"Do you know why I asked you to do this?"

Because I'd outlived my usefulness.

"Because you believe Keltham might turn some of us into heretics, and you'd like to minimize how many."

"Say Keltham asks you -" she glances at the paper, "why all the Chelish wizards are born in Cheliax, when wizards from all over the world should want to live here. What would you say to him."

This is a much easier question to answer.

"That wasn't in the official background material, so if I had to answer right away and couldn't wait on an advisory from yourself or Asmodia, I would tell him that I don't know, but my guess is that the wizards on-site all look native-born probably because that helps with passing the Security screening.  I've seen non-Chelish wizards in Cheliax ever but did mostly keep to Ostenso wizard academy while I was there, and I wasn't in a big town before then."

"Good. 

Say you accidentally at some point thought the question to yourself, what would your answer be?"

"They're weak and afraid of pain."

"It would be better for our souls to leave it at that, wouldn't it? But I think we unfortunately can't. All of these questions have real, good, satisfactory answers, obviously; devils aren't constantly afraid of heresy. Devils don't carefully avoid thinking about specific things. And we are going to have to become like devils in this regard because it's too late for us to be like -" gesture - "other people. Which of these questions would you be most relieved to know the real true answer to, an answer you can think about as much as you like because it's actually just satisfactory and thinking about it more brings you closer to understanding the will and greatness of Asmodeus?"

If she just picks one at random is she safe -

Is it better to learn from her mistake, and be punished for disobedience rather than die for heresy -

No she just needs to glance at things until she finds any item with a plausible excuse -

Why do we have to be hurt so? - wasn't one of her questions and she mustn't process the real meaning of Sevar's question anyways

SHE HAS TO PRODUCE AN ANSWER

"I - don't know how to answer that, if I haven't already been told the real true answers then I'm not deemed ready for them, I don't know how to guess which answer I'd be ready for and would help me -"

"You haven't been told the real true answers because it's been a very busy week and this is the first time we've had a couple hours away from Keltham. You're ready at minimum for the answer to every question that you're scared of thinking about, because we can't have you scared of thinking."

Why is she lying.  Who would believe that?

No, belief is mandatory.  Believe it somehow.

Peranza nods obediently.

"Shall we just go down the entire list, since you can't name one?"

If Sevar has true, reassuring answers for everything on the list Peranza will be genuinely impressed; for an instant there's a flare of hope.  Maybe Sevar's price in Dis means something?  "Yes," Peranza says.

"Ione Sala thinks it's okay to worship Nethys. 

There is - something of a realignment, happening among the gods, right now. It's hard to see from a mortal angle, but gods are doing Asmodeus favors who would not have been expected to do Asmodeus favors. Cayden Cailean gifted Pilar with the ability to track down every spy for Iomedae in Egorian, as long as she threw a party for them before kicking them out of the country, instead of executing them. That's what she was doing in Egorian. Broom's god - this is secret from Keltham, but permitted to know in the project - teleported every diamond anywhere in Nidal to Broom, at the same time as Asmodeus sent Maillol a vision saying we should set up near Ostenso where there's some kind of divine interdiction. Nethys warned us of the Zon-Kuthon attack.

It's hard for mortals to know for certain what the gods are doing. But there's a thing that would have been something a heretic might have said a week ago, which was: if Asmodeus is destined to win, why don't the other gods act like they know that? Why do they oppose Asmodeus? They don't have the excuse of being mortal and stupid and scared of pain; they should submit, if they see how it's destined to end, or I guess try to let Rovagug out if they're too opposed to submit. But in that we have the start of our answer - Asmodeus doesn't want them to let Rovagug out, and so He has left hidden from them the ultimate result He sees. When Good gods tell their priests that Asmodeus will not win in the end, they're telling the truth, as far as they know. 

Or that's what was true a week ago. I think that Asmodeus is now beginning to show his hand. We are valued in Dis not for the work we'll do in this world, but for the work we'll do in Hell, where the gods do know that Asmodeus reigns totally supreme and that there is nothing to do to oppose Him. With more Law, it will be possible to create better devils. 

That might seem like - an advantage, a substantial one even, but not a decisive one, not one that turns Cayden Cailean against Iomedae and has Nethys serving Asmodeus in the absence of prophecy. Do you see why it's a bigger advantage than that?"

Peranza doesn't gape, since such reactions are suppressed by default in Cheliax.

Is all that even slightly true -

But maybe it is true, Project Lawful being what it is, the answer is maybe yes, it's not like they haven't seen Pilar with the cake, Peranza was there when Ione called her warning, and they were told about the Cayden Cailean thing before any of these issues about heresy came up -

"I'm not sure I understood the question, sir?  Is the question, why being able to create better devils is a decisive enough advantage to make Cayden Cailean and Nethys believe in Lord Asmodeus's inevitable victory?  It would just be, because with better devils Hell gets stronger and wins, right?"

The flash of horror that goes through her at the thought is buried very very deep.

"If you just make a devil a little better than any anyone has ever made, then that devil will be able to get even better at making devils, and make one a little better than that. And get better at the process, not just the result - think how much mortal running-around-in-blind-panic would be prevented if being shaped into some kinds of devil didn't hurt, so we could just tell everyone who's scared that they can be that kind instead."

Wryly: "it'll probably still hurt the way this conversation is hurting you. But I believe maybe mortals, if it was just that, could muster their courage and go gladly to it.

