When everyone is done, Keltham collects the paper scraps, looks through them, and smiles.

"Right, then.  Well, I expect that most of your real compensation will be in resellable shares of the future income of the Project, which will vest in you over time as you work here; that's how it's done in Civilization.  But it's highly uncertain how much those end up being worth, and also people need to buy things now and then.  So it's also considered good practice in Civilization to pay researchers some reasonable core salaries in regular money, meant to be less volatile."

"The basic schema I'm working with here is that we have tier-1 and tier-2 researcher employees, with myself the sole member of tier-0, following some standard schemes in Civilization for compensating people working on projects like these.  The tier-1s are, currently, this is potentially something that changes over time, Carissa, Asmodia, Meritxell, and Ione, all of whom have displayed rapid learning speed on Law.  Ione also warns this site about incoming military attacks, which is worth some significant bonus pay, and Carissa is currently operating as my de facto second-in-command and ops person and general Keltham maintainer.  Tonia, Peranza, Gregoria, and Pilar are tier-2, except that Pilar is providing snacks catering and may possibly turn out to be incredibly important somehow in the same fashion as Ione; the expectation of Pilar maybe being important later is worth its own bonus."

"Basic salaries for a Project Lawful researcher - now, I realize that this isn't as much as a Security wizard makes, even though you're more valuable to Cheliax than they are - but again, most of your real compensation will be in resellable shares of future Project income vesting over time - are 100 gold per week at tier-2, 200 gold per week at tier-1, and 500 gold per week at tier-0."

"Ione, you saved Cheliax way more than two Raise Deads at the cost of some potential and maybe actual damage to yourself, but Maillol says he can't politically swing a 10,000 gold bonus, so for now I'm putting you down as having a secondary role as special forecaster which pays an additional 200 gold per week.  Pilar, you get an additional 50 gold per week for Cayden Cailean services that just might be much more important than they look, with an expectation of further payment if they are, plus a 1000 gold bonus for taking a sword that might possibly have led into some further and disastrous plot by Nidal if it had been allowed to kill me.  Carissa is tier-0.9, you might say, and receives 300 gold per week, and should be considered to have authority here as my second."

"Oh, and Asmodia obviously receives 75 gold per week, since she did say out loud that was enough to make her cheerful."

"Any questions."

There was something of Hell in that. Not very much, but. More than she's seen from Keltham before. 

She tries to look a totally reasonable amount of delighted and not a ridiculous amount of delighted.

Except probably he's joking and that's what the Asmodia and Keltham writing each other notes is about.

Tonia starts nervously giggling, she can't help herself.  ....she can help herself but it'd be difficult. 

Meritxell is pretty sure this is the best thing that has ever happened. Maybe that's what's meant by an amount of money you're cheerful about, it should feel like the best thing that ever happened, except it wouldn't without Asmodia also getting put in her place. ...if Keltham is serious about that. A Chelish person would be deadly serious but it's Keltham, and she's pretty sure he's, what's the word, trolling.

Is that actually the first time in her life that Ione has ever been appreciated for anything?  Possibly.  She's not sure.

She's oracle of Nethys and it shouldn't be possible to buy her loyalty with, like, money, instead of knowledge or what serves Nethys or at least incredibly rare and irreplaceable books.  But what with Cheliax having not even bothered to bid, they're not exactly making it difficult for Keltham to straight-up buy her loyalty with money.  She doesn't even know what she's going to do with that money.  It's just working on her anyways.  She can feel her loyalties shifting as she thinks.  Even though the money in this case is coming directly from Cheliax.  Some Asmodeans really need to rethink some of their strategies here.

Pilar is in a state of existential panic, not that this shows on her face.

She's a slave of Asmodeus.  Slave.  What do slaves of Asmodeus do with this amount of money?  Can she - is she supposed to - donate it to the Church of Asmodeus?

Pilar.

This is how Lawful Good paladins think, Pilar.

Do you actually know how Asmodean theology works literally at all, Pilar.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Gregoria thinks this is very generous and in line with the enormous benefits the Queen promised a night ago. She is grateful to Her Imperial Majestrix.

Asmodia silently unfolds and then holds up a sheet of paper saying:

PREDICTION:  Keltham tries to torment me by claiming he'll only pay me 75gp/week, which is less than he's planning to pay anyone else here.
Probability:  95%.

It's practically like being back in Civilization.

Keltham partially unfolds and holds up his own scrap of paper, still half-folded.

Col 1:  Ordinary Asmodia
Col 2:  Conspiracy Asmodia
Col 3:  Time-traveling Asmodia (1 loop only)

Probability that:

- Her sheet of paper predicts I troll her:                           .90 | .70 | .90
- If so, that her sheet of paper estimates a probability:    .40 | .60 | .90

Carissa attempts some quick math in her head to figure out whether Keltham net updated in favor of Conspiracy off this and therefore whether she needs to punish Asmodia. She is quickly coming to despise both of them, which is probably not the most helpful attitude to have about this, put a pin in that and come back to it later. 

Asmodia's sheet of paper predicting the outcome is a 9/7 update for regular over Conspiracy, the inclusion of a number is 6/4 in favor of Conspiracy, so on net an update for Conspiracy, ha, she'll get to punish Asmodia for it. Though it'd be better if she'd thought to predict in advance that Asmodia's paper-writing spree of excessive cleverness whatever the details would net persuade Keltham towards Conspiracy. 

"Planning to turn around the sheet of paper and show us anything else?"

Asmodia slowly turns around her sheet of paper to reveal...

...that the other side is blank.

"I'm going to hold off on conceding anything until you show us the probability you assigned that I'd have a second side to my sheet of paper," says Asmodia.

"Of course."

Keltham unfolds his own sheet of paper.

...and that she predicts my prediction of her:   .60 | .10 | .80

"Conspiracy Asmodia would love to have me believe that I'm thinking one level ahead of her while she's actually thinking one level ahead of me," Keltham says.

SHE WAS FUCKING THINKING THAT.  AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH SHE NEEDS TO LEARN THIS FASTER.

Nothing shows on her face.  She cannot pause in horror she must be alterAsmodia now and she has the headband to enforce that on herself.  "Or I, you know, have literally been doing this less than a day.  Now what's on the other side of your paper?  Some way of tormenting me yet more, 75%, nothing, 25%."

And THIS is why you don't try to get into cleverness contests with Keltham, you fucking idiot - actually, Security, communicate to Asmodia straight up orders that the next time she comes up with something incredibly clever to do, she does not do it literally regardless of the details of what it is.

....and communicate the same thing to Ione. 

Keltham flips his paper all the way over.

Actual probabilities:

Predicts:           .80 | .40 | .90
Probability:       .50 | .60 | .90
Predicts 2nd:    .40 | .20 | .80

"Conspiracy Asmodia mostly wouldn't try playing this game against me in the first place, it's too potentially revealing.  Unless she's already sure of how I'd update off her not playing, of course, but she probably hasn't seen enough of me to be sure what level I'd think on here."

"Welcome to Civilization, Asmodia.  You'll do just fine."

The order stands even though Carissa's going to have to recalculate the actual change in Keltham's predictions to figure out whether she can punish Asmodia or not.

Also, she notes that the path to Evil for Keltham plainly lies in his conviction that lying to and manipulating people is completely fine and in fact hilarious as long as you are trolling them. Some people should start thinking about lies and manipulations that are satisfactorily Evil even with the apparent constraint that you later declare them to have been 'trolling'. 

"I am confused about what we are supposed to believe at this point," says Gregoria, "unless being confused about what we're supposed to believe is part of this lesson?"