"Good enough.  Try that and see how the initial steps go.  I so authorize it.  Should they fail, I think I would be interested in hearing what her curse suggested as an alternative."

"Sevar.  You inquired after your correction."

"I mark first that there has been a developing anomaly in our attempt to follow those orders we first received: you are simply more important at this point than an ordinary county's heiress or fourth-circle cleric.  The ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law would have us offering you far more theological support than a fourth-circle cleric would receive, should you request that.  That events have gone beyond Asmodeus's plans is one obvious interpretation, but for you to serve Him well in this world and be raised high within it, would also inevitably mark you as a priority for theological support over time.  Then the developing conflict in the instructions should have been foreseeable, and perhaps we were meant to follow those orders strictly no matter how important you became."

"Given that the orders came by way of a contract devil rather than Asmodeus's direct vision and intervention, I am now making the judgment call that I am to offer you no less theological support than your actual importance merits under the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law, should you request that support, and I mean to tell the Queen that she is free herself to support your more material journey towards Asmodeus above the county-heiress level, as her own whims may move her."

"This is the most visibly dangerous decision you've seen me make so far, and if you feel any sense of nervousness about it yourself, this would be a good time to speak up."

- Carissa pulls the transcript of what the contract devil said out of her bag, opens it with her magic, rereads it.

"County heiresses don't usually have three Wishes and ten pounds of spellsilver," she says after a little while thinking. "We obliged a clarification anyway, when I tried again to sell my soul, and I didn't get told that I shouldn't possess such resources. I - do feel nervous, but I don't think I see a reason to decide differently."

"Hell, had it paid you such a price, would not be a slave of Church and Queen."

"Arguably, though it is rather a stretch, neither am I or Abrogail.  Slaves of Asmodeus, perhaps, but not of Church and Queen.  Mark well that I resorted to no such twisted interpretation when first we met."

"But on, then, to greater matters, which a fourth-circle cleric could not call in the Most High to clarify to her."  Aspexia Rugatonn looks tired, which means she is choosing to look tired, but that still means something and signals something even if it's a deliberate choice.  "You want to know if you're a heretic, or rather, if your heresy is wrong.  According to the doctrine of the Church, it is anathema.  According to the doctrine of Hell as we know it, it is anathema.  Even to offer your potential vassals some temporary and false hope in the face of Hell, is anathema under Asmodeanism as we know it, for Hell is the destruction of hope."

"The question is whether it is anathema to Asmodeus, and the problem we face there is that Asmodeus truly does not think in human concepts."

"To Zon-Kuthon, the object of torture is torture.  This only goes to show that not everything of Lawful Evil is thereby of Asmodeus.  What, to Asmodeus, is the object of torture?  Answer as you believe from within your heresy, and not from doctrine."

Carissa has thought about this endlessly and also the Most High's going to tear through it like tissue paper, isn't she.

Well. If it's false she wants to know that. She cannot build dath ilan on any lies.

"Asmodeus wants the error undone, of mortal free will; He wants His possessions not to possess that nature. He wants them obedient to Him. They should suffer if He wills that they suffer, and not only if He wills it for some reason, because if that weren't true then his power over them would not be absolute. Asmodeus desires that the power He rightly has over all of us is - reproduced after a fashion, that we own those weaker than us as Asmodeus owns us, and so obviously anyone I possess should suffer if I will it, and I don't need a reason, so long as I am myself obedient to Asmodeus, and not motivated by a rejection of His will. But the object of torture is the shaping of a soul, to be more useful, and closer to satisfactory; some torture is probably for the shaping of the torturer, not the victim, and it's still plainly Asmodean, to torture someone who is mine because I happen to want to and it doesn't undermine Asmodeus's goals.

But a slave of Asmodeus who just wants to cause their slaves maximum suffering at all times is indeed more like Zon-Kuthon than like Asmodeus; while perhaps bounds on their conduct can properly be placed only by those above them, and only on their own whims or insofar as it serves Asmodeus, it seems like they'd be a better slave of Asmodeus if they tortured their slaves exactly insofar as it improved them, in a manner that improved them, and thus left Asmodeus richer and not poorer. So torture is right whenever it strengthens Asmodeus, by strengthening his reputation or his tyranny or the incentive not to annoy him or his more valuable slaves, or by strengthening one of his possessions; but the purpose is strength."