With better devils you could have a summoned Keltham in every classroom, teaching all the children Law, which devils right now don't understand in such a way that they'd be able to do it. 

And all we have to do is make a devil which is just a little bit better at making devils - which is, in a sense, a kind of teaching, a kind of shaping, the precise thing this project is doing.

Ione Sala shouldn't worship Nethys, and you shouldn't start, but it's not threatening the way it was a week ago, any more than it's threatening that I venerate Dispater. Because Dispater works for Asmodeus, and Nethys does too - not fully, yet, but it's not surprising at all that Nethys, who sees farther, was the first to see it. And Ione believes Nethys to have charged her with helping the project succeed, and with making it visible to Keltham that the project has the backing of many gods - he'd be suspicious if it were just Asmodeans. He told me yesterday that he was tremendously relieved Cayden Cailean was backing us, since the fact Good gods too support this project gives him confidence in it.

What a gift, which Asmodeus could not buy, if He weren't going to win!

Why did Cayden take Pilar, and not anyone else, to Elysium, if He is Good and wants to save people from Hell? Anyone else might have been tempted to stay in Elysium - it's all right, you can think it, many people would be tempted to stay in Elysium - and that would have been a cruel thing to tempt them with, when Elysium will fall soon anyway; Pilar was the one who was done no cruelty, by showing her. They asked her at the end if she wanted to stay and she said 'no' and they said 'we knew that would be your answer'. She is meant to bring that little that Elysium has to teach us with her to Hell. And someday it'll be fine to worship Cayden Cailean, too, as it's fine to worship Mephistopheles."

There's a flash of contempt -

There's a flash of contempt openly in Peranza's thoughts.  It's safe to think that Sevar is a fool, because the Security reading her thoughts will be thinking that too.  If you look at the way Cheliax is set up, that Hell is set up, you'd have to be a fool to think they'd ever make devils in a way that didn't hurt.  The people of Cheliax are not that lied-to, they are openly told that Asmodeus's domain is tyranny and that the cruelty they endure is pleasing to Him.  You couldn't pray to Him if you were that mistaken about who He is.

"Why believe Hell would go along with making devils less painfully?" Peranza says.  It does not take heresy, it is not an executable offense, if you suggest that Hell likes hurting you in the course of your correction.  The corrected deserve for the correction to hurt, and the weak deserve to suffer; this is the doctrine of Hell.  Peranza has had to whip her classmates, and practice torture spells on children with no other uses, to make sure she experiences it from both sides, just like any other wizard.  Even if they could make devils painlessly, they wouldn't.

"Because I think it might interfere with making them think. I observe you all to be terrible at thinking, except Pilar who doesn't mind it. I would love to teach you how not to mind it. But I don't have that figured out yet, I'm not Abrogail, who did know how to hurt me in a way that made me better and stronger and worthier, and I can't promise people 'look, we'll hurt you in a way that makes you better and stronger and worthier', because they've never had Abrogail and on some level don't believe that that's even real. So if all goes well, I'll have my own collection of souls in training in Hell, and I'll figure out something better than paving stones to do with the ones who fall apart when they get hurt. Yes, they're contemptible; yes, they deserve to suffer; yes, it'd be better if I could figure out how to both deliver what they deserve to them and make them into something useful. But everyone's trying at the first thing and no one's trying at the second.

Do you want to know what Hell conveyed of Asmodeus's will for me?"

"Yes," Peranza says; she can answer that question quickly, what with the alternate answer of 'no' being very very obviously the wrong one.

It's good that she was asked that question so she didn't have to figure out how to respond to everything that came before it.

Carissa carefully pulls out the sheet of paper on which it was reconstructed from Elias's memories, and passes it across the table to Peranza.

Peranza reads, and is not particularly enlightened.  Perhaps she isn't actually meant to be enlightened, only shown how small and stupid she is before Asmodeus's wisdom?

"Are we meant to understand why our Lord directed you so?" she says.

"Not in full, I don't think. But I thought all the strange and doubtless mistaken things that I think, and He chose me, and He called Keltham my teacher; that we're meant to understand. Ordinarily it would be very stupid and pathetic to imagine that Hell is in an error we have the power to correct. I think now it is ambiguous, whether it is stupid and pathetic or not. If we succeed, Peranza, if we build Civilization on Golarion, then this ambition of mine to fix those souls Hell turns into paving-stones is small next to that, and I will be permitted it. If we fail then we'll all be worse off than if we'd never tried this, because we got halfway to Truth and ended up in a big muddle of heresy."

Half of that prediction is certainly credible.  (Probably fine to think this; Security is no doubt thinking the same.)

What would Ione say about all this if Peranza asked her

What would Pilar say about all this if Peranza asked her?  (Pilar is obviously strong in her faith; to wonder what she'd think of something is a permitted thought.)

A daring thought comes to her, more daring than has come to Peranza in a while; a thought that might get her punished, and yet, it wouldn't be execution for heresy, and that punishment would show Sevar's hand and relieve a lot of frantic anxiety about how real the promise of reduced punishment actually is.  "I think - the sort of question you're talking about - that somebody might be afraid to ask - would, for me, the most important question would be - why can't a devil tell us this, that Hell would go along with your plan, and swear to that in Asmodeus's name, and then we would know it was no heresy" and that the hope was real (actually you can just think that, Security's also skeptical of the truth here) and that Sevar's promises were remotely credible.