A cheerful gaggle of girls get up and go to lunch. 

Message: Pilar, the High Priestess's office.

Pilar will obey.  (Of course.)

(Jacint is still in her inner office; Carissa and Pilar are making use of one of her antechambers.)

"What happened to you yesterday. I got the Church's account of it."

Well, it started with her curse warning her about a party of Osirian adventurers presumably dispatched by Osirion to kidnap the cake girl.  In the sense of sending her to the key location with a cake to be delivered about fifty minutes later.

Then Pilar's curse told her she shouldn't just turn the kidnappers over to Security because that would make her curse sad, and her curse claimed that giving her the information was an act of trust in Pilar's Lawfulness and she needed to act like a god or her curse wouldn't be trusting her again.

So Pilar went to the Grand High Priestess's office to submit herself to the authority of somebody who understood deranged Chaotic Good curses invoking implied god-agreements.  But the Grand High Priestess was not there.  And when she was contacted by mirror, the person she put in charge of Pilar was Pilar.

Pilar had to run a meeting.  It involved a lot of intelligence officers debating what to make Osirion believe.  They were much older and more powerful than her and Pilar had to act like she was an invincible Project Lawful girl who was totally able to run meetings like that.  There were lots of decisions about what was best for Project Lawful and Carissa Sevar was completely out of contact and the Grand High Priestess had put Pilar in charge and Pilar had to guess what Sevar would've wanted her to have done.

(Pilar doesn't actually sound this plaintive.  It's just very very clear subtext for this perfectly professional report that Pilar is giving.)

Relatable, thinks Carissa, and then she realizes that she isn't going to let that show on her face because she's in charge here and is supposed to know what she's doing, and then imagines Keltham sputtering about signaling equilibriums that shouldn't equilibrate, and then lets it show on her face just a tiny bit, as a reward for Pilar if Pilar has good Sense Motive. 

"Optimistically," she says, "maybe Cayden Cailean has noticed we're going to win and is hoping he can buy the victory being smoother and less wasteful in exchange for it happening faster, which pleases Asmodeus. Or - hoping he can buy the world we'll build having more whorehouses and parties, I don't think those are inherently un-Asmodean. 

But I expect that's not what Nemamel would say, could we wake her from her sleep and ask her."

Pilar wasn't actually expecting that much approval.  It makes her feel better, but only a little.  Pilar feels like she has probably done a lot of things that call for her to be punished, and not in a matter-of-faith way where she could assign it herself.  Submitting to High Priestess Subirachs for her cruel amusement isn't the same as that.  Somebody who actually knows what Pilar did wrong has to tell her what that was.  The closest she's gotten to that is one spy punching her in the face and he wasn't even on the right side.

Pilar continues her story.  Somebody said that Project Lawful's cover had probably been blown as soon as dozens of uncleared emergency responders went to the villa and then a god-war started, because if you try to stonewall adversaries completely about a god-war they'll start using ninth-circle scrolls to get your people or get information out of them.

So Pilar personally made the irrevocable decision for all of Project Lawful that they were going to go deliberately high-profile to the other countries.  But with everything resting on the power of Pilar's own weird curse, because that weird curse didn't seem very related to what Project Lawful was actually about, making it a good distraction.

They had a seventh-circle wizard go in looking like Pilar, to deliver the cake, and she made the Osirians actually eat it with her, and then sent them home.

That was how Pilar's adventure yesterday started.

"One moment, I'm deciding whether you made the right call or not. 

I think yes. The one thing we can't afford for them to learn about is Keltham; if they're desperately trying to learn about the other girls that's resources not dedicated to learning about Keltham. Unless you're scryable. This place has some anti-scrying, don't go outside until I think more about it. Do you have possessions or relations such that you'd be distracted if they were kidnapped..."

Pilar has already been so instructed, on never leaving scry-shielded places without escorts.  There are probably a lot of people looking for her by now.

Pilar has a mother and sister who cannot come before Lord Asmodeus in her heart, but even after she said that, they got moved by Security anyways, which must be the correct decision since Security knows best.  She owns nothing of real importance to her, saving perhaps her spellbook.

