Asmodeus proposes a trade with Otolmens! There's this here unconscious squirrel who has ideas for containing the squirrel on behalf of Cheliax. Asmodeus obviously cannot intervene in the interdiction zone, but if Otolmens were to shower that squirrel with a bunch of element-57, or element-62, or element-65, extracted from deep under the earth, the nearby squirrels would learn that Asmodeus and Otolmens want that squirrel listened to, and then it would be listened to. Once it's conscious, which Asmodeus is sure His squirrels are working very diligently on and definitely don't suspect it happened for god-related-reasons.

Never MIND!  Probably there is not ACTUALLY anything important about that mortal and NOBODY really needs to be PAYING ANY MORE ATTENTION to it.

(connection terminated)

If at some point Sevar seems to be taking a breather on her Glib Sword work, Security will inform her that the girls think they're done with their background stories and are asking Security if they know when Asmodia will be back to check them.

Asmodia is indisposed. If necessary Keltham will be petrified for another day while this is resolved. Any word from the Grand High Priestess's office about the query made with respect to Asmodia.

Checking... they've sent the information to Hell, which is cheap, and which enables Hell to send back instructions if those instructions are urgent.  They didn't phrase it as a request for instruction.  No word back from Hell.

Understood. 

How about Carissa checks over the girls' backstories for now, with an Owl's Wisdom up, trying to catch most of what Asmodia would catch. 

Ione and Meritxell have been using up Cunnings and Wisdoms to try to supervise this in the absence of Asmodia and Sevar.  Their approach was to get everybody to say what their actual backgrounds and personality facts were like in realCheliax, then try to substitute alterCheliax-unacceptable truths one-for-one with alterfacts that should be about of equivalent rarity in alterCheliax.  Gregoria having a brother who's a paladin is pending a decision about whether that's an appropriate substitution for being one of a hundred children of a Baron's heir, which does seem like something that should probably get substituted because that's probably not true in alterCheliax?  They're not sure how many alterChelish people go off to be paladins though, that seems like an Asmodia or even a Sevar decision, and also Meritxell and Ione can't agree to within an order of magnitude on how unlikely it is that Gregoria is one of a hundred children of a Baron's heir.

Ione privately messages Sevar to ask if there's anything she should know about artifact headbands, Law epiphanies, and/or disintegrating Asmodean philosophies in her capacity as Nethysian sanity officer.

No artifact headband or Law epiphany could have plausibly causes Asmodia to collapse like that. ....though probably taking the headband off should be tried, if it hasn't. 

"Gregoria, have you ever met a paladin."

"Obviously no, but alter Gregoria also hasn't met her brother since he decided to join the order, he writes letters."

"What does he say in the letters?"

"That fighting at the Worldwound is lonely and he misses us, but he knows he's in the right place. That did I know this-or-that about Iomedae's triumphs on the road to godhood. That he misses our mother's cooking."

"'this-or-that.'"

"Honestly I kind of skim those parts, I know it's important to him but I'm not a history buff and I don't care how Iomedae won some specific battle in the Shining Crusades and what the cavalry tactics were like."

"You already said something aloud to Keltham about the Baron's heir thing - in a fashion where it was ambiguous if it was true, but he'll be looking for signs that it is -"

"Well, he'd have to ask my mother, but I haven't any reason to think it's true."

Carissa is very tired. "Can we get wizard salary data from a bunch of other places? That's another thing Asmodia was worried about, and I'm not that worried but we do want to make sure we know what we're deviating from."

Querying to Maillol says that they don't have an ETA on the Queen's promised intelligence officer yet.  He'll add both an urgency marker to the Queen's authorized requisition of such, and also the explicit question about wizard salary data in multiple countries outside Cheliax, and send that out on the next packet.

All right. What hypotheses are still live on Asmodia. Divine intervention but that shouldn't have been possible, something done to her in Hell which broke just now, thought a thought that caused her to become comatose.... can they use Modify Memory to erase the precise moment she was walking out of the room and fell over -

Also at around this time, Ione is requesting permission to have everybody assign probabilities on What's Actually Happening To Asmodia.  But only if it's the sort of thing where they'll get to find out the actual true answer afterwards, since otherwise they'll be training the wrong skill.

If Asmodia actually just got replaced by her future self, by the way, Ione is quitting Project Lawful to work someplace saner, like a lunatic asylum.*

(*)  These are nicer than you'd expect for Cheliax, though that's setting the bar low.  If nobody with deep pockets expects a person might get better and then be useful again, the putative patient will quickly get put to other, more remunerative uses.

"Doesn't Nethys like it when everyone is driven insane by the pursuit of knowledge? - that is not encouragement to go insane." Carissa bets 60% it was a intervention by - something not bound by the interdict? An Outer God, which may or may not exist and which supposedly aren't safe to speak of in more detail than that? A demon lord? She bets demon lords don't obey the interdict. 10% Asmodia thought a mind-destroying thing. 30% it's something Carissa hasn't thought of. 

Sounds like Asmodean propaganda to her, but then Ione wouldn't KNOW whether Nethys actually likes that because NOBODY IS GIVING IONE ANY THEOLOGY BOOKS.

Is Asmodia insane?  If Asmodia is insane, Ione would recommend trying putting that artifact headband back on her, or killing her and Raising her, assuming everybody's already tried standard healing spells that work against insanity.

Asmodia's not insane, just nonresponsive, but killing her and raising her is a decent option once they've exhausted less drastic ones.

Results of trying to remove the Wisdom headband:  Asmodia's pulse sped up further; she didn't awaken.  Putting the headband back on brought her pulse down to its previous slightly-fast state.

Results of requesting Asmodia's last minute of memory removed:  Scrolls/items of Modify Memory are not cheap and they don't just have one lying around.  They'll add it to the next requisition packet, though, the palace might have something.  Asmodia admittedly does have a priority "do not lose this person or incredibly bad things will happen to you" marker on her from Aspexia Rugatonn.

In general this project should have some scrolls of it sitting around at all times; this work is dangerous in specifically a Modify Memory kind of way. 

Things to try before they try killing and then Raising her: Break Enchantment, obviously, if it hasn't already been tried. Polymorphing her into a hamster and back. Polymorphing her into a dragon and back in case what happened was she had some insight human minds can't bear. Petrifying and unpetrifying her. At that point Carissa leans towards going ahead and killing her but wants a second opinion from someone with more curse expertise.

Break enchantment:  No effect.

Regular polymorphing to hamster:  Unconscious hamster.

Baleful polymorphing to hamster:  The hamster is awake and runs around in a cute and not especially sapient fashion!  When the hamster reverts to Asmodia, it seemed like she might have been awake for an instant, but then closed her eyes again.  Security might have been imagining it; he unfortunately didn't have Detect Thoughts running during that instant.

...there is a scroll of Greater Polymorph onsite, though Security doesn't even know why.  Does Sevar want them to take Asmodia outside and turn her into a small dragon?