"I think you are missing an important point about what Asmodeus might be trying to accomplish in the average and typical case of a worshipper subject to Him, because, in fact, you are not ordinary in how you yourself relate to being tortured."

"For most mortals in Golarion, Sevar, the way torture works is that they don't want to be tortured, so by torturing them if they do a thing, we ensure that they do not do it, or if we torture them in all cases but one, we force them to that exact path, and even, we can torture them unless some particular outcome eventuates and force them to try with such intelligence as is in them to find means to that outcome."

"I will pause in case you have questions about this seemingly unfamiliar concept."

It only works because no one knows any Law. 

She was not asked for comments, just questions. She's silent.

Aspexia, like a number of high-ranking Chelish authorities who scare people too much for them to talk, just runs Detect Thoughts instead.  It saves time on trying to scare people into not being too terrified to tell you things, or even on the less terrified ones trying to decide what to say in front of you.

"You are thinking that it only works because they don't know Law," Aspexia repeats for benefit of Subirachs.  "But knowledge of Law alone is not enough to convey immunity, I rather doubt.  I expect that Abrogail could shatter an average dath ilani if she wished, perhaps an average temple torturer could, and I expect that threats would work on them thenceforth whether or not they retained their knowledge of Law.  Mayhap not a Keeper, there is no way we may know from where we stand."

"Torture alone cannot force a greater devil to obedience if they do not deem you above themselves in Hell's hierarchy; greater devils, then, relate to pain and threats in some other fashion indeed.  There are torments in Hell even for they, when they fail, but they must be to other purposes than simply enforcing obedience from those that would not otherwise obey.  If a greater devil fell into the hands of Kuthites, say, they could not be moved to obedience for any amount of pain.  On a god it would not work at all.  Would it have worked on mortals in the days before they were cursed with free will?  I do not know, but I suspect not."

"Asmodeus is known to prefer mortals as they were before free will, even though this would render nonsensical any such system of tyranny as now exists in Cheliax.  In Asmodeus's Hell, devils are remade as beings who are more difficult to move by simple threats, and yet even for greater devils in Hell there is punishment."

"What to Asmodeus, then, is the object of torture?  What is to him tyranny, that in Cheliax we call this tyranny, but better would be if none here had free will or could be moved to actions by threat of torment?"

She thinks about it.

She's not surprised, that devils can't be moved by torture; it may take more than knowing the Law, but it is part of Law, and beings that Asmodeus chose to shape would not be so. That part feels right. 

It makes sense for Asmodeus to want more valuable devils. She doesn't need to understand Asmodeus to predict He wants that; whatever else He wants, if He has more valuable devils, it's easier for him to get. Torture making devils more valuable makes sense. If it's not the answer -

 - separate out some instances of it not being the answer -

- maybe torture is good to Asmodeus when it makes devils more valuable, but that's a small share of what makes it valuable and she's being asked to identify the rest. That doesn't require undoing every bit of reasoning that starts with the assumption Asmodeus runs Hell in a way that enables Him to better achieve His goals.

 - maybe torture doesn't make devils more valuable but otherwise causes Asmodeus to have more resources. For example, if Asmodeus had a deal of some kind with Zon-Kuthon and Hell were a blend of their tastes. ....no, feels wrong. For example, if torture is in some magical sense directly a source of power for Asmodeus, the way prayer is sort of understood to be. ....no, also feels wrong, if that were true it wouldn't be a complicated secret. Maybe torture makes minds more predictable to Asmodeus? Tortured minds are more alike, and so more useful? ....that's just a clever way to get back to her favored hypothesis that torture makes devils more valuable. Maybe torture makes the Good gods get all mad at Asmodeus and that in in some sense directly useful. ...also doesn't feel persuasive. 

- maybe torture does not cause Asmodeus to have more of anything else he cares about, and the only reason there is torture in Hell is because of Asmodeus's fondness for torture, like Zon-Kuthon, if not wholly like Zon-Kuthon because He does apparently care about several other things. In which case there is torture in Hell because Asmodeus likes it that way and no new way of training devils could improve the situation because Asmodeus doesn't regard it as potentially benefitting from improvement. 

That feels like an actually dangerous heresy, the kind of thing where if she believed it she'd - she's not sure what she'd do how about she stops thinking about that. What is it with her new urge to when she thinks of something dangerous keep thinking about it, like there's always a safe answer at the other end.

