Well, shit. Does he expect they're dishonestly coordinating backstories -

- she raises her hand -

"Carissa?"

"Unusual for, in my case, a third circle wizard at the Worldwound, and in their case, a top student at Ostenso's Academy of Wizardry, or unusual for a random person in Golarion."

Now that's a philosophically interesting question.  What Keltham really wants to ask is if their personal stories would seem surprisingly interesting to whoever is playing the hypothetical original LARP that this realitynovel is deconstructing.  But they're not going to have a better answer to that than he does.

Well, 'Keltham' would be the paying player of the original LARP, so...  "I think what we're looking for is the expected degree to which I, a dath ilani, would say something like, 'Wait what?' after I found out.  So the fact that you spent years at the Worldwound would be, like, a third of the way across, because it's surprising to me and matters to me, while you being secretly a dragon shapechanged into a human, if you knew I'd find that out later in the relationship, would be more like two-thirds across.  Maybe let's say it's only past the halfway point if you'd expect other people here to be surprised."

- nod. Okay, she isn't sure what hypothesis he is entertaining, here. 

She will mark herself as less than halfway surprising - if Keltham somehow learns 'chosen by Asmodeus to rework theology to be dath ilani' then the whole game is up anyway - and the average as less than her because she's pretty sure the others ought to be indicating less surprisingness than that. 

Tonia is pretty sure she's not at all surprising in any way unless they count the having sold her soul which Keltham's not supposed to learn about. She indicates that she is not surprising and that other people are only slightly more surprising than her. 

Meritxell would like to be a shapedchanged dragon! Or have a fascinating tragic backstory or something! Those feel like the way to be the best at this and she'd like to be the best at this. She's pretty sure if she'd had, like, a month's warning she could have had the best sexual fetishes, too, but that's hard to do from a cold start. She reluctantly marks down that she's not very interesting, which is incredibly painful to do, and that the average person is probably slightly more interesting than that, which is agonizing.

This is probably her fault, isn't it, unless Carissa screwed up even worse.  Ione puts down a two-thirds mark, since she's secretly a very rare chosen oracle of Nethys and not just a hidden worshipper.

She gives the general class a one-half mark, hoping that others are wise enough to realize that what they're telling Keltham there is the expected degree of weirdness that's normal for Golarion, which influences how much he'll think is normal.

Paxti puts down 1/2 and 1/3.  She doesn't have a fascinating though ordinary-for-Golarion backstory yet, but she wants to reserve space for getting one.

Asmodia puts down 0 and nearly 0.  She doesn't actually want a story.

Pilar silently writes her answers.

Gregoria's father is the heir to the Barony of Blanes. She doesn't think this makes her very interesting; firstly, everyone knows the man in question has a thing for that, and hundreds of children; secondly, probably most other Barons are like that, thirdly, it's not as if she's ever met the man. For all she knows her mother could be lying. If it were a Duke then that'd probably count as a little bit interesting but a Baron? Not really. 

Hopefully they'll get a good distribution of claims of interestingness so that any given girl can pretend later to have assigned a different one than she in fact did, but they can't coordinate, and it's hard to guess what other people will say. 

Gregoria frowns at her pen for a bit and then picks at random on the unremarkable half of both lines.

Well.  That's a very interesting response pattern.

It doesn't quite fit 'the LARP begins with 3-5 primary love interests, some of whom start out knowing about some of the others, plus a bunch of relatively normal girls who think everyone else there is also normal'.  Half the respondents thought everyone had backgrounds almost totally uninteresting to a dath ilani, which may indicate a failure of perspective-taking, or a failure to process the instructions somehow.

What he should've done was run a pilot of this procedure, asking about the degree to which everybody liked lunch, or something.

Very helpful there, obviously correct thought, but you're arriving a little too late.

"Right then," Keltham says.  "Can I get somebody to destroy these papers before the universe notices them?"

Broom now has additional questions.

"Broom needs to see the papers before they are destroyed."

"Broom, I was joking."

"Broom will have questions for Keltham later.  Broom still needs to see the papers now."

"They didn't consent to that in advance, and it does not seem appropriate to ask for their consent afterwards."

See this is why you have to TELL KELTHAM ABOUT OTOLMENS because otherwise he will NOT treat Broom like an institution you shut up and cooperate with. But Carissa has made that recommendation in the strongest terms she can and it's over her head and she shouldn't countermand it now, and also has no justification to herself know anything about Otolmens. 

"You also didn't tell us you were going to destroy them," Meritxell says. "I have been assuming maybe all of our notes are going to be preserved for posterity or something."

Keltham reminds himself that he was previously angry at Broom for reasons that shouldn't influence his behavior this much, and tamps down his irritation.

"Fine.  New poll, use this symbol for destroying all notes and then Broom can ask you to re-generate them for his observation if he wants.  This symbol for Broom being allowed to look at them first before they get destroyed.  This symbol if you think it's great to preserve those notes for posterity.  Minimum vote, not average vote."

"He does have any reason, as I'm given to understand it.  But Broom, you will need to ask in advance on future occasions, this kind of after-the-fact modification is destructive of trust in implied experimental contracts."

Keltham writes down the new poll and symbols on the whiteboard, underneath the previous questions.  The three symbols are \ /, V, and X, since it should be hard to tell what somebody is writing by looking at the motions of their quill; drawing two slanted lines that optionally touch or intersect accomplishes this.

This is such a terrifying exercise and it'd be really nice to know what Broom's deal is!!!!

Idea, Carissa thinks grouchily. Kidnap - or hire, whatever, probably hire because if they're scared it'll mess with the data - a bunch of Taldane wizard teenagers to put through all these experiments for us to learn from how they're responding.

She puts a V for letting Broom look because Aspexia Rugatonn seemed to think they should cooperate with Otolmens and Aspexia Rugatonn is the expert.

Ione doesn't know what this guy's deal is, but if he's here then Security wants him here, and she's not going to piss off Security without a reason.  She puts down V.

Asmodia puts down X.  Paxti puts down X.  Pilar writes down her own answer.

Meritxell puts down X. Gregoria puts down V.

Keltham checks the votes, then hands the notes over to Broom.  "The vote was to destroy after you read them."

"Broom thanks you," he says.  Slaves learn somewhat more politeness than is usual in Cheliax for non-slaves.

Broom reads the poll results.

It does not look like a situation that is not heading into an enormous mess.

Broom will decide what to do about that later.

"Okay, now can somebody please destroy the answers in a clear obvious way where everyone can see they were destroyed."

"Broom, if you could set them down on the floor clear of anything, we can just light them on fire."