"And I tried to get further advice from Nefreti and she said, and I quote, 'you're thinking too far ahead, and not far enough', which I could have gotten from a copper-seer."

"I have it at ninety percent she'll help, if Osirion's actually at risk of conquest by Cheliax."

"What does the remaining ten percent look like?"

"She's following a fairly detailed plan from Nethys and can't step out of it."

"Luckily for us, if Nethys has a fairly detailed plan to leverage all this to produce lots of very big explosions, it looks more likely Keltham knows what to do with a scroll of Wish and Cheliax knows it."

"Can we - spy on his lessons to Cheliax, try to directly learn the arts he'll be making them richer with, set a fair payment aside for him contractually until he can claim it -"

"Project's a hard nut to crack. We got confirmation that Sala and Pineda are both in it, despite not having sold their souls, but almost everyone else in the building is committed to Hell. And Cheliax's style of governance imposes many economic disadvantages on them but it does mean it is incredibly expensive to convince anyone to spy on them. All the same.... if Cheliax wants to get rich, they'll have to bring in more people sooner or later, and the contract suggests they're ready for it to be sooner. And as soon as there's someone who we can meaningfully offer Axis..."

Merenre shifts his beads, lost in thought. 

"The poor kid," Hemaka says, when it's been quiet a while. "He just - wants to make our world rich -"

"He probably wants a lot of other things. I just hope Cheliax can't give them to him."

PL-timestamp:  Day 13 (10) / Still Nighttime

"Keltham's going to ask whether he should forge ahead at full speed or go slower so as not to leave lots of broken heretics in his wake. I think we want our answer to be 'forge ahead'. More time isn't going to help him much on the broken heretics front since he doesn't even know what specific belief-collapses he's protecting against, and for our hiring purposes it'd be useful to know sooner what share of people shatter on contact with dath ilanism even if they've sold their souls and been warned in advance.

However, I am interested in any opinions to the contrary. In particular, you are each in fact very valuable, and if you think you're near shattering that is a significant strategic consideration we'd want and might be sufficient reason to tell Keltham to slow down."

"75% that Keltham isn't willing to forge ahead as fast as possible after the first time... what exactly happens to a broken heretic?  I'll also be the one to mention that, for example, sending them to Hell, or putting them in a torture chamber to try to break back, substantially increases the chance that Keltham eventually tells Osirion all about how you make lots and lots and lots of fire to launch things into space or just, you know, get rid of other things on the ground that made you very angry."

"A consideration I'd weight more highly hearing it from someone who isn't a heretic and would only say it if it were true.

The Queen has said already that arrangements have been made in Hell such that anyone who deliberately betrays us will suffer for it as much as possible; anyone who wakes up one night and realizes they hate Asmodeus and want to defect, but who in sensible self-preservation comes and reports this to us, will be unharmed. Probably we'll have you tell Keltham as much of the truth as possible and join the dropout girls, drawing a generous salary, under a Dominate Person but not one that affects you when Keltham's not around.

It is my hope that some of you might find in yourself an instinct of disapproval at that, a sense that you are not a friend to your hypothetical heretic self and don't like the idea of her living in luxury; to see yourself as you'd see any other similarly flawed subordinate is a useful skill, and I highly recommend it. But no one can matter so much I'd risk Keltham to make sure they get what they deserve. 

The precise measures Security will take in the case of a girl who turns on us are not to be known to you. I predict they are adequate."

"Security, tell Sevar my thoughts are and were sincere.  This isn't alterCheliax, you don't need to rely on reading my facial expression to figure out if I'm Cooperating or not."

"And, Prediction."

Message to Sevar:  Order in which the non-Special girls on the Project break:  Tonia, Peranza, Gregoria, Meritxell.

Security confirms that Sala is sincere, if very contemptuous.  Security also notes that he'd bet money on Peranza breaking before Tonia, judging by how hard Peranza is currently telling herself that she's fine and has nothing to worry about.

"I don't think you're deceiving me, I think you're deceiving yourself. Or being careless with arguments that lead places you like, at least.

Tonia. If you were going to become a broken heretic, what thought process would it probably be over."

Who DOES that to someone

Tonia sits there in blankfaced horror for several thousand years, maybe several million years, long enough the universe should really have ended and been replaced by whatever will succeed it. Inexplicably everyone is still here staring at her.  

".....I don't want to have sex with Keltham?"

"Not actually a problem. If he starts getting corrupted in a direction where it might be a problem we can substitute an impersonator for you anyway., if he's going down that slope we want to make sure we are very competently rewarding it."

"I don't like it when you ask me questions?"

"Come on, Tonia, that's not even something people sometimes say is heretical."

Tonia wishes very very dearly this had never happened to her and she'd just gone to the Worldwou - maybe that's an answer? "I wish I'd - not been chosen for this - and gone to the Worldwound -"

"And not sold your soul, and had at least the fantasy of escaping Hell, and been doing something that even paladins do, and that therefore appeases whatever Good impulses there are inside you?"

That sounds very bad and terrible and heretical???? "...no?"

"Thinking, 'wow, I wish I wasn't going to Hell' is not the kind of thing that is going to cause a catastrophic breakdown or make you someone none of the rest of us can ever trust. I have met actual clerics of Asmodeus who wish they weren't going to Hell."