"Yep. So we're going to have to learn really fast and be cleverer than him. And we don't have to win forever, just long enough that we have the Law-fragments we need to rederive the rest, and the metallurgy and heredity-theory to make Cheliax rich and make the project look worthwhile while we set about the harder work of reinventing what we haven't got." She sounds substantially more confident than she feels. "Dis thinks we're on the right track."

No one even makes a face at Carissa casually making claims about what Dis thinks, at this point.

"I'm still trying to grasp this at all, but I think we need to - be keeping track of the way everything must look to Keltham inside the world where everything is a Conspiracy, we need a list of things like Sevar going to the bathroom for a while right after Keltham mentioned the Conspiracy and that Yaisa and I were told to distract him.  And Ione asking about the birds, where Keltham would then suspect the world is maybe much larger, and then I think maybe that exact part is actually a victory for us because - we have to make sure that the list never starts making too much sense to him?  But we have to know what the list looks like because it's how Keltham is seeing things."

"The fact that some girls enjoy pain during sex is on the list, for him, he thinks that doesn't make any sense from a heredity perspective but makes perfect sense if a conspiracy were trying to fool him."

"....why doesn't it make any sense from a heredity perspective," says Tonia, "probably girls who bear up all right as slaves have more kids than those who don't."

"I did actually say that to him and yet."

"Can we lean on that, put his attention there, send him mixed signals so that when that finally gets the answer we want, he won't have been paying attention to other things..."

"Actually I'm not sure it's the right move.  I suspect Keltham's problem #7 is a key to the game between dath ilani, we're controlling what he sees and somehow that - won't be able to affect him, I think, because of whatever Law-fragment is in #7?  If we're avoiding lies then I shouldn't work with anyone from the Holding Cell on it.  But I request Ione, Pilar, Peranza, Gregoria, and Tonia all with me, and trying to figure out #7 as soon as possible so we can plan using it, and I request more Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom while we work on it."

"Granted. And I'll see about your headband, though it'll probably require talking with the Grand High Priestess. 

The Grand High Priestess - thinks there's a thing Keltham would understand at once, but which is dangerous to put to him, about what it is like for Asmodeus, to try to direct us mortals, about what kinds of actions that we take are easy for him to steer and which are hard. If you can figure out what she means by that she'll get you your headband, the only reason she doesn't give more people headbands I think is that there's something about mortals where being smarter doesn't reliably make us more useful and it's a Law-fragment, it's got to be."

"I request additional information on all of that.  Also, I don't know prices for Wisdom headbands, if Wisdom is cheaper then maybe I can get by with a +4 Wisdom headband and a lot of Fox's Cunnings."

Message:  Sevar, do you actually want anyone besides myself and Pilar working with Asmodia on this?  The others may explode.  I'd worry about Asmodia exploding but she's obviously one of the Different Girls now.

I'm going to talk to everyone about Hell tonight and then I'll have a better sense who is an explosion risk.

"If we're allowed to know things now, why are you in charge," says Meritxell.

"When I went to sell my soul, my devil conveyed that it was the will of Asmodeus, as translated down through Hell, that I not sell my soul this day, but be permitted to participate in the project and other matters as if I had, and that if I served well in this world I'd be raised high in it, and be among the most treasured possessions of Asmodeus in the next.

I tried again later to sell my soul for three Wishes and ten pounds of spellsilver and permanent Arcane Sight and Tongues and the devil said he'd have to ask his superiors, and then came back and said not yet, but was I willing to commit to selling at that price later. 

So I don't know exactly what's up but I have a lot of license with Hell right now, and probably will right up until I fail. And I'm likelier to fail if I don't have all of you guys on board, so I will be doing my best to offer appropriately massive bribes for doing a good job here, which is one of the things we're going to talk about tonight. - also the outfits are because the devil also said I should be indulged as if I was the heiress to a county, though Abrogail says I can't actually have a county unless I succeed.  

....we'll go over this all in more detail tonight."

Meritxell is speechless.

She doesn't ask if Sevar knows the price on her own lost soul, in the markets of Dis.

Because Asmodia already knows.  She can guess by now that a dath ilani would figure that out immediately, and therefore she knows the answer even though she hasn't finished thinking through why.  That's why her first owner is dead.  You can't just kill a contract devil and take their souls, obviously, they go by testaments.  But with Asmodia's soul price running up past the Wish level - something happened to him, somebody challenged him over it, who knows what happens when prices get that high.

How strange.

How strange that she can still be this angry.

She's not planning to let them actually have and keep and use her soul.  In reality, it's worthless, and somebody will pay a vast sum for her soul and gain nothing, you'd think that should be vengeance enough.

And yet, somehow, Asmodia is still seethingly angry on a level where keeping her face passive is taking everything she has.

"...do you know if our own souls are being traded around for prices like that now," Peranza says.  She feels numb.

"Not prices that high; there's no direct divine intervention over you all. But I suspect a lot more than you were paid, yes. If I were you I'd be mad about it; it's not how Keltham would've done it, he'd have split the gains from trade. But it's also - still very possible to leverage for your own benefit, because -

- do you think you'd be worth any more to Hell than an ordinary soul after being put through the ordinary course of Hell?"

"I don't know - very much about Hell, at all," Peranza says.  "I mean, I'll get there when I get there."

Message to Sevar.  Asmodia doesn't try to keep the seething hatred out of her whisper, if it's the sort of thing you can hear in a whisper.

I suggest that new members of the project should be informed of this, before they sell their souls, and in exchange for tipping them off, we should get half of the spellsilver they get, and that spellsilver should be distributed among project members who have already sold their souls.

Acknowledged. I can't make Hell fair but I can and will make you rich, Asmodia.

"I think that Hell wants us badly, but wants us precisely for qualities that it doesn't know how to inculcate, probably because of some god-agreements that restrict what greater devils can tell lesser ones. Therefore, as long as we are succeeding we have affordance and leverage to figure out how the formation of evil dath ilanis ought to work in Hell. This is one of the things we're going to discuss tonight. You've spent your whole lives not allowed to think very hard about Hell, and now we find ourselves practically assigned to change it. You may think about that, this afternoon and evening, but if you notice yourself running into a blind wall of panic then wait for tonight, where I have some ideas for how we can approach this."

"Why did Asmodeus pick you to not sell your soul," says Meritxell stubbornly.

"No one knows that or has any way to find out! I'm hoping it's because He noticed that I'm the right amount of a heretic to stay loyal to Him while I figure out how to build space in it for dath ilanis and all the things they need and want."

They won't give you a fucking thing, Sevar, because you're not willing to go to Abaddon rather than let Hell fuck you over.

...she hadn't meant that as a message for Sevar.  It is of course up to Security whether they will choose to pass it on anyways.

"On a totally separate topic, if Keltham is looking to try romances with people who aren't Sevar, does Asmodia have possession, or Pilar, because if not I should do it and I imagine that Sevar wants to talk with me before then."

"Not yet on Pilar, we're holding her out until he manages to be slightly less into consent. Asmodia, do you want to pursue Keltham?"