After the cake incident ended Pilar asked her curse if she'd behaved like a proper god around this deranged god-agreement she'd never made, and Pilar's curse said yes and good job and offered to help her scare a paladin out of the palace.

So Pilar called the Grand High Priestess again and reported that, and what she'd already done, but it was only briefly, and the Grand High Priestess couldn't possibly review everything that Pilar no doubt did wrong, and anyways wouldn't have the time for assigning her punishments.

The Grand High Priestess said that this was beginning to become interesting and told her to go scare off the paladin.

Pilar's curse required her to feel an actual desire to let the paladin go home safely before she was able to find him.

She didn't think until afterwards about whether maybe her curse might have tricked her into sending a paladin away safely who was going to be Maledicted anyways.  Her curse said that, if so, hypothetically speaking, the paladin would've completed his mission first, and Asmodeus wouldn't have considered that a good trade, and would've been well-served by scaring off the paladin instead, for Pilar will never be used against her Lord.

Pilar expressed some skepticism about Chaotic Good apparently being fine with the paladin not completing his mission.  Her curse claimed that it was totally reasonable for Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good to team up against Lawful Good just like against Chaotic Evil because they both found paladins annoying for different reasons.

Pilar asked how her curse felt about throwing surprise parties for all the Lastwall spies targeting the palace so that they'd get to go home safely to their families.

Pilar's curse said sure, but there would have to be offsets from the standpoint of Chaotic Good, make it an offer.  There was a MEETING with VERY SENIOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS asking Pilar whether Chaotic-Good-pleasing things they could do cheaply were good enough for her, like they thought it was her making the decisions and not her oracular curse.  And in the middle of that the QUEEN came in and asked Pilar why nobody had thought of asking the Queen to be part of the Osirion-scaring operation, and Pilar felt like a tiny baby mouse too small for a huge hawk to be worth eating, being asked by the hawk why it hadn't been invited to the baby mouse's party.

Now there's some things Cheliax is doing for Chaotic Good in exchange for getting rid of as many spies as they did, mostly undoing some small things that Cayden Cailean would've really hated and that weren't actually helping Cheliax that much.  Plus a compact that, so long as it looks like Lastwall still really doesn't have any eyes left on the palace, they're not going to try any plots more nefarious than they would've done if Lastwall had still been watching.

The compact was signed by the Queen in blood.

Pilar let her curse direct her, and what her curse did, was, her curse mushed a cupcake into the parchment so that the pink icing left behind would be her curse's signature.

Pilar doesn't actually know whether or not she would still be alive, if the Grand High Priestess hadn't been personally attending the meeting by then.

She probably would be; Abrogail's perfectly capable of being professional when there are real stakes for Cheliax. Of course, Cheliax has lots of diamonds right now so maybe Pilar being dead isn't real stakes. 

"But, let me guess, too busy to offer any detailed opinion on your conduct besides that you should go ahead and round up all the spies?"

Carissa Sevar is RIGHT.   How did Carissa Sevar KNOW.

So Pilar pointed out the people who would be invited to her surprise, and arranged a huge party in the palace's largest ballroom, and everybody was invited in such a way as to scare them as little as possible.  Also one of the people who did the inviting was the QUEEN and Pilar had to go WITH the Queen to set that up and the Queen TALKED at her about THINGS and actually Pilar would rather not think about that entire conversation for the rest of her life.

Then there was a huge party for the spies who got to go home, with Pilar dressed as Meritxell, who Pilar hopes enjoys being very very famous to other countries' intelligence services.  The Queen danced with a prostitute.  Pilar comforted somebody who was sad about his country probably not wanting him back and explained that home can be anywhere that people care about you and doesn't have to be the country you were born in.

Pilar's curse was very excited and happy!  And said that Pilar got another week before her curse started feeling hungry again.  Apparently even though Pilar got musicians and official Imperial snack catering and gave colorful hats to all the Security officers, it did not count as a real actual proper party to her curse, because the party didn't have enough true camaraderie, revelry, sex, and drugs.  Or something.  Pilar has not previously been really into Cayden Cailean theology.

