"Do you want to have a slave in love with you for purposes of being more cruel to her?  If yes, then let that be pursued by all means, any count's heiress could have the same for herself.  If not, I think that forcing it isn't especially likely to be good for you.  Hell's exact wordings often don't bear as much weight as we might hope, when passing instructions down from Asmodeus, but they did say to find the desires within yourself that would keep you out of Axis and not to force them."

"Well, then the answer is that I don't especially because it sounds like a lot of work." 

INT 17, WIS 18, left wizard school when Asmodeus chose him. Noted as a strong mathematician back when he was in school. Loyal, obviously; when Asmodeus selected him it wasn't in a temple or during prayer, as is most typical, but while he was witnessing the execution of a heretic, and he was initially concerned that the heretic's god had chosen him and immediately turned himself in. 25, which is older than they were asked for but two different teachers mentioned him when asked about math talents. 

An actual countess's heir who applied via the entirely different route of wanting to be in the next batch of 'Project Lawful girls' and get her own cake powers.  There were something like fifty of those, from various daughters of nobility.

This is the one with Intelligence 17, Wisdom 15, Splendour 18, third-circle at age 18, and an interest in mathematics for which she's received private tutoring since she was 14.  A prior member of the Asmodean inner ring, who knows herself to be inescapably damned via the route of being unable to sincerely Atone for what she's done.  She's lived a proud life but a disciplined one, and has proven herself able to endure privations more severe than Project Lawful's living standards.  Will probably take orders from the Chosen of Asmodeus without problems; having Asmodia instruct her on her alter-self seems more like it might run into issues of overt obedience and internal contempt.  It will expend some noticeable amount of political capital if she ends up executed as an irretrievable heretic, but not disastrously so; it can be made clear to her mother that Project Lawful is not safe physically or spiritually.

" - yes, all right, I definitely want her, though we're going to have to be careful how we present that application to Keltham, I predict he hasn't extrapolated very much about nobles from the things he got told about nobles. I assume all the other such are much less promising?"

"You'd think those hopefuls might deduce that the first batch being recruited from Ostenso's wizard academy would have tipped them off that we might possibly want something associated with wizardry in some fashion, but in this you would be optimistic.  I suppose I should not call it stupid; they saw a potential advantage and it costs them little to ask if they might have it."

Carissa finds it incomprehensible that not all nobles learn wizardry. Well, the ones who are sorcerers have an excuse, she guesses. "Well, too bad, because we could use all their Bluff and I suspect they might have another angle on some of our deception challenges. .... we show Keltham some mediocre applicants, actually, since he doesn't think we did pre-filtering, though I expect it'll be easy enough to write their profiles such that he rejects them..."

"A dangerous game, I think, if he perchance wants one of those anyways.  If we have more than eight candidates he must needs to do some selecting in any case... I think he is not expecting us to have filtered the candidates but will be reasoning that 'Governance' has filtered it somehow, since we're not just presenting him with a list of every wizard student in Cheliax?"

Intelligence 16, Wisdom 13, very pretty, a decent wizard, did fine in math class, and actually has an obligate rape fetish that mindreads show her as still being internally conflicted and in denial about.  Would be a tier-2 researcher at best - though her prior accomplishments look no worse than Tonia's, say - but possibly useful for Sevar's corruption plans?

Honestly Carissa is presently feeling worried that Keltham's just going to cheerfully do things that might technically be Evil but that he's very sure won't hurt anyone no matter what kinds of people she throws his way. But she doesn't actually have enough evidence to reach that conclusion, just a doomy feeling.  "And we can get her a Ring of Sustenance and extra tutoring, to keep up....actually, can we quote Keltham a start date that's five or seven days out for all the new candidates, for screening/travel/orientation, so they're close on their Rings and we get nights with them? Those'll be extra important while they're new and getting oriented."

"All the potential obstacles I see to the later start date seem more your business than mine, Chosen - how Keltham reacts, whether the new candidates are then further behind in lessons compared to the previous..."

"With respect to this particular candidate, I note that I don't have a solution yet in mind for getting Keltham to choose her when her overt accomplishments seem less than those of others, and we cannot tell him the real reason, and I am not sure what lie would reliably avoid being caught out?  I presented her to you in hopes you would see a solution that has not yet come to me."

"Hmmm. Note from her recommender saying that she's only average at the - calculating part of math, and a little below average at how fast she works things out, but strikingly clever at deriving underlying rules and so on - where we can produce the 'strikingly clever' by giving her a headband and extra six hours?"

"Except that if she, the only candidate who seems slow inside classes but to show up the next day with better understanding, then turns out to possess a very convenient fetish from the standpoint of a Conspiracy trying to corrupt Keltham sexually...  I don't see how it gives very much away, actually, but I imagine Asmodia wailing and pleading that it didn't happen in alterCheliax."

"In alter Cheliax we just let Keltham pick which students he gets. ....and possibly we should just do that, once we've filtered for loyalty. We can have a second list of girls for him to introduce once the project gets bigger and needs more than just very bright researchers."

The review goes on for quite some time, though Subirachs did front-load some of the more promising or interesting candidates.

The other Project Lawful researchers are meanwhile working on their alterCheliax personalities; in particular, trying to make sure they have some.

