And in fact, now that Keltham thinks of it, an obvious guess is that nobody is managing this project, because Asmodeus said to set it up, so people in Governance did that, but Asmodeus didn't say who should manage it, so nobody is, and everything going on here is actually being routed into a completely ad-hoc system of random people in Governance grabbing bits of authority and responding to his requests as he makes them, and there is apparently a site manager because this person has been mentioned to him, but there's nobody above that site manager and so the site manager is hiding because he knows he won't be able to answer any of Keltham's questions.

Which is, Keltham supposes, what project management and governance might very well end up looking like, after subtracting 6 Intelligence points from everyone and everything.

Is he wrong?  Is anyone allowed to tell him if he's wrong?  Is the person who would need to sign off on that on the Nidal front, is their failover replacement dead, and is there now a long awkward silence while everybody in this room knows the correct answer to his question but the person who needs to sign off on answering it is discarnate?

"- should we volunteer answers to questions or are the questions meant to be illustrative."

"If you actually know and are allowed to tell me, please do."

"The site manager is Ferrar Maillol; his office is labelled on the maps they put up in the cafeteria; he's the person I go to when you want mice or something. I....think he reports to someone in the Church? Probably a higher circle cleric? And probably someone at the front right now. They probably report to the Queen and the Grand High Priestess."

"If they're reporting to the Queen and the Grand High Priestess then they're not reporting to anybody.  Pick one."

"To be clear, that advice was not directed at you personally."

"I will note, however, Carissa, that you do not, in fact, have any idea of who is above Ferrer, except that somewhere up there is the Queen and Grand High Priestess.  It's actually pretty rare where I come from to not know who is your boss's boss.  Maybe this is because you don't have the universally interconnected machines but I really wouldn't think so.  You have not actually disconfirmed the fallback hypothesis that what you do not know about, does not exist, and there is nothing above Ferrer but an amorphous cloud of individuals in Governance whom Ferrer individually contacts each time he tries to make something happen on the site."

"Anyways, I think I am done with the main part of my rant that I needed to get out of myself.  Any questions you expect the actual readers of this lecture will want answered?  After that, by the way, and on reflection, maybe more urgently than resuming the math parts, I need to know WHO THE ASS IS CAYDEN CAILEAN IN VASTLY GREATER DETAIL."

No one else talks; this is obviously in authorized lies only territory. 

Go on, Pilar.

Claims that have been authorized about Cayden Cailean, all true:

He is a former human adventurer. History has it that he ascended on a drunken dare, which isn't the kind of thing that should be possible. His areas of concern are competition, exploration, sex, mind-altering substances, and revelry; his herald is a prostitute and former travelling companion; he tends not to seek out conflict with other gods, but is allied with Desna, Milani, Sarenrae, Shelyn, and Torag; he has chillier relationships with the Lawful gods, and it's generally understood that He and Asmodeus don't get along, being diametrically opposed in alignment. He doesn't have a holy book, having never seen fit to inspire the writing of one. There are rumors that He personally attends drunken festivities in the River Kingdoms in His honor.

Pilar will repeat all that pretty flawlessly, since she's had time to rehearse it, including the part where she doesn't sound rehearsed.

"...gods can just show up to places, looking human?  That is a thing that ever happens?"

20% probability that one of his girls is exactly that, if so.

Pilar has not been instructed in advance on how to answer that question!

"I'm... not sure?  I didn't think to ask about how many chances in 100 that it would be true."

Does anyone want to stop her from answering, think think?  No?

"Gods can do most things but they usually don't, when they manifest looking like people it's usually inside their divine realm.  There's stories about gods manifesting in Golarion, but only during huge crises, and it's not clear to me from my reading that any of it must have really happened, except that most books say that Aroden was doing that when" Asmodeus killed him "he died."

Ione didn't go out of her way to collect information like that, or at least, that's what she told herself, but in retrospect, maybe she happened to be hanging out in sections of library where there were books talking about how vast and how ancient Golarion and other planes were.

"So gods are easier to kill when they're manifested looking like people, and they only do that in their highly protected home where it's safe, or after they build what they think is a large enough coalition to protect them from other gods, or in massive emergency-opportunities?"

"If there was any book that had that kind of information it would be in the incredibly protected library of a five-hundred-year-old ninth-circle wizard, I think.  Which I can't borrow from, to be clear."

"Ione, what's Cayden Cailean doing messing with my project?  Best guess?"

Ione thinks about it, both for real and to give somebody else a chance to instruct her on that.

Cheliax's best guesses that Keltham is allowed to know are that Cayden Cailean is trying to support the project in some way that may only be clear in retrospect, that Cayden Cailean lost a dare of some kind, that Cayden Cailean is subject to some preexisting agreement which manifests like this, or that He's just not acting in a goal oriented way, sometimes Chaotic gods don't. Ione can add her own speculation if it'd make sense in alterCheliax.

Some of that doesn't sound like things a random Project Lawful researcher should be saying!

"It could be that he lost a dare, it could be that there's an old bargain, it could be that he's just being Chaotic Good and literally doesn't have a goal because Chaotic gods are sometimes like that.  Or it could be that - somewhere at the end of everything that happens here is a lot of exploring, competing, and sex and revelry and drugs.  Not necessarily for us personally, to be clear, I'm more the bookish type."

"Pilar, did they say anything more to you?"

"The clerics who examined me said that everyone's current guess was that Cayden Cailean is being, uh, cooperative, not least because of the bit where I was there to step in front of a sword at the right time, which is why it seemed like a better idea to leave me here than pull me as a Security risk.  Whatever gods think is supposed to happen as a result of this project, Asmodeus likes it, your god likes it, Nethys likes it.  The current guess is that either Cayden Cailean likes it too, or Asmodeus bargained with him to help."  The degree to which this itself is incredibly odd and alarming is not to be said out loud.

"So Cayden Cailean is in favor of Civilization because people will be having more fun.  Okay.  That's better news than I was expecting, it sounds like he might be one of the gods that's just all the way on board."

"That makes sense of why Cayden Cailean but not why candy.  Were there any speculations about why candy?"

"I would guess that - if you're the kind of god that Cayden Cailean is, it's easiest to act on the world by giving out candy, even if that requires a weird complicated Chaotic plan instead of a simpler one?"

Wait a minute.  Was that her guessing?  That sounded like something Pilar shouldn't have known herself.

"Lovely.  Just wonderful."

"Say, Pilar, I'd say that for putting up with this, I deserve, not just any cookie, but a big cookie with precisely printed frosting that happens to explain what's going on here and what Cayden Cailean wants from our project and what he's trying to do with it and also what's the name of my god."

There is the weight of a cookie in her hand and somebody had better be ready to cast an illusion really fast -

The frosting is just decorated, roughly, as a cheerful smiling face.  Unless somebody already cast the illusion.

Pilar silently hands over the cookie.