Then she finally was allowed to go to her new quarters in the fortress, and High Priestess Subirachs was very mean to her.  That, plus a Nap Stack, was the only reason Pilar was remotely functional today.

Right. Okay. Carissa's day was not actually all that much better but she's not going to say that.

"It might be worth separating out trying-to-appease-your-curse and trying-to-leverage-your-curse-for-counterespionage," she says after a bit of thought. "I bet you could ask your curse for, I dunno, some girl in Ostenso in a predicament Chaotic Good would be sad about and that Asmodeus doesn't prefer either - blinded by a fever and starving to death,  raised in a cellar by Urgathoa cultists, whatever - and throw her a 'we've restored you to health and to life' party, and maybe that keeps the curse sated, rather than trying to time the palace events to the curse's demands, which might leak information some way we're not thinking of.

'would this paladin otherwise have been Maledicted', and also 'would this paladin otherwise have learned something false that served Cheliax' are things you should have thought of before you talked to the paladin. It worked out fine, but it might not have. It's possible your curse is trying to get you in the habit of doing curse things without checking if they are also the best deal you can get Cheliax and our Lord. It is stupid, dangerous, and stupidly dangerous to operate in the palace without understanding the Queen and what she'll want to hear about and what to involve her in directly, but I am tempering my judgment over that because I'm not sure that the important people in the room would've known what to tell you.

It is very Asmodean to be able to make yourself believe useful things that you know on some level Nemamel, with your information, wouldn't believe. I don't - get why, actually, and I think it might be close to the secret of Evil dath ilan, and this might veer close towards instruction on faith, which I can't offer you, but I'm not going to punish believing that the paladins should get to go home because that'd be nice for them; your beliefs ought to serve Asmodeus, and that one did. 

On the whole I don't hear major errors, in that. You are in the power of a really annoying enemy, which permits you very little of what it'd be healthy for you to enjoy; but getting rid of all Lastwall's spies is a huge achievement, and might let us root out their revolutionaries, too, if they have worse information. The myth of the Project Lawful girls exceeds our real capacities, but not for very long, maybe, if we keep learning. 

You may try on my headband, and think for a minute about whether there's anything else you got wrong that Pilar who was smarter would've gotten right."

Pilar's pretty honored by this!  She will put on the headband.

The headband definitely feels like it is making Pilar be much smarter!  Pilar can now be allowed to know things that she thinks only a smarter Pilar ought to know.

"It would've been really valuable for us to know what the Osirians would've asked the cake girl if they'd taken her prisoner.  I could've ordered a Security to go ask for volunteers in the palace dungeons, somebody would've been genuinely cheerful about getting out to do that, even if there was a chance they might get Soul Bind cast on them for a while."

"I feel like I was being really stupid when I was talking to the paladin.  Amateurish.  I was making too much up as I went along.  I'm afraid he's going to get home and somebody's going to figure out that he wasn't really talking to an agent of Milani.  I should've given his cookie to a more experienced agent and let them talk to him."

"I should not have talked up Paxti as Project Lawful's deadliest agent.  It should've been somebody who's just quietly reliable like Gregoria.  I made that choice because I thought Paxti would like it, not to serve our Lord.  That's severe."

"Most of the sin and transgression I'm feeling is because I talked sharply to people who were above me and better than me and ordered them around, and, even if I had to do that, I feel like that's something an Asmodean should still be punished for.  I grabbed away your authority and made decisions for your project while you were out of contact.  Even if that was my best effort at doing a job the Grand High Priestess ordered me to do, it doesn't mean that I shouldn't be punished for all the things I chose to do along the way.  If I'd done it wrong or disobeyed, that would mean being punished even more, but I still - it's like Keltham's game, there's a best way to play but not a way where you don't lose any 2s."

"And I should've arranged for somebody to cast Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom on me before the meeting started, it was important."

Pilar takes off the headband, less reluctantly than some people would.  Being the person who a smarter Pilar seems like she ought to be is not as comfortable as being regular Pilar.

