"I'm sure there are peasants overlooked everywhere, it's a question of how resource-intensive it'd be to find them, and how much we'd learn if they're that different. If you only want two maybe we can fake the deaths of a couple of wizard students in a way that doesn't raise too many questions. I do think it's worth expending some effort on; I'm curious about the answers too, and I expect Keltham is already looking for some correlate we don't know about."

"I do think they need previous education in math, if we want to test the effects on them of Law.  Not peasants, but - girls apprenticed to send out merchant ships, ships not owned by any powerful wizards -"

"Teaching girls such is rather rarer outside Cheliax.  Likewise for those philosophical academies that teach those who study mathematics for its own sake.  If you are satisfied with a pair of boys to examine, the task will be simpler."

"I know far too little of women and men outside Cheliax to guess whether that would matter."

" - huh," says Gregoria aloud, since she won't be lit on fire for it apparently, "I sort of assumed that wasn't really true, that only Cheliax educates women."

"It's true. You'd have learned soon enough, at the Worldwound."

"I request to know why that's true.  Can Keltham - deduce Hell and Asmodeus's true nature from that, somehow, if it's just Cheliax?"

" - I want to refer that upwards because I know it to be an occasion of heresy for me."

She thinks that this is great and speaks to the fundamental superiority of Asmodeus to other churches and Cheliax to other places, but that can still be heresy if you do it wrong enough.

"Human societies are like that by default.  Elves and drow and dragons less so.  Only in Cheliax has Asmodeus exerted the force to come in and smash aside existing social orders and impose a tyranny of His own image, which does not share this common property of human societies."

"We are, I think, becoming lost in the weeds.  Asmodia, I will assign you some worldly intelligence officer to answer all such questions; now speak not for a time.  Have others other matters to discuss, over our tea and snacks?"

"Are we getting more students? Ones better selected for - the thing we're now doing?"

"Likely yes. Though we should wait and see the attrition rates from having a breakdown and becoming an incorrigible heretic, before we start funneling all Cheliax's best and brightest here."

"If you're not an incorrigible heretic somehow then I think we'll be fine," Meritxell says. 

"Well, I think whether I'm an incorrigible heretic or not remains unclear and you had better not benchmark off me."

"I'm currently making up all of my Nethysian theology as I go along and it's not impossible Keltham will catch me out on that.  I request true books of Nethysian theology, sworn to me to be unaltered and uncensored, that I may better serve my god in whatever ways He is very evidently cooperating with Cheliax.  Including protecting the Project from attacks by Nidal, giving Keltham a particularly convenient channel through which to send him only approved or modified books, and opening the possibility for Keltham to apparently flee and hide while continuing his research, so long as I can provide him with a library takaral."

"Denied.  If I send Asmodia any books of secrets I will instruct her to tell you nothing of what is said of Nethys there."

"As annoying as you are, the actual worshippers of Nethys are far less pleasant to deal with.  Had you ever met Nefreti Clepati, you yourself might agree that you were better off reinventing your own theology."

"She's not lying."

Ione will keep quiet, then, and try not to think any angry thoughts very loudly until she is back among less dangerous people.  Lord Nethys will have foreseen this pass, the petty slights of Asmodeans directed against the follower of a greater god; what she invents for herself will be enough to serve Him.

"What do you think are the biggest weaknesses of Project Lawful," Meritxell asks the Queen after letting Ione's sulky silence speak poorly of her for a moment.

"Keltham knows far too much that you don't."

"You are crippled by an education almost absolutely unsuited to the task you now face, only able to stumble along by grace of your naive enemy undoing some of the damage and re-teaching you."

"Neither Asmodia nor Carissa are as yet really more clever than Keltham even with their headbands; I have a sense that only I am presently his match there, if I, and Aspexia has bid me not replace Asmodia in her duties."

"You have previously been terrorized out of thinking for yourselves, and that is now suddenly your job, with far less initiation and preparation and filtering than is usual in Cheliax."

"Everything you do occurs under the shadow of forces greater than yourself, of which Pilar's snack service is only the most overt manifestation, and it is not clear where those forces are steering you or how they could be exploited."

"Key project members have questionable or openly non-Asmodean loyalties.  The one among you strongest in her faith is the center of Cayden Cailean's manipulations."

"The Law you are ultimately attempting to learn was taught to Keltham in a form perhaps deliberately designed to contradict and poison philosophies such as Asmodeanism, especially as that philosophy was taught to you before you entered the inner ring that has tea with the Queen."

"Multiple gods may be very unhappy with what we are trying, only Broom's god protects this place from their direct interventions, and it's not at all clear that Broom's god will remain happy with us."

"Other countries have had their attention dramatically called to Project Lawful and the misdirection of the false Project Lawful may not hold."

"Everything you do is under the time limit of Keltham's waking hours as he progresses towards awareness."

"In trying to awaken Keltham to Evil you may well be matching wits against Lawful Good minds barely short of gods, who designed his education to keep him asleep and hobbled."

"Some of the knowledge Keltham holds may be vastly destructive to Golarion if not contained."

"To contain the Project's dangers we may need our own Keepers and not just our own ilani."

"The improvised early days of Project Lawful may have revealed some truth to Keltham that will eventually prove fatal once he understands the rest."

Carissa is not going to argue with the Grand High Priestess that they should have the Queen at Asmodia's job for a day so they can learn from her. That sounds like a great way to die horribly. 

Not going to argue. Not arguing. 

To Sevar alone:  I fear what the tropes would make of it.  I fear the results if we try to replace the asexual - who watches it all and now also controls the game, beginning from a disfavored position but rising rapidly, who is learning Keltham's own Law to wield against him - with Keltham's already-defeated rival for your heart.

See, that's why to not argue with the Grand High Priestess aside from the Asmodean virtue of obedience, or at the root of it; she has reasons you didn't think of.

Carissa is not sure if the tropes are, uh, real. But probably better to err on the side of assuming they are, even if it means they lose something that would be very useful to them. And anyway that is the decision that was made.

"This would usually be the point where I said something about how I've been on more doomed projects than this one, and pushed through.  But if I make it out of Project Lawful alive, I'm pretty sure that will top all other candidates for which projects I tell future subordinates I survived."

"You do have a bit more support from upper management than most projects can expect, and vast though not adequate resources to back you.  Believe me when I say that it could have been much, much, much worse."

"Our allotted time here is passing, I fear.   Pilar, the Most High has business with your curse.  Subirachs, Sevar, a word with you before the Most High returns."

"The rest of you are dismissed."

"Maillol, see them out."

Meritxell, I have a certain matter to discuss with you privately.  Be available for my summons, in some minutes, before I go.  Security who see of this in your thoughts are to speak of it to no one.

Meritxell is aware she should be terrified but instead she's delighted. She wants to be one of the interesting girls, not one of the boring ones, and that involves some terrifying summonses. She leaves and waits, genuinely unsure if she's more scared or excited.