"Horrible past personal trauma that I outgrew over the last nine days, once I was out as a Nethysian and everybody accepted that about me because I saved all their asses from Nidal?  Nobody else on the alter-Project has a horrible past personal trauma, right?"

"None disclosed yet."

"Okay.  I told a boy once, he'd been raised on his parents' stories of Old Cheliax and sincerely believed that if he turned me into the authorities I was done for, now that Asmodeus was running the country.  He told me that, I correctly read his sincerity and stupidly believed him and was too scared to ask any authorities, he blackmailed me into sexual service for a couple of years, I eventually broke loose... not sure how, I probably didn't just kill him... I ended up thinking that was what men just wanted and tried to offer it to Keltham, but I now realize this was probably some kind of lingering insanity and actually Keltham can just have a normal relationship with me."

"Iiiiii don't like it but I'm having a hard time predicting specific Keltham objections. I couldn't even predict Keltham's specific objections to the concept of military discipline so I shouldn't expect to get them here."

"I don't like it, and I want something better but I don't know - what's better."

"No, I do, it's what's more normal.  What happens to more people than this happens to?  In alterCheliax, I realize it happens all the time in realCheliax."

"This is way too close to being a trope.  If it happened to alterIone, she should be hiding it, and presenting Keltham with some more normal story, that we can reveal this trope hiding behind, if at some point we want him to believe in tropes so his girlfriends can extract him from the Project."

"One of her parents got executed for being a Nethysian under the old regime? And she knows the new one says it's different but she didn't really believe it until it came out and they were like 'yeah, fine'?"

"I like it more but why did oldCheliax execute Nethysians?  RealTaldor doesn't, as far as I know?"

"I don't think it does, no. The ....Church of Nethys sided with a claimant to the throne and the retaliation included retaliation against the Church? Is there precedent for that in Taldor?"

"Not in the histories I've read, except for the part where Taldor is so big, so old, and so internally divided that there's precedent for anything?"

"I'm not sure about the theology on this, my actual sense of Nethys is that we don't really do the thing about siding with throne claimants.  Side with a wizard, sure, or side with a library.  The Church of Nethys ran a library in my hometown of Wark-by-Laecastel, the Count of Laecastel decided he liked the librarian or didn't like the books, stuff happened, every registered Nethysian in the city got executed..."

"No, that wouldn't make me scared when I got to Ostenso, I don't think?  It wouldn't be general prejudice against Nethysians, everybody thinking Nethysians are alter-Manohar."

"A general prejudice against Nethysians in alterCheliax does seem plausible.  I must personally say that some of your early charms were lost on me after I had to construct a universe which would somehow contain you inside it."

"The old regime banned the church after some incidents that aren't spoken of so that no one gets any ideas, and even under the new regime you're supposed to have gone in to promise under Truth Spell you're not doing various classes of thing like Wishes, and your parents were scared and had preferred to practice in secret - though not on anything dangerous?"

"If I'd been a Nethysian my whole life I'd damn well find out, under the new regime, what the incidents were... I guess maybe not if I was hiding and didn't dare ask suspicious questions."

"Let's go ask Maillol right now, says Keltham.  We don't do unspecified incidents on my wall.  We always know ourselves specifically what happened even if our alter-selves don't."

"Let's first figure out what alter-Ione believed and then we can figure out what was true, I think the second part's going to be substantially easy especially as she can be wrong."

"Some Nethysian exploded the wrong person, I might guess?  I don't feel like I'd guess.  I'd want to know.  Nethys is god of knowledge, not god of guesses.  AlterIone would ask Maillol herself, though maybe not this fast."

"OldCheliax required all Nethysians to be registered and was sometimes known to kill them en masse if a noble felt like it.  Ione's mother thought it was safer not to register.  She was wrong."

"She'd probably have died when Ione was too young to remember, though?  So that wouldn't have traumatized her much if at all?  Do non-Asmodeans get attached to parents that way even if they're too young to remember?"

"Don't ask me that, I was just thinking we should actually kill my mother for consistency purposes."

"We should have a non-Chelish person on call for these sorts of things. Ione would've been...four, if it was right before the war? I don't think four year olds have emotional attachments unless you're trying to raise them dependent on you for some reason."

Asmodia is now inspecting her wall.  That remark about Ione wanting her mother dead sparked a memory, she'd heard something about Ione's parents before this...

"Moot point, this doesn't fly.  Ione, you told Keltham over a meal that your parents were a couple of low-level bureaucrats who wizard-tracked you because they didn't know what to do with you."

"Oh, right.  Sorry, I -"

"Don't fucking OH RIGHT me, if you fuck up like that during a real conversation everybody on this Project DIES."

"Well done, Asmodia. Ione, spend some time tonight reading everything you've said to Keltham. 

Is there a way to convince Keltham the project does not have transcripts from before the Zon-Kuthon war, because the copies sent out were destroy-on-receipt and the copies on site were destroyed by the attack?"

"We'd probably take... let's call it a 4-to-1 hit on Conspiracy, as I'd guess Keltham's guesses.  I'm hard-pressed to guess if that's better or worse than trying to subtly edit the transcript instead."

"I think we can probably get away with claiming that there's only transcripts of Keltham's lectures, plus a bunch of particular not-very-detailed reports that people submitted about private conversations that Keltham knows we know about or that would've been written up in alterCheliax.  I can write up outlines of those, but people should actually write their own reports, so the tone will be right and people will know what's in them."

"Ah... this should theoretically include the Queen, if she would have reported on any of her own interactions."

"I'll put in the report to Egorian that we're compiling alter Cheliax documentation. In your judgment does the Queen of alter Cheliax submit such."

"Keltham pitched her on what the Project could do.  I think the alterQueen probably reports something about that, especially if there was anything in there she hadn't already heard.  I admit, I'm having some trouble remembering in my own head what Keltham said versus what got picked up in his thoughts, most of the really interesting and reportable stuff was in his thoughts..."