"Instead of from scratch, which would make them entities that had values different from those of selfish humans. I can try not to speak in your terms, but it's true, about Chaotic Evil humans, that they don't care about coordination and still won't kill someone for a copper piece, because killing people is unpleasant, if you're a human with human values, even if you are one who is very selfish as humans go."

"It's unpleasant because the ancestors of humans who went around killing other humans tended to get killed themselves, and so had fewer children to carry their heritable tendencies, and eventually the survivors' children were people with innate tendencies not to kill people even when it seemed like there was a reason.  Because it just seemed unpleasant.  Stuff like that is how the ingredients for Good got into humans at all in the first place.  We would not say, on our terms, that finding it unpleasant to kill people is sufficient to be Good, but that I would find it unpleasant is an instance of how I value a habit of coordination that allows people to live together even though I am selfish."

"Set that aside, because it's drawing on Law I haven't lectured on as yet.  It sounds like Asmodeus was another being of pure Evil with no humanlike goals in him, on this story.  Obvious Additional Questions then include why Asmodeus appears, on the surface of things, to be helping Cheliax, and how the ancient Good beings ended up wanting to help humans, if they had no humanity in them."

"The Church of Iomedae holds that actually the values of ancient Good beings are alien too, which is why you need Iomedae, who was once human. The Church of Sarenrae would say instead that those ancient Good gods that valued humans drew more strength from them, and won ancient wars. The Church of Desna would say that Desna values, for every agent, that it attain its own priorities whatever they are, which makes Her friendly to humans, though also friendly to demons and useless in the war on Evil. The Church of Dou-Bral, when it existed, would have said that Dou-Bral values joy and pleasure, which happen to be things humans value too.

All would say that Asmodeus was, of many agents like Him, the one whose values happened by coincidence to overlap the most with the values of humans, and thus that those Good powers concerned with humans backed Him for that reason. I think the Church of Asmodeus tells it differently, emphasizing that Asmodeus bargained cleverly with Good, winning their support in exchange for an ongoing commitment to their concerns. Again I know little; it was before Iomedae's time, and none of the ancient gods can speak to humans easily."

"Desna's strategies aren't parsing for me.  If she purely values beings obtaining their own priorities, she should be engaging in wars of extermination to eliminate everything whose behavior tends to interfere with other beings obtaining their priorities, in hopes of a much longer-term better future from her standpoint.  Depending on the exact form of her values, Desna might try to exterminate everything that has priorities that are hard to obtain, so the future will be full of things with priorities that are easy to obtain instead.  Even if Desna can't get everything she wants, because of other gods, she should still be backing Iomedae in a war on demons, if she singlemindedly and not in a human way wants beings to have their priorities obtained."

"That is a reasonable criticism of Desna; I don't know how She would answer it. If I had to guess I might guess something like that destroying an entity against its will is so undesirable that most plans that feature it won't measure out well. In practice She doesn't try to exterminate humans or demons."

"What are Asmodeus's goals?"

"Asmodeus in His concern for contracts wants Hell to be prosperous and invent lots of things and develop complex financial instruments, and participates in such so as to grow His own wealth; Asmodeus in His concern for power wants through His wealth to command the efforts of others for His own benefit; Asmodeus in His concern for Law wants the flaws of mortals to be corrected that He may reveal to them more of His domain and that they will be easier to contract with."

"Asmodeus isn't obviously benefiting in any way from what he's doing for Cheliax; it's been represented to me that Asmodeus prefers it when I exercise power over Carissa, which suggests that he doesn't want power to be exercised for himself, so much as power of anyone over anyone.  Similarly, Asmodeus's concern for contracts sounds like he wants anyone to make contracts with anyone, not like he wants them to form contracts benefiting Asmodeus in particular.  Is Asmodeus a god of Evil or an Evil god?"

"When people in Cheliax have values closer to those of Asmodeus, and conduct themselves more like how Asmodeus does, that strengthens Him; He can see them more clearly and anticipate their actions at lower cost. More of them will have the habits of mind suited to being His clerics, so He can select among a higher quality pool, and when it is necessary for Him to communicate, communication is much less costly with an aligned agent. It is the desire of Asmodeus that the people of Cheliax be Evil for His own benefit, and He doesn't care if they're Evil in ways that don't align them more with Him.

- Iomedaens disapprove of this. You might seek an account from one who approves of it, for balance."

"Don't know where I'd find one of those in Cheliax.  Tell me about the Iomedans' disapproval."

"There is a city in Abaddon called Awaiting Consumption. They raise humans there, in cages, and when they are grown they set some aside for breeding the next generation, and they consume them, their souls included. By some estimates there are more humans there than in any city in Golarion.

Asmodeus does not think this is His problem. Because of the way He raises people, in Cheliax, they're less likely than people in other place to pledge their lives to the battle against it. But it must be stopped, and Good is the only force in the universe that will do it."

Pretty clear why Carissa didn't tell him that.  Keltham thinks he approves of the decision.  Good thing that he strongly suspects that what happened to Keltham out of dath ilan in his plane crash is something that works for anyone anywhere, or that news might be enough to shake him -

Keltham catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his mind, a thought about Zon-Kuthon's afterlife and Owl's Wisdom.  He's pretty sure of what it says.  There isn't much need to think it.

"What was the plan for taking out Awaiting Consumption and Zon-Kuthon's afterlife?  You talk about there needing to be someone to pledge their lives to the battle against it; out of dath ilan we would say you needed someone to win."

(That is, of course, the teaching of the ACTUAL Iomedae, concisely enough expressed there that a flicker of her attention alights briefly on the room.)

"The original plan began a hundred years ago with Aroden's manifestation on Golarion, and went wrong when He was murdered and prophecy shattered. He was an older and more powerful god; His death left Iomedae alone in the fight, and responsible also for containing the Worldwound. We will regroup, eventually, and marshal the forces to attack again Abaddon and Zon-Kuthon's afterlife, but right now our resources are barely adequate to not be destroyed ourselves. It is our hope that the wisdom of your Lawful Good society could change that."

Okay, check the obvious simple paths to victory to see why they don't work.  "Somebody mentioned to me that a misphrased Wish spell could produce a flaming crater a Teleport radius across, which I think is seven hundred miles or something like that?  If they weren't mistaken or exaggerating, that's a fairly respectably-sized explosion even for my Civilization.  What goes wrong if the plan is, say, sending a suicide volunteer into Awaiting-Consumption and doing that?  And if they rebuild the city, do it again."

"In a god's domain, magic works as that god intends; Awaiting Consumption is part of the domain of Urgathoa, goddess of gluttony, and She would not permit our magic to work in Her lands."

"Huh.  Why was there any hope at all then, barring new fundamental discoveries in magic?"

"Well, Iomedae'll probably have to kill Urgathoa first, but gods do succeed at that sort of thing sometimes."

"Do enormous explosions help with that at all?  Strictly nonmagical ones, say, if the problem is that magic per se stops working."

"Nonmagical explosions...well, they might kill all the captives presently in Awaiting Consumption. I don't know that she would be able to prevent that."

"Thing that explodes a lot as soon as anybody tries to nullify the magic on it, or after a few seconds if nobody does.  Can you teleport it into Awaiting Consumption from a safe distance?"

"...maybe. The explosion itself is still nonmagical?"

"Correct."

"I think that is at least likely enough to work that we would do it if we knew how."

It can't possibly be this easy to get Keltham to teach them weaponry.