....though the best time to have unsafe thoughts is right now while they can be corrected promptly. 

Okay.

If the point of torture is that it makes Asmodeus weaker, makes His triumph less likely, but He likes it, so it happens anyway even though it makes devils worse, then Carissa thinks Iomedae kind of has a point. Carissa in that world is not going to betray the project because she mostly cares about Carissa and they are competent to make that not in the interests of Carissa, but she'd cease feeling like Good was obviously and plainly her enemy. Good would kind of deserve to win, if Asmodeus wasn't trying to because He was so busy torturing people in ways that undermined his other goals. The contempt that Carissa feels for anyone else who undermines Asmodeus, she feels for this hypothetical Asmodeus, undermining himself.  

There; she thought it; now it's obviously not the answer to the puzzle, so keep thinking. 

The answer is not that a Hell with torture leaves Asmodeus weaker than a Hell without it; now that she's actually thought it it's self-refuting. 

So it leaves Asmodeus stronger, or at least the same. 

But she's not supposed to just again give the answer 'to make devils better', that would be - failing to engage with what the High Priestess is trying to say to her - 

What does pain have to do with tyranny?

Well, someone who can hurt you without reprisal is above you. Maybe that's important; maybe in a sense there's no real chain of command, if everyone's seamlessly working together to advance Asmodeus's goals, and for it to be a tyranny at all it has to be clear who can hurt who. That explains why torture is allowed; it doesn't explain why it's a particularly common proclivity. Is torture unique in having that property? Or maybe another way of thinking about it is - is everything which has that property torture?

If so, then this tea was torture; it was, after all, orchestrated in significant part to make it clear to the girls on the project who could hurt who. And the elaborate rituals of formality among nobles are torture too; they are after all about establishing who can hurt who without reprisal, communicated with every degree of incline of one's head -

- yeah, that's not a useful definition. Torture is one way to communicate that, but not the only one. But maybe the others bottom out in torture. Or, they could just bottom out in final execution, but that would be horrible and wasteful; better for everyone if they bottom out in torture. Except people like Asmodia. 

Carissa's authority on the project, she is well aware, is located in significant part in the girls' knowledge that an experiment is being run, and that if they're incompetent even when barely punished then they'll be properly punished. She's doing without much torture, but not without the threat of it; the threat of it underlies the whole thing. 

That feels like it might be as close to an answer as she's going to get on the spot, but the thought of backtracing inferences into spoken words is suddenly quite intimidating. Well, presumably the Grand High Priestess is reading her mind.

"I am.  Abrogail has certainly made progress on her goal of having your thoughts not collapse when you know they are being read, and in teaching you to think in Asmodeus's service without being afraid of thinking."  Aspexia hopes that was, in fact, the right goal.  It was certainly a very proactive one.

"Further facts to consider:  Hell - not Asmodeus, who cannot speak to us except in sharply circumscribed vision, but Hell - has never made any offer so merciful as you are contemplating, even though, you might think, Hell could gain advantage by making that offer to souls that would otherwise come to Asmodeus not at all.  Because other souls would then demand it?  Possibly, even as those recruited to your Project, if they were warned, might demand more than others to sell their souls -"

"No, Sevar, you should not do that.  Hell is circumscribed not in how many souls they may buy, but in how much they may pay out and in the minimum they must pay per soul.  If you'd succeeded in your sale, I expect it would have been worth it, to Asmodeus, but it might have caused ten or a hundred others not to be able to sell theirs, this year, I do not know the exact rate of exchange.  Let your recruits sell you contracts on themselves such as you sold to Keltham, if you dislike the thought of devils cheating you."

"I don't think Hell is advantaged by being known to make such offers, not in - the current world they have to negotiate with. But Civilization's going to be bad for Hell, if we don't figure out how to make it good for Hell; the correct general policies are going to be different in a world that's building Civilization than they were in the world for all of history."

"Mm.  Leaving aside the question of Hell negotiating with a more Lawful future Cheliax, I do hope to hear some acknowledgment from you that you will not warn your new recruits of their fair prices.  It is theoretically a matter of the Queen to make it an order, as it is Crown rather than Church which depends on soul-sales to function, but I doubt she will be amused if she must tell you herself what I am telling you that she'd tell you."

