"I do have any additional questions about that, but should probably bother Carissa with them rather than you."

"You want I should go back downstairs myself and leave you in this nice room to think?"

"...yeah."

He does!

...she does.

Actually Keltham is back, looking sheepish, and wants to know the classification status on Asmodia's (mostly)(a)sexuality.

It's not a secret.  Tell whoever.

He's gone again!

Asmodia stares out at the coast, it's windy enough today that there's regular crashing waves, and she can, if she makes an effort, not think about anything at all.

She doesn't want it to seem suspicious, when her mind actually does go quiet from the perspective of listening Security.

When she legitimately hasn't thought much, for a short while, she imagines herself back in the Gardens of Erecura, in the midst of Dis, as is under the seal of Hell, and thinks.

Does Asmodia want to be married to Keltham, even if she never has sex with him, even if he gets all his sex from Sevar and Ione and Pilar?  It's an important question for reasons beyond the obvious.

She's pretty sure - though she has taken time to think about it - that the answer is no.

She wants to make fifth-circle and Teleport herself the fuck out of Cheliax and live the rest of her life answerable to nobody, is what she actually wants.  And then at the end of that, go to the gardens of Erecura forever, or go to Abaddon briefly.

Keltham may have neglected to explain the difference between aromantic and asexual, and Taldane certainly isn't helping out with words for such things.  But even so, Asmodia knows, she is not just sexually unattracted to Keltham.  She does not dislike him, and for certain she would choose him over every man of Cheliax; but there is nothing about the thought of establishing a household with him that appeals, compared to the thought of just walking away from everything.

Sevar thinks, obviously, that the trope theory is true.  What happened today must have just about nailed it down, from her perspective.

In reality, Asmodia doesn't fit that pattern at all.

And Keltham also doesn't believe it, because, so far as he knows, even if for different reasons, Asmodia does not fit that pattern.

Then if Cayden Cailean and Nethys are frantically scurrying around setting up the appearance of a dath ilani romance novel - and maybe it's not Asmodeus who is Sevar's patron, after all, even if she thinks that's Who -

The target they're trying to fool isn't Keltham.

It's Cheliax.

What will Asmodia do, with this thought?  Nothing, that she can think of that she ought to do, except to hold it secret behind her barrier.

Whether her Patron, whichever interfering god that is, is making use of her - or whether there is, as would be the moral of a dath ilani romance novel, someone somewhere in all of everything who cares - Asmodia is grateful, and wants more.  So whatever is happening around her, though Asmodia does not understand it, she will surely not destroy it.

"The asexual is the one who watches it all, is she?" Asmodia says out loud.  It's a perfectly fine thing for Security to report to Sevar.  "Sure.  I can do that."

(If an Ace is present at all, even with a prominent story role, she is not always a romanceable character inside an eroLARP.  There is aroace representation too.  Just saying.)

Even Nethys can't tell what is and isn't a trope at this point.

The things that watch from orthogonal angles to ultimate reality now seem unsure which events represent selection for a trope, and which events are reality just unfolding under its own not-further-selected momentum.

Nethys suspects that even the Tentatively Hypothesized Things That Put Keltham Where There Would Be Possible Tropes may not know for sure what's a trope anymore.

PL-timeline:  Day 6 / Afternoon

Keltham reconvenes his lectures, more aware than before that he is trying to teach in days what Civilization takes years to engrain when it forges a dath ilani; even if, yes, Civilization is teaching it to children rather than adults; yes, even so.

He may need to make more than one run on Probability in a lecture, if it's to be understood and used, as the other lectures Keltham taught were not quite meant to be used right away the same way.  And then go on conveying it in his everyday words and actions, as adults show themselves before children.

From the other direction, this time; begin from the Law of Probability that would, if they were doing things in the right order rather than quickly, have been proven as the only possible Law that yields all of a collection of Law-fragments that would each have been motivated on their own.

The probability of an event is between 0 and 1:
\X.  0 <= P(X) <= 1

Definition:  X \/ Y denotes "the event that X happens or Y happens or both happen".

Definition:  X & Y denotes "the event that both X and Y happen".

Definition:  ~X denotes "the event that X doesn't happen".

For every event, the chance that it both happens and doesn't happen is nope:
\X.  P(X & ~X) = 0

And for every event, the chance that it either happens or doesn't happen is yes:
\X.  P(X \/ ~X) = 1

If two events are mutually exclusive, in the sense that they can't both happen, the probability of either happening is the sum of the individual events' probabilities:
\X Y.  P(X & Y) = 0   =>   P(X \/ Y) = P(X) + P(Y)

Or more generally, if they're not exclusive, we can still sum them by subtracting their overlap:
\X Y.  P(X \/ Y) = P(X) + P(Y) - P(X & Y)

Keltham shall first pause and call upon them to recognize that Probability generalizes Validity; the laws of logical reasoning, that are valid over every possible world, can be seen as a special case of reasoning with the probabilities of 0 and 1.

He shall then, by way of illustrating some of what is being skipped over, ask them what bad thing would happen to them if they tried to claim that some events could have a probability of 3 or -7.