"Serving the tropes competes with other goals like keeping Keltham happy and building Civilization. We're better off in the world where none of the instances of us are directing effort towards trope-service than the world where all of us are going full power on it, assuming we have the same odds of winning Keltham either way."

"So remember the question of how long it takes Cheliax's current form of government to explode after introducing Keltham to it, and whether you could find Counts who weren't ilani, to replace any ilani Counts who got ideas about not responding to threats?  I think that logic only works if there's no Sevars who decide to serve the tropes."

"I don't see why I would decide differently than other Carissae, we're presumably using the same decision process so ought to arrive at the same conclusion."

"So the question is whether there's somebody who is almost entirely like you, in whatever Golarions are out there, who would, faced with this situation, choose to - maybe the politer term would be, go along with the tropes.  Somebody who'd be just as seductive of Keltham, but not somebody who - thinks exactly like that, about tropes."

" - maybe. If she was slightly less inconvenienced by them and thought of them as the reason she's become so powerful."

(Security didn't tap Asmodia with Cunning right away.  They have a few third-circles on staff who are doing nothing but enhancement, now, though not Asmodia's requested ten such.  One of those is hurried in to cast a Cunning on her.)

Asmodia requests a moment to think for a bit after getting Cunninged.  Many of her thoughts are screened; hopefully Security is not Detecting right now, since Keltham isn't around, but worst-case she's still got the Gorthoklek order.

...so the way that she thinks this actually works, is that any world has something like a Resistance or Vulnerability to the tropes, or a Difficulty Check for the tropes.  The decisions Sevars make within the world can possibly make their world harder or easier for the tropes to manifest in, though, obviously, the Sevars may not know which choices of theirs really do that.  They also don't know the tropes' strength, what amount of Vulnerability they need or Resistance they can overcome.

You could, at the very least, if deciding not to talk about any other demon lords, which makes things more difficult for the tropes, try offsettingly to do something nice for the tropes, to keep it all in balance?  Or maybe you've got to do a lot of nice things for the tropes, or somebody has to, before they can get to your universe at all?

...Nethys, Cayden Cailean, and her own sponsor, possibly seem to think that their correct move is facilitating the tropes.

......but Asmodia can't tell if this is something those gods are creating the appearance of, and want Sevar to believe; or something they're treating as their own hidden power and special tactic, which Asmodia should not reveal.

"This is unfortunately not a case where 4 more points of Intelligence immediately causes everything to become clear," Asmodia lies.  "I think we're at least not supposed to do anything that makes life more difficult for the tropes unless the Most High signs off on that."

"...okay. So, talking about powerful entities whose attention we don't want is fine, for now, unless they're the kind where that directly gets their attention." It does seem shaped like a problem for the Most High.

After Keltham and Yaisa have tromped off to their... whatever they're about to do... Peranza leans over confidentially towards Gregoria.  "So is anyone else feeling incredibly annoyed that Yaisa stole Keltham and now we don't get to hear about Miyalsvor?"

"Peranza, you're slipping, that was alterPeranza talking to alterGregoria.  I mean, it's the correct direction of mistake to make, if you've got to make one, but I worry if you slip that way maybe you'll slip the other way too."

"Acknowledged."

"Real Gregoria's also super mad about that, though," Gregoria says. "I don't see why we can't just learn about Civilization and have, like, one day a week to be unabashed sluts."

"Because if we don't corrupt Keltham for Lord Asmodeus, he eventually figures us out.  And unless an eighth-circle wizard is Detecting Thoughts on him right then, he commits suicide before we can stop him, goes to Axis, and gets raised by Osirion."

"Cheliax would still win because we'd have better Keepers than Osirion, Keepers who eventually would get further than Keltham dared to go himself.  But it would be a harder battle."

Pilar is hard to argue with because of the thing where she's more pious than you. Gregoria nods and only scowls slightly.

Ione honestly does not think that whole "corrupt Keltham with increasingly Evil sex" plan is going to work, ever, but it sure is more fun than a lot of other tasks you can get assigned in Cheliax.  She's on board until this all explodes.  (As all things do in time, praise Nethys.)

"Report on how Yaisa's doing with Keltham," Carissa asks Security, though she hasn't been urgently interrupted so probably it's not a catastrophe.

Security soon hands her a transcript of their meeting.

(Sfw tldr version here.)

She scans it for things that belong in Asmodia's orange or red columns. Nope, nope, nope, does Yaisa have to be so smug, nope... she hands it back to Security. "You'll have to look later, he's on his way back, but basically worked great," she adds to Asmodia quietly.

Keltham is in fact on his way back!