"Of course. I understand, and I won't tell them. If I think of something clever that doesn't reduce Cheliax's ability to sell souls I will seek authorization before I do it."

"Good.  With such a contract as you sold Keltham, you can rebuy their souls later, at some more reasonable price than your price to Keltham, and force Hell to either repurchase them more fairly, or yield them to your own purposes.  So long as you don't cripple the entire Chelish Security apparatus."

"To return to the point.  It should be clear to you by now that the lynchpin of your entire plan is the question of what - not the Church's doctrine, not Hell's hierarchy - what Asmodeus will accept in terms of Hell's possible arrangements.  Cheliax is probably less important to Him than that; here He may accept more pragmatic sleights."

"And I call your attention again to the notion that torment is not simply for shaping souls.  It has something to do with tyranny and slavery, with how the threat of torment produces obedience in mortals - though better still apparently would be if those mortals had no free will to begin with.  It has to do, you suggest, with how the question of who torments who, makes there to be a hierarchy in Hell; and so a place in that hierarchy which one's pride lies in owning and defending, rather than a mob pursuing one goal without other organization."

"Is that enough for you to deduce the answer you are seeking, with such knowledge of Law as you now have?  I bid you think about it, don't just say 'no' and refer the question back to me."

She tries to make herself speak the thoughts out loud, this time, for Subirachs's benefit and because it's not like she's less accountable for them if she only thinks them. 

"Torture does shape souls, but it would not be acceptable to Asmodeus if Hell only used torture for the shaping of souls. Torture is also the bedrock of the Asmodean tyranny; if you could not use torture for punishment, then Hell would resemble just - one of Keltham's organizations, that fires you if it's displeased with you, and considers itself otherwise to have only the authority you agreed to. There probably wouldn't be discipline problems, if I had a little shard of Hell that merely fired those who displeased or disobeyed, but that's because they'd be tortured once fired; the shard would still be using torture as its bedrock, just making other parts of Hell actually do it. That would be unacceptable, I think. I don't know why. It feels intuitively unacceptable, like a tyranny trying to pretend it isn't one. If that shard of Hell produced much of value to Asmodeus, maybe those who owned it could afford to obfuscate the tyranny - but -

- oh, I have it, it wouldn't work. Humans, who are very very flawed, might treat 'you are treated well here, but could be fired' as substantially different from 'you're tortured for disobedience', and might flock to my shard if they were qualified, but if it's just an obfuscation then a more careful and more Lawful being wouldn't see a difference, it wouldn't produce different strategies in response, it's a dead end. It has to be actually different, to do anything actually valuable with beings that are not starting as incoherent as humans. If the tyranny is founded in something different, something that uses dath ilani better, it has to be founded in that all the way to its core. 

if you were building it out of Carissae you could have its currency of power be intelligence. The weakest devils and petitioners are very stupid, and by proving themselves they are granted more intelligence, having demonstrated that they'll actually serve better with it, and the punishment for failure is for those enhancements to be stripped away; pride and tyranny and slavery, with pain only in whatever place it needs occupy for Asmodeus's other purposes. That might only work on people who are very like me. Then again, the appeal doesn't need to be anywhere near universal. 

My answer is that if I'm not doing that with torture, I have to figure out what does do it, and ideally does it in a manner just as pleasing to Asmodeus and at no higher cost, because torture is cheap, and if it doesn't suit His will for Hell then no pragmatic concerns about the survival of Cheliax in this new world will make it possible, and if it does suit His will for Hell then it should be done. Though - 

- such a thing wouldn't be granted to me unless I am such that it does not injure the order of Hell, to grant it to me. And right now I'm not Asmodean enough or frankly Lawful Evil enough."

"Mm.  Have you guessed yet how I will answer?"

"If I knew your answer it would be mine, Most High."

"I surely hope not."  It seems Aspexia Rugatonn has decided to look suddenly very tired, as she speaks.  "My answer is that I don't know what exactly Asmodeus seeks.  Why would I?  We obey His orders, and by this means does He work His will.  To command and be obeyed is Asmodeus's nature as a god, as much as Cayden Cailean is acting here through his domain of revelry.  If Asmodeus tried to act otherwise, outside His domains, He would face much greater costs and difficulties."

