"Yeah, I don't know, if I was Lord Nethys I wouldn't exactly be trying to make this part easy on the Asmodeans.  But I am sure that Nethys would not have un-fun doctrines.  Seems like a fun god, you know?"

Once the heretic is gone, Pilar will raise her concerns about all of this work and discovery being stuff that Keltham could duplicate much faster on the second try, if he goes to Osirion.  Maybe they should be asking Keltham to slow down more and teach them more Law first, so they can benefit more from watching him do this?

" - that's a good point. I think there are a lot of advantages to having work underway on concrete things, though. And we might not have to hold on all that long before we can decisively defeat Osirion in a war - actually, let's have that as a category of project considerations we're tracking separately. What's the size of Cheliax's economic and military advantage, what's the amount of military technology Keltham now holds inside him to unleash fast, how close are we to the state where, if Keltham goes to Osirion, we can just conquer it? If spellsilver's a tenth as expensive, and we get a year's head start, then we can win a war before Osirion has the chance to do any spellsilver refining."

"Does 'we're tracking separately' possibly mean, in fact, 'Asmodia is tracking separately', because at some point I am going to start demanding valuable magic items from Cheliax or, or something I just feel like there should be something."

"I wanted to offer you a cookie, but Snack Service didn't think my motivations were pure enough."

"I am sure there is someone in Cheliax whose entire job is planning to win a war with Osirion if it comes up. I just want him here keeping track of how all this changes the considerations."

PL-timestamp:  Day 16 (12) / Late Night

The Possible Doctrines of Nethys, guessed by Ione Sala, Oracle of the Library's Curse, Chosen and Blessed of Lord Nethys and His Instrument:

1.  Nethys is god of knowledge.  Libraries are sacred places to Him.  To destroy or damage a library book is heresy takaral.  Acts of devotion to Nethys include: reading books, though they must actually be desired and enjoyed for their own sake; the discovery and invention of new knowledge of the world; the travel and discovery of other worlds beyond Golarion, or witnessing their strangeness brought here.

2.  Nethys is god of magic.  Knowing more magic makes you a better person.  Not all higher-circle wizards are superior to lower-circle wizards, however, and authority does not strictly follow power.  There are also matters of skill and research to consider, and matters of service and heresy towards Him.

3.  Nethys is god of destruction explosions.  The proper fate of all things is to explode.  Anything that doesn't explode will sooner or later change its shape and form, and become part of something else that does explode.  It is heresy to suggest that anything cannot or should not explode; but it is not heretical to make it to explode later rather than sooner, or explode in one manner rather than another.  Nethys's worshippers need not be eager to explode themselves.

4.  Nethys is god of madness diverse ways of thinking.  Madness can be seen as knowledge corrupted, insanity can be seen as a mind exploded, and so Nethys holds jurisdiction there as well.  The faithful of Nethys are granted dominion over madness as they are granted dominion over knowledge, and may, according to their own whim or kindness, choose to guard others from such, who do not see how their own minds are bound for explosion.

5.  Nethys is greatest of gods.  As the god of knowledge, He is the only being in the multiverse who actually knows what the fuck He is doing.  All other beings, mortals and gods alike, stumble in the dark, except insofar as the god of knowledge chooses to enlighten them of a role they have to play in one of Nethys's vast plans.  Nethys's eventual triumph over all other gods is inevitable, given His domain.

6.  Nethys is a kindly god who only hurts His worshippers as is needful to accomplish His goals, never for the sake of cruelty.  He does not shatter the minds of His believers unless they betray Him and refuse His evident intentions, and protects them from the grimmest fates while they are about His work, to maintain clear incentives for them.  At the end of their lives, those worthy of Him, which is not an unreasonably difficult bar to surpass, will go to His afterlife in which all knowledge is contained in vast libraries, there to study magic ever after with nobody torturing them even a little.

7.  The appropriate attitude of a Nethysian toward her inferiors within or without the faith, is not cruelty, but smugness in her superior knowingness.  Nethys is the greatest and smuggest of the gods.  All other beings know less than Him and are therefore inferior and deserving of His smugness.  When Nethys has inevitably conquered all that there is, His true faithful will get to tell everyone that they were right all along and they told them so.  Nobody will get turned into a paving stone.

8.  As the greatest and smuggest of the gods, knowing far more than His lessers, the touch of Nethys is too fearsome for a mortal mind to withstand.  Asmodeans lie and pretend that this is because Nethys is mad Himself and not merely god over madness, to discourage prayer to him.  This is not so; Nethys is simply greater and knows deadlier secrets than those other gods which can touch upon mortals more lightly.