"I think if we force this too much it's not going to work," Gregoria says after two hours of Personality Workshopping Sessions. "Tonia's shy, but speaks up when people are talking about farmers, and sort of thinks of nobility as something from fairy tales. She has a massive crush on Keltham but has never dated anyone before and doesn't actually know how seducing people works and so she's planning to just nurse it forever. Peranza wants to travel the world and now that she's seen Civilization wants to travel there too even though that's probably metaphysically impossible. She's going to ask Keltham to ask if we can go to the beach, and display some enthusiasm when we're shopping in Absalom via scry, and read some travel novels.  I think everyone should stop having sex and do their jobs, though I'll change my mind if Keltham wants me.

Whenever we try to add things on top of that they seem artificial and stupid because that's actually perfectly descriptive of many people and most people don't also have a tragic backstory where their sister was murdered by muggers in front of them or an ex-boyfriend who was Good and that's why they will only date Evil people now or -" She rips up an entire ideas sheet, demonstratively. "It's okay if we're background characters, as long as we're mastering Law and asking Keltham good questions in class and not looking awestruck whenever he says 'if the Queen were mean to someone you'd obviously overthrow the government' or whatever."

"I think having a brother who joined a paladin order isn't that much of a weird backstory, doesn't require acting ability, and preserves some options for us later," says Meritxell. "Leave it on the list for Sevar to look at at least. Also leave on the one where your father died in the revolution where the Queen took power, it'd be genuinely weird if none of us have relatives who did."

"Fine."

Asmodia has mostly been trying to collect a list of everything that Keltham now has seen about alterCheliax and it is a LONG list and she wants it to be SHORTER and then NOT GROW ANY MORE but Keltham would unfortunately NOTICE THAT because in alterCheliax everyone would obviously be CHEERFUL about Keltham learning MORE AND MORE THINGS.

Occasionally part of her mind overhears somebody is saying something that is not Probability-Sightful thinking and she casts a sniper shot in that direction, like right now, where Keltham is obviously immediately going to ask 'how many people join paladin orders' in order to calculate exactly how odd that is and even if the person he's asking shouldn't appear to know that they need to know it themselves so that when Keltham asks correlated questions he will get answers that all make sense put together.  

Lunchtime comes around.  Are failed not-researchers-anymore welcome at lunchtime on the extra days, when they're not pretending to Keltham that Cheliax is nice?

If they make themselves useful, sure. Yaisa in particular should stay abreast on developments in alter Cheliax. They should get food last, obviously, after the valuable people. 

(Gregoria thinks that in alter Cheliax probably a lot of those who serve at the Worldwound for a decade join a paladin order, but obviously they should check the rates from Taldor first. Between the eight girls there are thirty living siblings, though, so lots of things that happen in alter Cheliax in one in thirty people should be represented with someone's sibling.)

There's less Security running fewer Detect Thoughts today, as they catch up on their own downtime, but lunch is a good time to scan everyone again; Security reports to Sevar that Peranza's mind is obsessing about that thing the Queen said about torturing people until they start having thoughts again.  In a way that this particular Security finds somewhat reminiscent of that earlier thing with being turned into a statue, which he absolutely does not mean any insult to the Chosen by observing, but he has seen Sevar thinking at all about some things and is resigned to being a statue for a few decades after his own death and possibly someone doesn't want Peranza to fall in love with the Queen or... whatever it is that tropes do.

Carissa is slightly worried that everyone including her is just using tropes as shorthand for 'extremely weird things will happen.'

But, Peranza does seem concerning. Carissa has no idea how to tell if someone is obsessing over 'I'll hurt you until you have thoughts' in a way that makes it a good idea to hurt them until they have thoughts or not. She tried being sympathetic and generous and that didn't work at all; maybe that's the indicator that the way to get through to Peranza is torture? 

Let's keep a closer eye on her, mindread her more often, she responds.

Asmodia shows up to lunch late, looking slightly twitchy, and after lunch takes aside Sevar to request that Keltham possibly stay a statue for longer, because she's starting to realize the actual magnitude of the problems involved in constructing alterCheliax and they are large and in particular for example it's clear that Keltham saw something anomalous about the 500gp/week price of Security wizards compared to 100gp/week for good 4th-circle enchanters, and just because this is true in realCheliax does not mean that it is necessarily true in alterCheliax, and the promised consultant from intelligence isn't here yet, and even if they were Asmodia now needs some other kind of consultant instead, and maybe it would be kind of a good idea to figure out exactly how tanned everyone should look and then keep them that tanned and keep Keltham a statue at least until everyone's Rings of Sustenance kick.

" - I think we'll give other things away, smaller things, if we haven't seen him in a week. We'll change too much; he'll notice. The difference in price is fine, it's because Cheliax holds the northern Worldwound perimeter where it's approximately impossible to supply the forts by land or by sea so teleporters earn a massive premium, Keltham doesn't have any understanding of military logistics but if he did he'd say 'wow, you're holding a sixty mile border with twenty thousand troops a thousand miles from your own territory somewhere crops don't grow and there's no local populace no fucking wonder your teleporters can do whatever they want as long as they do their jobs.'"

Asmodia doesn't look terribly reassured, but nods obediently and goes back to trying to triage everything that has to be true about alterCheliax simultaneously.

An hour later Asmodia comes back and argues, talking slightly faster than usual for her, that maybe they actually need to keep Keltham a statue for slightly less than a month, in case Keltham noticed that Golarion has a moon.  Two days is enough of a skip for him to possibly notice the anomaly in the Moon's expected phase change - even if not right away, later when he knows what the phase changes are supposed to be, Keltham might look back and notice the anomaly if he remembers -