PL-timestamp:  Day 9 (7) / Morning
PL-placestamp:  Osirion / Sothis / Black Dome

"Well, I notice the odds of the destruction of the multiverse are down to three percent. Did you do that?"

"Do you mean, did I move the market, yes of course I did, or did I take actions that reduced the odds of the destruction of the multiverse by seven percent. I did not do that."

"Oh good. I would have to give you such a raise and I'm not sure the treasury could stand it."

"The multiverse getting destroyed looks less likely because we have a more completely satisfying account of Otolmens' cause for concern - Keltham being from another world with more advanced technology is basically sufficient to explain all Her interventions so far. It also fell some off Keltham getting petrified again for the second time in three days because that moves our timelines on how long Cheliax can hold onto him in an optimistic direction, and the multiverse is less likely to get destroyed if he gets out sooner before he's taught them too much. I might change my mind on that once I get a close look at the interim contracts he's drawn up."

Abadar can see contracts just fine, in nearly-human amounts of detail, but conveying them to the pharaoh is still completely incapacitating, and they have to work carefully around anything that'll leave the pharaoh insensible for a day, with as many things up in the air as are at present. "Tomorrow, if nothing comes up."

"...there's actually something I was here to ask about."

It's not the kind of thing he'd usually miss, even with a god-headache. "Ah. Go ahead."

"Lastwall wants to buy all our Chelish intelligence, and warns that, uh, Cayden Cailean's Project Lawful contribution is apparently helping Cheliax track down and deport all Lastwall's intelligence apparatus, including people who worked for someone else but indirectly for Lastwall, and so therefore that selling it to them might make us subject to the mysterious possibly cake-related forces that have scourged their own people."

"Well, at least it's not anything weird."

Cayden Cailean doesn't have temples.  It's not on-theme.

In Absalom where He ascended, there's a tavern-cathouse run by a wife-and-husband pair, a madam and a brewmaster.  The drink there isn't especially expensive.  Neither are the women; they're tapped by Remove Disease weekly, which usually costs a hefty premium, but the women here tend to run older and not as pretty as most in that tier of the profession.  

If you want a Regenerate on your missing hand, don't bother waving around 750gp, not here.  They don't want the kind of custom that would bring them, if anything that expensive were sold here for money.  Try saying under truthspell that you lost your hand during a drunken fight with a nobleman's bodyguard after the nobleman kicked a beggar in front of you.  Afterwards you might get a drink poured for you that also can't be bought with money, and a night of warmth that's real.

Neither the wife nor the husband has Grand High Anything in front of their titles, or indeed, any particular titles at all.

It is the center of Cayden Cailean's faith in Golarion if anything is.

The revelry in that place has been diminished, these last few days since the gods fought.

"You too," the swashbuckling swordsman in leather armor says to the somber-looking barkeep, as one of the special drinks is drawn for him.

"Yeah."

They haven't lost all their spells.

They've lost some of their spells.  Higher-level ones in particular.  Cayden Cailean is still able to grant a Regenerate, it seems, if that is necessary to restore the missing hand of some drunken do-gooder.

"Any idea why?" says the swashbuckler to the barkeep.  "Sent from Him, or otherwise?  I'm sure not getting any touches of reassurance about it."

The barkeep shakes his head.  "Nothing direct, and what I'm getting implied from - the tavern rumors, that He might influence, from the wanderers that might be drawn here, by His will - it's not -"

There's moisture in the barkeep's eyes.

The swashbuckler sips his drink.  It's still pretty good.  "If there's news that bad, it's not going to get better if you delay in the telling."

"The tavern rumors are leaning that He sacrificed too much of His divinity fighting against Zon-Kuthon, so that Zon-Kuthon would die inside the vault after being sealed there.  Just.  You know.  The obvious stupid stuff that drunks make up, because, because how would they know, even if that was true, right?  Probably made up after they heard rumors about His clerics losing some of their spells, and put that together with Cheliax cutting into Nidal faster than expected."

The swashbuckler nods.  "I don't suppose the tavern rumors say that it's just temporary and He'll recover in a year, or a century?"

"Priestesses of - Desna - and Shelyn - have been wandering in, on impulse, they don't know what this place is, but when they get here, they tend to feel an impulse to preach, to our faithful -"  There's tears running down the barkeep's cheeks now.

