Gregoria is pretty sure that 1) no compensation for this project could possibly be adequate and 2) Keltham's going to offer them a lot of money. Though it'd be nice if instead he cut Asmodia down to size. Overconfidence isn't a superpower.

"That's an awful lot for a second-circle wizard, as I'm given to understand it, but I suppose you now have a sufficiently vital role on this project that I do want to keep you happy.  Is 50 gold a week going to make you happy?  Will you be positively cheerful about that, Asmodia?"

"Cheerful is more like 75 gold a week."

Okay, you know what, Manohar's Detect Thoughts has run down, he's not bothering to cast another one, and he's going to show himself invisibly out and then write a scathing report to the Queen about this clownshow operation, in lieu of slowly burning a number of different people here to death.  He truly does not want to listen to especially this part of this shit for one minute longer.  Asmodeus ought to smite this place.

"If that's what it takes to keep you cheerful, fine.  75 gold a week."

Asmodia has a sudden sinking feeling.

It occurs to her that it sure is unusual that she can't tell whether or not Keltham is hiding something, Keltham usually has no Bluff so why does he suddenly have any Bluff now?

Bluff in general, no.  Skill Focus: Trolling, yes.

Keltham turns to address the group; Paxti and Pela have been brought here too, now, and have been standing back and staying quiet with a permanently slightly cheerful expression which, it is only now occurring to Keltham, must have been concealing nearly total bewilderment, unless somebody briefed them while he was out, which somebody hopefully remembered to do... anyways.

"So, the announcement I was planning to make before we all got distracted."

"Bad news first, four of you have already been notified that the rate at which you're absorbing Law was, in my judgment, not sufficient to keep up with the speed at which I intend Project Lawful to go.  You remain the brilliant high-Intelligence wizards who were considered good candidates for this operation in the first place, but that doesn't correlate perfectly with aptitude for Law, either here or in Civilization.  All of you took the risk that it might not work out, when you came here, and some of you won that gamble and some of you lost it."

"Some of those leaving the main Project are currently planning to stay in this fortress and work on some new project - thereby among other things allowing those who stay on Project Lawful to have some people in their cohort they can hang out with, who are not quite as close to the center of all the craziness.  Others of those departing say they may explore other possibilities, but are considering that one as well."

"I don't know how people express gratitude here for having meta-successfully completed the hard work of trying at something you're not sure you can do, and failing, and giving up when the time comes - as one must be able to promise to yourself you will do, says a proverb out of dath ilan, if you're going to dare to try things like that in the first place.  This attempt, in particular, is going to have more of an impact on their lives than most such, and now it's up to everyone remaining to produce results which justify the risk they took and realized.  In Civilization there's rituals for this, but they're not single-person rituals and I don't want to pause to explain and it should be your own way anyhow - so, however people in Cheliax say thank you as a group and not just individuals - may the rest of us all please thank Jacme, Pela, Paxti, and Yaisa now."

People in Cheliax don't thank each other at all and certainly not for failing. 

Carissa summons a flock of dancing lights at her fingertips and sends them off to gather around the four of them. Should be easy enough for everyone to imitate, seems like vaguely the kind of thing Good people would do if they had a lot of wizards which they don't.

...well, he can't join in on that one, he doesn't have Dancing Lights at the moment.  And stamping his feet probably seems odd if he's the only one doing it - no wait, actually, he's got a Light cleric cantrip at the moment.

Keltham casts Light on his hand, and waves gravely at each of Jacme, Pela, Paxti, and Yaisa in turn.

This is the worst thing that has ever happened to Pela in her entire life which is weird because she's been tortured quite a lot. But she hasn't had to pretend she likes it!!!

"We may most of us be joining you sooner or later so get a good tutor. I recommend rings."

"I thought you had to be fourth circle to learn rings," Jacme says, blinking rapidly at the suddenly many lights.

"The curriculum says that but it was written by cowards."

"I'll protect you all from Carissa if that becomes necessary."

"You'll be protecting them from getting good."

"My offer stands."

"I'll keep that in mind," Jacme says, not at all like Keltham's offering to defend her from her actual superior, which he cannot do.

"That was all I had to say to the whole original group forming Project Lawful. You're not obligated to stick around here for even an additional five seconds, if you don't want to; so far as reporting goes, you're back to Maillol, or I think that's how it would go, and you're no longer answerable to my suggestions at all.  That said, Project Lawful itself is going back on its schedule for today in 10 minutes and reconvening in Breakout Room 4, so if you all want to hang out more as a group - which, to be clear, I don't know one way or the other whether you'd actually want to do - I'd suggest setting that up for evening hours."

Message to Carissa:  Do you have anything to say to the Ostensos?  If not, let's go off and leave them some time to themselves, I think is the polite thing to do, or it would be in Civilization?  Also I want to talk with you about how I'm supposed to react to Asmodia on this as her new boss.  Let me know if any of that was stupid.

Message: None of that seemed stupid except I don't understand why Conspiracy implies Asmodia having a fake headband. They probably do want time to themselves.

And she can go off with Keltham out of earshot of everyone else.

"So, for example, suppose Asmodia just traveled back in time by four months, either in her mind or in her body, and we are not allowed to know this because Time Shenanigans.  Then she does not need a real headband, the headband is just there to explain why she suddenly knows the Law of Probability and her personality got more mature.  A +6 headband is supposedly difficult to obtain, if people have been telling me the truth about that part; but maybe you can, for example, much more cheaply get a fake headband that looks like a +6 one to magical detection, maybe even one that makes the wearer detect as having an additional 6 Wisdom to Detect Anxieties."

"Anyways, I mostly do not think that's what happened, especially since her headband was real and that would be a pretty expensive solution for covering up a generic augmentation or personality change, which was why I tested that."

"Which leaves the question of how I, as her boss, am supposed to react to what she did.  Ferrer Maillol thinks she's supposed to get yelled at, and I should tell him to do that on my behalf if I won't do it myself, and if I don't she'll misbehave further in order to further test her limits.  Civilization would basically say that what she and Manohar did was their own business and I get zero say in it except insofar as to decide whether I want to hire the person she ended up as, which I do?"

"- so I don't think that last bit is quite true, though I admit that I would've probably taken the offer if I'd gotten it and didn't have a headband yet, it's an insanely tempting offer. But - but Manohar does things that are a bad idea, and you're supposed to punish people on secret projects who do things that look to be a bad idea, regardless of whether they actually turned out to be a bad idea, rather than - locating all the punishment in the actual failure which is luck rather than in the decision process - does that make sense -"

"Yeah, I have no idea how the rules on Civilization's actual secret projects work, is the thing.  I know various suggestions for conduct and rules on secret projects that commonly appear in fiction, which rules, one would assume, are optimized to sound totally reasonable to readers while also allowing for convenient drama and disasters to happen anyways.  I have been trying not to let any of those enter my mind."

"I'm also not sure I should just do things the Chelish way, what with, for example, it not being obvious to people from Cheliax that whether Yaisa and I end up fucking is something that should not be mentioned in employee retention conversations."

"What's the reasoning behind the notion that somebody in my position, in general, should have an expectation that Asmodia not do this thing that was legal for her to do, and hold himself injured by her having done it?"

"So the military has the concept of - depriving your organizational superiors of decision power and steering power for your own benefit or out of carelessness. Does dath ilan have that concept."

"Probably not... exactly, in whatever form it is?  For every decision there's one clearly identifiable person who's supposed to make that decision.  If, in the military, or in a corporation, somebody else was supposed to make that decision, and they did, and then you did it differently and not by throwing an exception either, then sure you get fired."