"I know what tyranny we were instructed to create in Cheliax, but not the question to which that was His answer, I cannot say what else would have served Him well had matters been other than what they were.  I know Hell's current doctrine.  I don't know what bargains and compacts constrain the shape of Hell, in addition to His pure will, or what the combination of those two might permit in terms of alternative arrangements."

"If I knew Asmodeus's exact true goals and tried to serve those goals to the greatest possible extent, without awaiting His instructions, I could not be Most High, I could not be His cleric at all.  Even if that served His interests best, He could not use me that way.  It is outright contrary to His domain.  If you hold Him in contempt for that you must hold every other god in the same contempt.  Gods are beings of means and not just ends."

"And how could I know Asmodeus's own true answer?  He is not mortal, was never mortal, His true answer will be some god-thing spoken in a language of Law I know not."

"What is tyranny, what is slavery, what is pride, what does Asmodeus truly want from us?  If you told me that the actual and correct answer to this question had to be produced within one hour or all Hell would be destroyed, I would call Asmodia to this place and give her my Crown, then call Abrogail here to lend her mightier Crown to you, and hope that the two of you could solve it together."

"Oh. 

Well, if I have your leave to try, I'm going to try. ...pray for me."

"If it did not seem that there were other gods assisting here, if I was not nearly certain that Asmodeus has bargained with some Good god and paid them for some benefit He received, I would order you off this course.  You are trying to understand what Asmodeus wants out of Hell and then create a new arrangement there He finds more satisfactory.  That is something that Asmodeus alone literally could not arrange to have happen, even if, once on that course, He predicted your success."

"It doesn't mean that you aren't Chosen of Asmodeus, Sevar, or that He is not backing you in this.  Only that the plan, if there is one, literally could not have been His alone."

"That occurred to me. Optimistically, that the Good gods have foreseen their defeat, now, and are bargaining for the world of Asmodeus's victory to contain some of that which they value. Less optimistically - bringing Keltham here perhaps had to be satisfactory to a number of different powers. 

What does Irori even value." She says it aloud because she's instinctively saying all her thoughts aloud, and then realizes that maybe that wasn't one to say aloud.

"People solving their own problems for themselves.  In a way Irori is more opposed to Asmodeus than Iomedae, in nature if not in goals.  Iomedae commands paladins to Her service.  Irori cannot act on anything in Golarion except insofar as somebody pursuing their own pathway may happen to benefit His goals."

"Yes, it's a very obvious thought.  Do keep in mind that you were specifically warned against certain pitfalls here.  Irori will not have asked Asmodeus to deliver you to Him in return, if that is what is going on here; that too is not Irori's nature as a god.  He cares nothing for faith in Him, devotion to Him, for that is also contrary to His nature."

"I understand." What does it even mean to be a god of people solving their own problems for themselves. - no, Irori's aims don't matter here even if He is among the collaborators on this. Carissa belongs to Asmodeus and her only problem is how best to serve Him, and she's been promised Hell. Not exactly promised Hell. Promised that if she comes to Asmodeus with no thought of other choices she will be treasured. Perhaps someone else paid Asmodeus; what of it? She hopes Asmodeus got a lot of whatever He values, in exchange, and He gets Carissa too.

"And Sevar.  Don't start thinking that torture can't be the answer to anything just because you suspect the current form of Hell is sometimes using it wrongly.  You've seen Abrogail use it in a fashion of which you approve.  I'm told that Keltham swiftly reinvented one of her hard-learned principles.  The new Hell you are envisioning is a lot more likely to go over well with our Lord if it is, in fact, Hell, rather than a tiny section of Axis carved out of it."

"Yes, Most High." She knows that very well, so she's taking the reprimand not as 'you might not have known that' but as 'you are despite knowing that likely to err this way'. Which is fair. 

It would backfire, wouldn't it, to tell most of the girls they're at risk of being too Lawful Neutral. Axis is generally understood to be pretty comfortable. It's not backfiring on Carissa. She can't fix Hell if she doesn't figure out how to be actually Lawful Evil and actually Asmodean and go to Asmodeus as ordered with no thought of any others, so that's a fixed point in all of her plans; she'll do that, and do the other things around that which make sense and serve Asmodeus. 

"Better thoughts.  Some of your previous ones were frankly not trending in a positive direction.  Do you know which ones I am referring to?"