Some of the other drinkers look uncomfortable, but not surprised, like this is a sight they've seen before.

"Oh," the swashbuckler says.  "Do we know how long."

The barkeep shakes his head.

The swashbuckler realizes, somewhat to his own surprise, that he's also crying.  "Well, He had a good run, since He first got drunk enough to go for the Starstone, you know, having that actually work was more than anyone could've expected, really, and if the tavern rumors are true, it's a fine way to finally go."

The barkeep pours himself a glass, a small one, because it's not the first time he's had this conversation today, and won't be the last, and clinks it against the last of the swashbuckler's beer.  "To Cayden Cailean."

"To Cayden Cailean."

They drink.

"He's obviously not actually dead," the swashbuckler says, after that.  "I'm still getting spells, you're still getting spells.  He could just be - warning us - that it might happen.  Telling us we might need to find a new deity, or else adjust our lifestyles, sometime soon.  Making sure we're not taken by surprise, if it happens."

"Hell of a way to warn us, if it's just a possibility."

"He might still pull through.  He's lucky that way, right?  Practically the god of having things unexpectedly work out okay."

"If He lives, I will Plane Shift to Elysium so I can personally punch Him in the fucking face."

PL-timestamp:  Day 9 (7) / Late Morning
PL-placestamp:  Otolmens Containment Zone / Project Lawful main site

Jacint Subirachs slides a slim folder across the table, the first of many.

"I suppose I may as well start with the only native Intelligence 19 candidate that turned up in the right age bracket.  Wisdom 15.  Second-circle wizard.  Was definitely angling for the research track.  Loyalty mindreads consistent with someone keeping their head down, doing well in school, aiming for a comfortable life in magical research or crafting, not thinking a lot about what happens after that life ends, no unusual heresies or resentments.  Enough submission and masochism to be trainable without much difficulty.  Not very ambitious, a follower not a leader.  Mathematical talent high, more outstanding at that than at wizardry."

"There is of course the obvious sticking point, and I expect you'll turn this one down, but it seemed worth checking if you wanted to apply the obvious fix."

"Alter Cheliax wouldn't. I'm ....worried that sex has weird correlates beneath the surface somewhere which a potion won't fix and Keltham will notice. I guess he could be open about having done it, and claim it was voluntary? ...does that imply weird things....preventing pregnancy would be cheaper if sex change potions were incredibly cheap, but they could be in the price range a wizard can afford without changing society much.... - let's see how much better he is than the other candidates and come back to it."

Jacint slides another folder across to her.  "Intelligence 18, Wisdom 17.  One point ahead of Asmodia in both.  Personality traits... well, you read it."

Raised by a wizard father, an accomplished devil binder, who decided to have his children raised by devils and cut off entirely from the rest of human civilization in case they ended up more Asmodean that way. Eight kids, four suicides, but this one turned out well. Loyal, incredibly smart, third-circle already at age 18 having been tutored privately rather than going to a wizarding academy.  She is noted not to be good at talking to other human beings. Splendour could probably fix that. 

" - very cool experiment but we absolutely can't use that. Or maybe she can be separately tutored in Law, but Keltham can't meet her."

Another folder.  "Intelligence 18, Wisdom 16, second-circle.  Faint tiefling ancestry, only visible in pointed ears and slitted, brightly colored eyes.  She played it up heavily at her wizard academy, and pretended to be half vampire and half succubus at anyone foolish enough to buy a young girl's bluff.  Not particularly submissive, masochistic enough to be less scared of Hell than most.  Terrorized what other students she could, but always acted with great obedience and discipline towards those formally above her in the chain of command."

"If that one works out terribly what went wrong. ...gets Keltham thinking about nonhumans? No, actually, I think that's fine, it's a tangent where we don't have anything to hide. I guess we'll have to make a call about whether alter Golarion has succubi, but I lean 'yes, we're not pretending the Abyss is nice'. Yeah, all right, let's show her to him."

Next file. Intelligence 18, Wisdom 17, boy aged 22; he'd be pulled back from the Worldwound. Clean disciplinary record, notably good at math; enjoys coming up with elaborate torture variant potions in his free time. Not a match for Keltham sex-wise even if they made him into a girl. "Probably makes sense to present Keltham with some boys? Even if it makes him jealous, that seems potentially productive..."