But looks busy, and doesn't talk to anyone right away.  Keltham instead strides over to Maillol's office, to check if Governance had any comments on his informal proposal for an interim contract between Cheliax and Project Lawful.  Or any comments they might have on his articles of incorporation for Project Lawful.  And pick up the papers for candidate employees to talk about with Carissa.

He also briefly queries Maillol about the all-in costs if Keltham wants to straight-up employ Yaisa himself, while having her retain living quarters on Project Lawful, and gives Maillol early warning on that possibility / requests that things should be configured now to allow that later.  Not that their relationship advanced anything like that far, or that Yaisa has even indicated any such interest, Keltham just prefers to keep that option open for later.

Comments on Keltham's informal proposal are in this folder.  Comments on Keltham's proposed corporation thingy are in this smaller folder.  Job candidates in this bigger folder.

Yaisa's upkeep would be 6gp/week, yeah pretty expensive but they're remote out here.  Keltham needs to make sure Yaisa's paid at least 12gp/week by him.

Yes, the possibility was kept open; Sevar already gave Maillol the tip that Keltham might ask that about somebody, at some point, and also that the person would be Yaisa.  Maillol appreciates the heads-up nonetheless.

...isn't it nice to have such an attentive girlfriend!  If she actually is in the Conspiracy Keltham is kind of doomed, yo.

All right, now Keltham is heading back to the dining hall.

Things he definitely has to do today (he announces):  Consider new employees with Carissa, review and revise the contract stuff.

Things he hopefully still has time to do anyways (he further announces):  Teach a bit more Law, Utility would be the obvious Law that comes next.  Get in his daily magic practice and put on another Silent Image show at dinnertime.  He'll maybe try to wing a Miyalsvor short story tomorrow; Keltham's evening tonight is spoken for.

So roughly - maybe one to two hours of Law before dinner if there's time, but first Keltham wants to do the most urgent Project stuff that needs to be done today rather than tomorrow.  Everyone good on that?

Sounds good.

PL-timestamp:  Day 10 (8) / Afternoon

Keltham reviews Cheliax's feedback on his proposed interim contract.  He is conscious somewhere in the back of his mind that if he is inside a generalized fiction novel then this is the exciting Trade With Aliens section where the narration zooms in to show his thoughts in tons of detail, and all the readers are carefully evaluating the logic of everything to see if they can spot where Keltham makes his dramatic fatal error, and that the part where he's occasionally distracted by thoughts of Yaisa is presumably being played for comedy in a way that implies this is definitely a story wherein Keltham is making amusing reader-spottable errors.  Thankfully Keltham's probability density is mostly not in his life being run pointwise by tropes in that detailed of a way, or on there existing an audience he can reason about that way.  Carissa wasn't a hidden cleric and all that.

Cheliax does seem to be on board with Keltham's basic outline of the theory behind an interim intended-to-be-replaced contract, though?  Keltham expected more pushback on this.

For something like metallurgy, which was Keltham's next intended thing to try, or road-building, the plan is to have what would otherwise be an insanely onerous patent scheme, in which any Chelish metalmakers or roadbuilders adopting new techniques need to hand over to the Project 80% of their increased profits above a 20% increase, relative to a baseline they establish under untampered truthspell; alternatively the Project can directly demand a per-volume patent fee.  The rough idea is that you'd expect these entities to, themselves, end up capturing half the gains from trade, so if Keltham gets nearly all their gains, he's getting around half the gains to Cheliax.  This fails if those entities compete against each other too much and can capture only a small fraction of those gains, which is why Keltham can also set a coordinated per-volume fee if he notices that happening.

Chelish Governance is strongly recommended but not mandated to reimburse them for substantial amounts of the money the manufacturers pay the Project, so the manufacturers can scale operations the way they usually would given increased profits, and perhaps to subsidize purchase of the goods, to make up for its price being set higher.

If countries outside Cheliax start using the same technology, which Keltham is not actually expecting to happen that quickly, then competition from those countries will decrease pricing power inside Cheliax and the manufacturers will show less of a profit increase and the Project will get less of that increased profit.  Or to put it another way, if roadmakers outside Cheliax adopt the same technology successfully, the government is allowed to hire those outside roadmakers to make roads inside Cheliax, but they must be doing a sales volume outside Cheliax at least equivalent to their sales volume within it (to fence off some overly clever functionary getting ideas about setting up a "new roadmaker" just outside the Chelish border).  The Project may at its discretion arrange things so that everybody with knowledge of key engineering details is a Project employee and bound to the project by nondisclosure arrangements.

It's intended that this overly arduous and detailed arrangement will eventually be replaced by a measurement of excess general growth in Cheliax's economy relative to economies of other countries, of which Keltham captures around half, after which all this can be tossed aside and replaced by general taxation and reimbursement mechanisms.