, barely human; some of it is more coherent, and verges on comprehensible Taldane pleading.

"- please, please, I'm sorry - no -"

"- kill me -"

On the ground in front of them a man is engaged in trying to drag himself across the flaming ground. His skin is raw and bloody and occasionally burns right through to the bone, though the injuries close up, when they get that serious. He's in enough pain that his muscles are spasming and his limbs don't quite obey him; he's not screaming but just gasping hoarsely. The sound is unforgettable.

(Carissa Sevar has very good spellcraft, and it's easier to think about spellcraft than about other things, so the main thing she is thinking is that this spell is, evidently from watching it cast, one of those two minutes per caster circle spells.)

This is important.

Or his god wouldn't be showing it to him.

Any negative effects it has on him should already have been taken into account as an acceptable cost.

Keltham tries to look around.

Very briefly.

It's still enough to get a general impression of things.

He looks at Carissa, who doesn't seem to be in visible emotional difficulty, because six years at the Worldwound, presumably.

"Please look around to see if there are any clues and then turn this off," Keltham says, and shuts his eyes and puts his fingers into his ears.

Illusion spell.  This isn't real.  A movie of a bad thing that isn't actually happening.

Security dispels it. Exchanges glances with Carissa. 

Well, the 'look around for clues' is nice because it means she has a minute to compare cover stories.

'some people are kinky!' is not going to cover it. 

'Abaddon!' is an obvious option. And the other obvious one is Zon-Kuthon. Abaddon is - more of a lie, there's other stuff about Abaddon which would establish that it doesn't really involve very much being on fire, they could filter it. Zen Kuthon is known to Keltham to have an inverted utility function. He's Lawful Evil but not the way Asmodeus is Evil, in the was Good and got turned to the exact opposite sense. And that does look like the exact opposite of Good. ...she can also buy their future selves option value, say that she thinks it's probably Zon Kuthon but didn't see anything definitive. 

She pulls out a notebook and writes down some irrelevant things she happened to see, because taking notes is what she'd be doing, if she was learning something new. And then she pats Keltham tentatively on the shoulder and, if he doesn't flinch, hugs him.

He doesn't flinch when touched.  A dath ilani may not have seen illusion spells but they have at least seen movies.  Though no movie of anything like that, of course, it would leave scars on whoever saw it.

But some things are worth getting some scars, even on your mind and core, and Keltham's god evidently thought this was that important.

"I hope you know what that -" Keltham starts, and then realizes that if he continues with this ill-advised 'speech' business he's going to vomit, so he stops his breath and clamps down on abdominal muscles instead.

"I have a top guess? I think - so Zon-Kuthon, the god who wandered into the void and values the opposite of everything he did before, has a country. And claims its people when they die."

"It was real?  That's happening right now, somewhere?"

"I don't know!!!! But - if I were a god I - wouldn't do that to make any point at all except - except itself - and if it's real, that's - that's what it'd be -"

Keltham is not a Keeper and therefore he is going to do something epistemically questionable and, while not assigning bad probabilities over the branched possibilities, he will mentally live for a time inside the possible world where that vision definitely hasn't happened yet, until he stops feeling like he's going to throw up, and come to terms with the other branches later.

"I have my obvious theory about what that means and why my god would do that.  Both of you come up with your theories before I state mine, then we all state what our theories were before we heard the other person's theories," Keltham says.  "Raise your hand when you have a theory, and once we've all raised our hands, Security goes first."  Obviously, this affair has reached a state of urgency where any pretense of Security being dispassionate not-really-present observers can be discarded along with all other pretenses.

"....your god wants you to negotiate for Cheliax to do something about that and thinks that once we have the metalworking and riches of dath ilan we'll be able to."

"Carissa."  He's going in reverse order of how much he trusts the people present to speak their answers uninfluenced by who spoke earlier.

"...so your god is Lawful Neutral. And you're at least by self-identification Evil. And, uh, I think your god is pitching being Lawful Neutral. Saying to you, 'okay, you mostly only care about pursuing your own interests and dealing fairly with others, but that mostly might matter a lot, here, what are you going to do about that." Carissa is not sure that is a good direction to push Keltham in but they ....need to reconsider a lot of strategy, if Abadar is going to be this pointed, and it might be time to start angling for the plan where Keltham leaves and takes her with him. At least to be sure not to burn it.

"Persuasive pitch, if so," Keltham says, learning, as he speaks, to speak and clench his stomach muscles at the same time.  "I'll pause to take my expensive shirt off first not to ruin it, and I'll want somebody to pay me afterwards, but I will, in fact, jump into waterholes to save drowning children."

"My theory is that Zon-Kuthon of the inverted values is the god that has an effectively unnegotiable incentive to oppose everything we're doing here and want us all dead; that the vision uniquely identifies Zon Kuthon though why it had to come in that form I don't know; and that we're being warned that the security precautions we had at the time I got my spells this morning, plus any further precautions we'd take predictably to my god, without this vision, are not adequate to navigate that with acceptable casualties."

"Can Zon-Kuthon just - take people, could he take somebody here, especially if they're Lawful Evil, if his clerics attack us - or does Asmodeus -"