"Well, I assume - actually, who originally made the policy decision that we wanted to go on presenting Keltham only with girls if possible?  Was that you, or Maillol, or...?"

"I want more masochist girls we can potentially distract him with but I haven't said it should only be girls. I think the - tropes - might want it to be girls, but we don't know if they're real and I don't know what happens if we defy them. Anyway alter Cheliax's government mostly is interested in the engineering stuff, here, and it'd be silly to gender-segregate that."

It's possible that Jacint may have misunderstood the Chosen's will, here.  But Jacint did say that she'd go hunting for masochistic female mathematicians and the Chosen didn't tell her not to... admittedly, Jacint is, in theory, Sevar's superior...

Oh well.  They sent her some boys anyways.

"I would not be too surprised, under his circumstances, if Keltham finds himself mysteriously dissatisfied with all the male candidates.  Or - if the tropes try to stop us from adding males, do they do anything visible, that Keltham would notice?  Like mysterious accidents occurring to all the males he chooses..."

" - maybe? I think things so far have been - not subtler, they haven't been subtle at all, but not accidents, they've all been the product of some agent doing things for its own reasons. This might be a question alter Cheliax just brings to Keltham, if they're still worried about tropes, though they're much less worried than us about tropes because Carissa sold her soul without incident and Asmodia doesn't have superpowers......

Ugh. Tropes are probably real and alter Cheliax doesn't think so, which doesn't feel very sustainable at all.....how many good candidates do we have if we leave out the boys."

"We have about five-sixths of the candidates.  But all the boys they included were boys where somebody decided 'maybe this one's good enough to be worth an elixir of sex-shifting', and while in some cases those judgments seem a bit questionable, still..."

Next folder.  Intelligence 18-possibly-19-ish, it detected as 19 once but 18 all other times tried.  Wisdom 14.  Intellectual achievements include mastering a dozen different languages and punching above her weight in Wondrous Items crafting classes.  Sped through her math classes in academy.  Neither submissive nor masochistic, spotted history of disciplinary problems related to taking orders from people she deems less intelligent than herself, but those seem to have yielded to correction.  Loyalty scans show that her overt loyalty to Asmodeus is heavily predicated on imagining Him as a supremely intelligent mastermind.  Did not require much correction from the Church to look out solely for herself first and foremost within her own thoughts, holds non-Lawful-Evil alignments in genuine contempt.

Jacint comments that this is a known personality type that would desert Cheliax if given a clear opportunity, but tends to fall promptly into line once forced to sell her soul.  Jacint is not quite sure what happens if you force her to sell her soul and then try to turn her into a dath ilani, but it seems to Jacint that if they go with all meek obedient engineers then those will be lacking some fire that is probably important?

Next candidate.  Intelligence 16, Wisdom 18, Splendour 8, barely 2nd-circle, submissive-masochistic-slave nature, unusually pretty.  Left something of a mess by her school experiences and her difficulty in placing herself as anything but a victim there, struggling through by sheer force of academic effort and excellence.  Younger than Keltham but within his stated one-year age-difference limit, if they don't want to lie about that.  Did excellently at the mathematical part of the curriculum, punching well above her measured Intelligence level.  Her theology is whatever she thinks she's been told her theology is, by the last person who looked like an authority and told her that; she has no signs of theological opinions otherwise.

Jacint comments that this is somebody who might actually fall in love with Keltham if he showed her kindness, assuming that this problem was not otherwise headed off at the pass, which Jacint is pretty sure she can do.  Or if Carissa Sevar herself happens to want a slave in love with her, it wouldn't take long.

It seems inefficient to be kind to people so infrequently they're bowled over when they encounter it. ...she's going to not share that thought, she is working on humility and not jumping to heresy as soon as she notices something done differently than she'd do it. 

"Maybe when I'm less busy," she says absently about having a slave who is in love with her. " - or actually - it seems to me like I barely have enough hours in the day as it is and don't really have time for entertainment, but becoming Eviller isn't entertainment, it's really important, so maybe I should be prioritizing it more? Is this a good angle on becoming Eviller, do you think?"