"The Grand High Priestess thinks you'll be the first success, if I do discover a way to produce Evil dath ilani. Maybe the only one. I understood her at the time just to be saying that it'll be very painful, and you can take it - and it will be - but I think maybe she was saying something that is also gestured at by Keltham's game. You'll play even if you only ever lose. There is a human weakness, a tendency to shy away from games we are sure to lose, that is attenuated in you, I think. 

- I'm going to take a while to calculate these punishment codes, I haven't done this before. You're dismissed to lunch."

Thank you, Pilar doesn't say, because Cheliax, but the thank you that she's not saying is very sincere.

"Acknowledged," Pilar says, and goes to lunch feeling a lot better and very glad that she has superiors like Carissa Sevar and Aspexia Rugatonn, who hopefully are not doing this at all because they feel any fondness for Pilar personally; it would be sad if Hell had to correct them for that.

Carissa works out the codes and then heads to Maillol's office to make sure they're on the same page about plan: pretend that Cheliax is incompetently managed, to cover genuine incompetence and also permit the degree of illegibility they want.

Cheliax is incompetently managed, anywhere that somebody on the order of the Queen or Aspexia Rugatonn is not watching very closely.  Sevar is unfamiliar with this because she went from her wizard school, managed by a wizard wearing probably a +6 intelligence headband, to the Worldwound, which is where a lot of the best managers are being expended, and then straight to Project Lawful.  Sevar has never in her entire life tried to serve on, let alone manage, a temple project inside the capital of some random County in the Chelish boondocks, where there's three layers of higher management between you and Egorian, never mind King Infrexus.

Maillol's got this one.

He can be totally realistic about this.

Carissa and Pilar are both gone, which Meritxell takes as an opportunity to sit next to Keltham and quiz him if he seems amenable to quizzing about what kinds of things there are prediction markets for in dath ilan. Are there prediction markets for who the next Legislators will be. Are there prediction markets for which of all the lunch places in a city will be ruled the tastiest. Are there prediction markets for who in your class is best in bed.

Prediction markets for the next Legislators:  Of course!  Everyone gets to look at them except for the Representatives who actually have to redelegate their delegated votes to Legislators, who are generally asked by their own constituents not to look at those prediction markets to avoid circularity.

Prediction markets for restaurants being tasty:  You could subsidize a tiny market on a prediction on whether a restaurant will be tasty to you, as you'll rate the meal afterwards, and some... tiny golems possibly?? belonging to some kind of rich merchant entity that only buys and sells predictions?? will fight it out among themselves to predict your rating.  It's not clear what it would mean for a restaurant to be tastiest in general.

Prediction markets for who in your class is best in the cuddleroom:  It's much harder to guess how somebody will rate somebody else's cuddleroom skills, especially while you're young enough to be in classes and there's not much data on you.  A restaurant has lots more customers and ratings that the prediction-trading merchants get to see.  Most cuddleroom encounters aren't rated at all!  You could obviously subsidize a personal rating prediction on a sex worker just like a restaurant, that's almost exactly analogous.

"Does that...subsidizing a rating, I mean - work better than just asking a friend for a recommendation?"

Nothing prevents your friend from buying into the tiny prediction market, if your friend thinks they have relevant information about you that rich prediction-trading merchants' tiny golems haven't figured out!

....okay. 

Carissa managed this by pretty much literally saying 'you should resolve your contractual hangups so we can have sex' and Meritxell is younger and less daring and not going to do that. 

When it comes to dating people who aren't sex workers, that's more a case of, not so much asking your friends for recommendations, as your friends betting with each other on how you'll rate somebody after having dated them.  A 'recommendation' isn't falsifiable and quantifiable the same way.

Keltham can guess that's not how it works in Cheliax.  How do people find the best date recommenders, is it just a matter of asking somebody else who recommended them a very good date?

(Keltham may possibly be trying to flirt back by keeping the topic on dating, potentially permitting slow deniable escalation towards common knowledge of interest?  It's hard to read this because he's so alien.)

....mostly people just tell their friends who they find hot, and then their friends egg them on into asking them out/being conveniently vulnerable in their vicinity/whatever. It isn't very Chelish to seek assurance about how well it'll work out, first; it is generally believed that you learn useful things from the failures as much as the successes, at least at their age.