And that's with people who otherwise had good-enough prospects that the prediction markets said they could try to become Keepers in the first place!

Keltham paid to slightly subsidize a market once on what would actually happen to him if he tried to become a Keeper, just because he was curious, and the chances were 81% on him ending up unhappy enough that it wasn't worth toughing things out and deciding to just wake up in the Future a couple of centuries later, and 97% on regretting ever having tried.

Okay.  They'd say this in Taldor, right?  Asmodia's not getting any input from Carissa Sevar but it's in keeping with everything else they've told Keltham and it's definitely true in Taldor, right?

"...Keltham, it's possible that what Civilization considers to be an enormous risk to its population of safe happy rich people is not quite the same as what somebody from Golarion would consider to be a really drastic risk."

"And that really doesn't sound like what happened to me while wearing the artifact headband either.  I wasn't getting sadder while I was figuring out the Law, I was incredibly happy, maybe literally happier than I've ever been.  And afterwards what I ended up with was more like rushing into things headlong, believing that nothing can hurt you.  It's why I guessed that telling Security to hold me down and light my hand on fire for thirty seconds might bring me out of it."

"Ninety-seven percent chance of regretting having tried something is a pretty good reason not to try it.  I know what you're going to say, you're going to say that Cheliax generally and you personally would think that maybe Keepers are useful for closing the Worldwound or guarding dangerous-information like the kind we've just run across."

"But ending up permanently unhappy to the point where you give up and go to Hell - if this is even something Hell can fix - is not something, that an Evil person should end up just giving away to Good.  If I believed otherwise, for myself, having any Good tendencies of my own and a much better picture of the risks, I'd have already asked to put on the most powerful headband available so I could save everyone in Golarion faster.  Which I didn't, because it's not just suicide, it's personality suicide.  Possibly worse - based on my limited past experience with permadeath from flying machines - than just going to Abaddon and ending up somewhere else afterwards.  I'm doing enough for Good, and don't need to do that much more at the expense of sacrificing all the other pieces of myself that also get a vote."

"I am not, personally and selfishly, comfortable with the prospect of disintegrating the personalities of people I know and are coming to like, of watching that happen to them knowing I was responsible.  And the thought of it happening to Carissa in particular, I'm noticing, is something I can't face, even though I can guess by now some of what she'll say."

"I can't actually stop the rest of you, I suppose, only advise in the strongest possible terms that you, Asmodia, do not teach material in that vein or neighboring it to others, and to the others here, that they do not try to learn it from you."

"Carissa, do not attempt to become a Keeper.  Also, do not try to persuade anyone else here to learn that or teach that.  That is an order from me, not as your employer but as your Keltham."

"Take that fucking back."

"Pilar?"

"Sevar's not exactly like me, but she's enough like me that I know exactly how much you just -"

"And you.  You don't get to make that decision for me either.  You have no fucking idea what any of this means to somebody who actually has any faith in Lord Asmodeus."

Pilar hasn't learned self-control the way everyone else in Cheliax has needed to.

Security, this seems like a Dominate Person sort of situation.  Grab her and, recover, somehow.  NOW!

"I am listening."

"I've known for as long as I can remember that I'm something flawed and wrong.  When I was old enough to understand the teachings of the Church at all, I heard the priest of Lord Asmodeus say that we were made wrong because we had something called free will, and I knew it was true, somehow, even though I now realize I had no idea what that meant until meeting you and hearing about the Law and hearing Asmodia talk just now.  I was told there was no hope of fixing it until I got to Hell, I believed that, they believed that, so I was content to let people probably less broken than I am, correct me when I was wrong, and hurt me in that correction so I didn't need to feel guilty for having been wrong.  I asked for orders from people better than I was, and obeyed them, because when I did that I was doing the best that a mortal possibly could, maybe they were wrong orders sometimes but if so it wasn't my place to say and I didn't need to think about it.  When I was given orders by better people and could just obey them, I was being as right as it's possible for a mortal to be."

