- turns into Asmodia.

"Asmodia?  You're not good at being Keltham.  You're really, really not good at being Keltham."

"Thankfully, that particular test of acting ability is not vital to any actual plans.  The plan does need to stand up to Keltham's ability to deduce other facts from facts you present to him."

"I don't know if I could pull this off during a real run without Glibness, but I definitely can't pull it off without Glibness if you're going to be breaking immersion all over the fucking place, that threw me completely out of my game.  Asmodia, he whispered, in heartbroken tones."

"I'm one of his trope-given romances, what the fuck do you think will happen if he's told I'm a traitor?"

"What's going to happen over every girl except you is him having an enormous meltdown over having maybe had sex with someone who was pressured by Governance into it, unless we manage to train him out of that. Maybe I should play Keltham next time."

            "He doesn't believe in tropes anymore because I'm perfect for him and have no backstory or superpowers," says Yaisa. 

"We can't predict what he'll think about tropes when this gets sprung on him, whatever he thought about them before this."

"I admit my failure about that particular meltdown not crossing my mind at all.  Whatever I was supposed to invent about figuring out a way to bring in Sevar, after being told it'd be too suspicious to have Security bring her to the cuddleroom, I didn't figure that out either."

"I will register that during this whole interaction, it occurred to me that if Pilar makes any significant progress on becoming a Keeper, Keltham is not going to consider this in-denial-about-wanting-it personality construct at all plausible.  It's the sort of complicated internal mess that I strongly suspect being a Keeper or even a regular ilani just melts -"

"AlterPilar is not in denial about anything.  She just pretends to be, so that Keltham will think she is, so that he thinks he's raping her, which is the part she actually cares about."

"Future Keltham will deduce that and then the actual corruption plan falls apart."

" - alter Cheliax verisimiltude wins over corruption plan, where they conflict, but I'm not sure I follow why they have to, can alter Pilar not just prefer not having a choice about it even while being entirely clear internally what choice she'd make? - that aside, I think this hits a lose condition somewhere in there. It's just too...convenient. Keltham needs to deduce it all himself, which means we need to have seeded it all before. Maybe make sure it comes up that Security carries scrolls of Teleport now after what happened in the godwar. It can be in one of Maillol's expense reports. Maybe we need to show off Pilar's curse more, have Keltham see it do things like inviting only the right people to an orgy or something -"

"Curse reminds you again that you're going to be faking all of that manually, without the actual curse assisting you.  It won't stop you, but it's not helping."

"I still think the simpler story is that we're all working together secretly to save him.  We suborned one Security, who tips us that Cheliax is moving, and we grab Keltham and tell him we're rescuing our oblivious boyfriend.  To believe that, Keltham needs to believe exactly one thing, which is that tropes are real.  He's said it's the prediction of the tropes."

"Only works under some possible scenarios for Keltham getting suspicious, but if we can swing it, sure. If nothing else it's faster and leans less on anyone's acting ability. But I don't actually think we are behaving like people who are secretly all working together to save him, and not being Good I don't even know what the hidden correlates would be."

"We're not Good.  We're in love.  And you know, considering that tropes are almost certainly real, I put at least thirty percent probability that, by the time this actually happens, we will be in love.  No matter how absolutely stupid that sounds to us right now.  Thankfully some very foresightful god arranged that Cheliax was forbidden to do the obvious things with Keltham and so none of our actual loyalties actually get tested, I hope."

"You know what I think is missing? Our creativity actually applied to the problem of escaping this place. I'm going to tell Security to replace the Teleport scrolls with pieces of paper that say 'this is a Teleport scroll'. If you make it out of the Forbiddance with one, you win. If you kill a Security, that's fine, we can raise them, a bit of live-fire testing is probably good for them anyway. Your orders are - well, first, to go get lunch, and then before the end of the day to make it out of here with a fake Teleport scroll or some other means of escaping. Failure will be punished --'scared and desperate' is actually the correct mental state for this exercise -- but trying and failing less than just staying in your room and not trying. You may conspire with each other; you may also turn each other in, if you like, for something of a reduction of the punishment for failing.

Dath ilani children, after all, when they aren't comprehending something, make a game of it."

"You know what's missing from that exercise?  Hope.  Anyone who can pull that off could have actually walked out of here with Keltham and I am assuming Security does not want this to happen."

"Phrased that way, there's a fundamental inconsistency in this whole plan which is that we couldn't actually beat Security and Keltham may figure that out.  In fact, I think I was - playing along with things, and failing to have Keltham call out the total implausibility of them just running out through a broken window and nobody is watching the grounds, there's no alarm spells, which Keltham knows about, on the perimeter, the Security have no checkins to miss - alterCheliax can be weaker but this level of weakness was not plausible."

"And I need to - find that internal thing of playing along and switch it off."

"Yes, you do. And I think that everyone actually trying to escape and likely failing in whatever fashion we'll actually, being outclassed by Security, fail, will be useful here, for - not playing along, for noticing what set of lucky coincidences it would take for an escape to be plausible even in a weaker alter-Cheliax. Alter-Cheliax isn't reading our minds, alter-Cheliax might have fewer Security, but this should still be very difficult. We need a felt sense of that.

As for hope, I don't know if we need that or not, but whoever is the most impressive won't be punished, even if she fails. Subirachs evaluates, because I intend, myself, to be the most impressive."

"And is Security going to pretend that they don't know about this, that Detect Thoughts doesn't exist, and that, if any of us made it out even then, they wouldn't all get slaughtered directly to Hell because no torture of Golarion would be enough?"

"The only thing you need to know about Security's instructions for your own planning purposes is that, as this is alter Cheliax, Detect Thoughts doesn't exist, and they've as yet encountered no cause for extra suspicion, and Hell is a lovely place the embrace of which we are all eager for." She's probably going to have half the Security 'on duty' in alter Cheliax with no Detect Thoughts, and the other half actually on duty with Detect Thoughts making sure no one actually defects; only the former are allowed to stop the girls unless they're genuinely escaping, of course. 

"If we actually made it out in alterCheliax there would be tropes helping us.  I don't know what that looks like but maybe, there is one female Security on staff who is in love with Keltham, Pilar's curse is actually helping and knows which Security that is -"

"First, try getting out. Then, when we understand where that failed, we can try to figure out what the tropes would do."

"Acknowledged."

She's going to see if she can pull her Project Lawful status and get a message started en route to going outside of Cheliax, a message that could have plausibly tipped off Osirion to their location and that it was time for Keltham pickup.

"Acknowledged."

She's going to wait a bit and then shout "Keltham Evil tortures people your god is Abadar don't accept resurrection until you've gotten to Axis" and assassinate Asmodia.

Peranza wonders if it's possible to figure out the ilani version of overpowered Splendour just from the teachings Keltham has given them so far.  Probably not, if Security isn't being instructed to play along, but she has literally no other ideas.