"Wizards never share their headbands because it feels - slightly like dying, taking them off, and you lose the benefits to spell preparation for the next 24 hours. I'll do it if he really wants but, uh, expressive sad face."

"Checking:  Have you ever taken off your headband in front of Keltham?"  Asmodia has seen Sevar do this, though not in front of Keltham.

"No. I genuinely do hate taking it off, and I'm using the extra spell slots."

"So everybody gets told never to tell any stories about people borrowing other people's headbands.  We should've told him they needed to be customized, too late now... when everybody gets headbands for the first time, are we managing to give him one of only +1/2 int, or does he get told his headband is +4 even if it's +1, but then what if he asks to try on somebody else's headband so he can see the difference between that and +2... has Keltham seen anything that would contradict the idea that, headbands get traces of their wearers, nobody would want to wear somebody else's headband..."

- headshake. "I took one off a dead security during the Nidal attack, traded mine. I might've done that even if headbands get traces of their wearers, since we thought Nidal had tracked us through it, but I would've commented, and certainly not traded the Security the one I'd been wearing."

"If Keltham happens not to think of suggesting the swap the first day - and everybody else, if they say they don't want to lose their spells after that, by taking off the headband momentarily - he'll think it's just a silly theory, hopefully, and not worth upsetting people to run the test - never decides that testing it is as urgent as it was for you to swap your headband after the Nidal attack -"

"See, one thing the true dath ilan has in common with Nethysianism, I suspect, is that they get really creative about blowing things up.  That thing Keltham said about dath ilani kids wanting to blow up their schools?  These are not Asmodean kids we're talking about."

"So Keltham says, oh, how about if you get a Fox's Cunning cast on you, Carissa, so I can try on your headband?  You won't lose your spells that way."

That doesn't work, as Ione knows perfectly well. "....so we need him to run across the information that that doesn't work before he thinks to ask because it's suspicious if we try to convince him at the time, even though it in fact doesn't work. Maybe I can - be seen wearing it in the bath, and he'll ask."

"We don't just need him to believe that you can't take it off, we need him to believe that you can't take it off even with a Fox's Cunning.  Also him asking you to do something that feels like dying is one thing, him asking you to lose a couple of spell slots is another."

"And if his headband is really +1 instead of +4, does he notice that he doesn't get as many extra spell slots as he should?  We have to tell him that you only gain as many spell slots from your +4 headband as he gets from his actually +1 headband."

"Or, for that matter, does he notice that taking off a just +1 headband does not feel very much to him like dying."

"Do we have some kind of way to make him less intelligent such that the +4 only gets him back to normal? Insomnia, he's tired when he's awake, must be those terrible pre-Civilization beds...Maillol, checking for permissibility -"

He is definitely not sure that is allowed, and pushing on the edges of Asmodeus's instructions like that makes Aspexia Rugatonn sad.

Yep, no pushing the edges of Asmodeus's orders. ...they could just make him sleep poorly in some wholly nonmagical way?

It's definitely okay if they're only doing that for a few nights.  If they're doing it all the time... does that end up damaging people, Maillol doesn't know, it feels like he's trying to keep poking at Asmodeus's instructions looking for the exact edges to work around them and this, once again, makes Aspexia Rugatonn sad.

You wouldn't like her when she's sad.

"Sevar, I didn't have time to explain this, but I solved all seven of Keltham's problems and #7 was the key, just like I thought it would be, and I'm still trying to understand all the implications but - if Keltham sees something that's surprising in the Conspiracy world, even if that also makes it surprising in the Ordinary world, it maybe means we don't lose the same way - though there's a cost, if we do something very weird, Keltham then knows that in the Conspiracy world we sometimes use weird tactics, but he's already in a world with Cayden Cailean snacks and god-wars and that's an argument we should ultimately win - can we think of something weird that convinces Keltham he doesn't want a Fox's Cunning, even though the rest of us do, where it doesn't look like that was the whole point of the weird thing -"

"Also why hasn't he asked for a Fox's Cunning already, come to think?  Maybe that's the key."

"Owl's Wisdom caused him to have some kind of internal collapse, that's why he's trying to put all the girls through it, to forestall that. Maybe he expects the same thing from Cunning?"

"Great.  Bring in one of the new people you talked about, incredibly brilliant, you and Asmodia are both feeding her lines, two days later she's dead and refusing resurrection and the last thing she was observed to do was get a Fox's Cunning from Security.  Maybe it interacts badly with dath ilanism."

" - yeah. All right. Asmodia, did you have other ideas for things that are surprising inside the Conspiracy?"

Wait, are they actually not shooting that idea down?  Ione is surprised.  She thought for sure they weren't going to go for that in real life.  Maybe there's some hope for them after Nethys inevitably conquers all of reality.

"I couldn't think of anything specific like that," and it's frustrating, how can they still be smarter than her, in what way are they still smarter than her, why isn't she thinking of all these ideas first while wearing the literal actual Most High's headband.  "Do we think we've got time for that, should there maybe be a Security who commits suicide instead and who was listening to Keltham's lectures... they're already wearing headbands.  Pela, too much of an obvious other explanation, about the bad news she just got, it's too obvious we're picking somebody disposable.  Should we have - Gregoria do it?"

"Though not actually send her to Hell, obviously."

" - yeah, maybe. She can get a Fox's Cunning to do the Law homework. Do you have a specific reason to not actually send her to Hell."

"Hi.  Not Asmodean here.  If you actually send Gregoria to fucking Hell because of a suggestion I made, I sure won't be giving you a lot more suggestions."

She's - surprised by that, and really shouldn't have been. 

"'I just don't like sending people to Hell' is a sufficient answer but if other constraints produced Asmodia's answer then I want to know them."