9.  The ultimate end of the multiverse is that it will explode in the most glorious explosion that there has ever been.  Nethys and His faithful alone will know it and witness it, before they, too, having already learned all things, explode.

10.  Nethys's oracle is Chosen and Blessed of Nethys.  Whomsoever would injure Nethys's dignity through her or block her performance of her duties will find, despite all precautions they attempted to take, that Nethys has perfectly foreseen their futile evasions (see doctrine #1) and arranged an appropriately retributive explosion (see doctrine #3).

Submitted by Ione Sala to those Asmodeans concealing from her whatever actual doctrines of Nethys may exist, in the clear communication that to maintain Cheliax's Conspiracy she must maintain some coherent presentation of Nethysian doctrine to Keltham, and the rest of the Conspiracy must be consistent with it, and even so it is one more lie of alterCheliax and in her own opinion a needless one.

Ione will, in due consideration of the Conspiracy's purposes, attempt to construct, from this base, an alter-version, being the Doctrines of AlterNethys, such as may be more gently presented to Keltham.  She will endeavor there to conceal or downplay all points regarding Nethys's moral and strategic superiority over lesser gods, and those greater trends favoring Him.

Should, however, the entire basis of her guessed theology, be wrong in such fashion as may prove harmful to Cheliax's Conspiracy, Ione Sala encourages her superiors to swear and attest to her regarding the actual doctrines of her faith; that she may better serve Nethys, and, through serving Him alone, aid also Cheliax.

"Okay, before I authorize this lie, what actually is the doctrine of Nethys. I do not evaluate myself as at risk of being seduced by it."

"Nethys's doctrines as a mortal are obscured in hazes of history.  It is said that Nethys destroyed Ulunat, First Spawn of Rovagug, or granted the first Pharaoh of Osirion the power to destroy it, before he was a god.  It is said that he thought little of all who were not wizards."

"As a god, little is known of His doctrines because anyone that Nethys touches goes mad.  His Heralds, who on rare occasions have been known to send visions, seem to each have different concepts of what is Nethys's way.  In practice, the doctrines of the Church of Nethys are whatever the most powerful caster in Nethys's service says are the doctrines.  Currently that is Nefreti Clepati, who, much like Nethys, is widely believed to be both omniscient and mad.  She is furthermore reputed to be incredibly, incredibly annoying about it."

"Nethys's domains are knowledge, magic, destruction, and madness."

"Well, that's not the most encouraging god to be meddling in our project. I'll tell Ione this is approved, then.

Is there a plan to stop Nefreti Clepati showing up."

"If there were, it would be the task of gods more than mortals, I think."

PL-timestamp:  Day 17 (13) / Morning

All right, Keltham is in fact still feeling a bit burned from yesterday's MANIACAL SCIENCE marathon.

Possibly there are going to be some suddenly-scheduled off-hours this morning.

How are people looking at breakfast?

Chipper. There's very good pastries, and the sun is finally shining (it's a new moon.)

So, what if, hypothetically, everybody were to take this morning off.

There would be no complaints here.

"I think there's some important person Maillol wants you to know about but I don't think they're so important you can't tell them to hang around until evening."

Or late morning, at least.  Keltham feels like he would like to spend at least the next hour not thinking very much.  Possibly with having somebody else hanging around being visibly very nice to him, like by peeling grapes for him, or a footrub, or something.  Those being two of the items on the classic list of things you can ask a dath ilani romantic partner to do when you've built up an unreasonable amount of social credit with them.

Presumably this person is Yaisa, since nobody else on his list of existing relationships would have had any significant downtime of their own since yesterday evening.

"You could ask several girls, and then get two simultaneous footrubs and grapes peeled. I'm not too tired to pamper the most important person in the world for a little while."

...all right.

Sure.

If that's allowed.

He doesn't feel like it should be, but if that's allowed, it sounds... warm.

"Yaisa, Meritxell, come take care of Keltham with me, he's feeling in need of a refreshing break."

"If you'd just say 'for two silver' then you'd avoid making him even more stressed," says Yaisa, "and we'd have less work to do."

"I am Keltham's; no one else could have that of me at any price. ...except Abrogail, who probably could, if Keltham didn't exist. I have official permission to not try to fit numbers on it yet. You can have two silver, if you want them. Meritxell just wants to be acknowledged as one of Keltham's best lovers for this sort of thing, paying her two silvers wouldn't work either."