"Maybe in dath ilan people like me would end up very unhappy because there's no Church of Asmodeus there to take care of them.  When I imagine living in your world, I sure do imagine going right into the cold the next day.  Maybe that's why there aren't any people like me left, where you're from.  This isn't dath ilan.  Here we have Asmodeus."

"And most importantly, not that you understand this, not that you maybe can understand this, it's incredibly clear to me that what Lord Asmodeus wants is for me to learn the proper Law and the proper way of relating to it, not whatever crippled version they teach non-Keepers in dath ilan.  It's possible that this is the most important thing Asmodeus wants out of Project Lawful in the first place, for his people to be able to become Keepers.  Which means, that's what's going to happen.  Period.  You have no concept of what it's like to, to give yourself to a god, to follow them, but it's like the way that Carissa is to you but more so, and I will not betray Lord Asmodeus."

"You know how Ione told you that what she wanted from Project Lawful was to follow you where you went, and learn what you learn?  And you said that wasn't something that it was the Project's place to ask you to give her, instead of just money?"

"This is what I want from the Project.  And it's not your place, or the Project's place, to take that from me or decide it for me."

"That is... very alien to me, yes."

"What do you predict High Priestess Subirachs would say about this, if we went to her right now and asked her?"

"Nothing, because literally nobody except the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus has the right to say to me what you just said to Carissa, and if Jacint Subirachs told me something like that, I would report her and the Most High would have her arrested."

Pilar, you don't need to be clever here.  The non-misleading truth is enough.

Acknowledged.

"I see.  Or rather, I don't see, but I sure see there's something pretty large I'm not seeing."

"It's called 'faith' and you're not going to understand it for a long time, if ever."

"Now take back what you said to Carissa before it breaks her and not the fun kind of breaking either."

"Carissa, I order you not to try to become a Keeper or get anyone else to do that for the next day, so I have time to think.  Everyone else, don't try to learn from Asmodia teaching in that style, Asmodia, don't try to teach it, for the next day, so I have time to think."

"The previous indefinite orders are rescinded."

And done!

"Thank you, pending your correct decision later," Pilar says, showing none of her internal wobbliness.

Somebody please dispel this fucking Splendour.

Well that could have gone worse. Pilar seems to have successfully conveyed more than half of Asmodeanism without complaint from Keltham. Her heart is hammering in her chest, but. That's got to be points for Ordinary World. 

"Can we maybe take a break so I can talk with Keltham?" she asks when the silence is starting to rather ring in her ears.

"Everybody takes a break and reconvenes maybe after lunch, orders from the Nethysian sanity officer."

What the ACTUAL FUCK just happened.

"Well, you heard the sanity officer," says Keltham.  "Carissa, I'm at your disposal, I guess."

His own heart is starting to hammer in his chest as he wonders exactly how badly he might have already screwed things up with Carissa.

Carissa's head is spinning and she doesn't actually know what alter Carissa would do here except in the sense that there's an alter Carissa in her heart all the time, the one who is in love with Keltham and doesn't think that's pathetic. 

She takes his hand and wishes she could just Dimension Door, that's what fourth-circle wizards do when they want to be somewhere else, but there's the Forbiddance so they have to walk. To her room; it's closest. 

"'m not mad at you, you didn't hurt me. I just - want to talk, don't even know exactly where to start -"

"I don't know where to start either, I don't understand what just happened, actually, except that I somehow screwed up really badly."

" - not with me, not really, though I get why Pilar - Pilar is clearly a lot more devout than me." She chuckles weakly. "I - I'm fine with taking it very very slowly? I'm fine with it taking all this lifetime, if that's what - needs to happen. I don't want to be flawed forever. So I'll become a devil eventually, or a god I guess. I wouldn't want to never be that, it'd be like - never being allowed to grow up? 

And - in general Asmodeans are in a hurry to grow up. Because our world isn't the kind of place where you have the luxury of - being basically all right while you figure things out unspoiled."

Is any of that true? Don't ask Carissa, she doesn't know! It feels true enough when she says it.

"Actually true, or wrongthought because some part of you knows that if that were true then your Keltham would feel better?  What Pilar said - somehow rang truer of you, to me, than what you said about yourself, just now."