"Another error I anticipate is getting too excited to be in a high-stakes project for the fate of the world and perhaps also Hell, and coming to think of yourself as the main character of such a story. Part of the Project is seducing Keltham, so as to show him what Asmodeanism has to offer that Abadar does not; power, and cruelty, and service not traded-for-at-market-rates but won and held. If everyone is seeking their individual importance then many of you, like many of the original girls, will throw yourselves at Keltham seeking to be the one who awakens him to Asmodeanism.

If that is not what you would do in alter-Cheliax, you must not do it. If you don't actually find him attractive, you must not do it.  Until you've satisfied us you understand alter-Cheliax fully, seducing Keltham, or trying to have an interesting backstory for him, must meet my and Asmodia's approval. You may not present to Keltham a face any stranger than you have in the real world, adjusted for alter-Cheliax frequencies of traits occurring; he will be suspicious, if everyone around him seems to want him when they weren't selected for that, if everyone around him has interesting traits that ought, by rights, to be very rare. 

Many of you will sit in the back of the classroom, do the math exercises, do a good job and ask insightful questions, and never feature in a single report to Egorian. This is a commendable trajectory, you will be amply rewarded for it, and it is much much better than trying to get Keltham's attention and fucking up."

"The final possibility I anticipate is betrayal. Errors, we are attempting to handle with a light hand, because you are valuable, and it is our desire to preserve your value. You will be corrected because it is important that you be right. You will learn and improve and, hopefully, you will play your part in strengthening Cheliax and Hell. If something is necessary for your growth and confidence and success, you are reasonably likely to get it. 

If you deliberately and intentionally try to sell this project out, self-interest and consideration for your value will take a backseat to ensuring that you regret that as much as it is possible for you, or for a lump of bleeding flesh with distant memories of being you, to regret anything. Other countries would love Keltham, and would pay you generously to deliver him; you will not survive trying that, and if you somehow do Hell will still make sure, when you reach them, that it was not worth it. Her Majesty has arranged already that anyone who intentionally betrays this project will suffer as much as possible, forever, even if this cuts into the profit Hell would otherwise have of you.

I don't expect you to believe this, even after I just said that on this project I won't lie to you, but I say that because I dislike it; one of my own pet heresies is that Hell is wasteful, and could make better use of even the most contemptible and useless of souls. I do not desire that anyone make the kind of mistake for which you will suffer forever. It is not a fate I will condemn you to gladly. I am warning you so that you can avoid that. 

It is absolutely an order I will give, if you do betray us. If I got squeamish, Her Infernal Majesty would order it for me, and I don't like wasting her time.

Are there any questions."

Security reports that they have rather a lot of internal questions, with several people thinking things along the lines of 'I'm already thinking true things and am a good Asmodean', 'This is even more heresy than I was personally warned by the Most High to expect', some amount of nervousness by those who came more voluntarily that they have in fact made poor life choices, and nobody who thinks it especially prudent to voice any of those questions out loud in context.

Most of them are planning to feel out other project members, to determine if they can how they are meant to react to all this, rather than directly confronting Sevar about anything, which would be merely stupid.  Nobody is planning any overt disobedience, which would also be merely stupid.

It has been successfully pressed into them that Cheliax considers this project important and they are not to fuck it up.  If nothing else, the fact that Sevar is still alive after saying all this in front of Security is making an impression.

About as good as you can expect, really. "All yours," she says to Asmodia, and heads out; she'll still watch, obviously, but they'll be more able to learn not in the presence of someone they've just been informed is very important.

PL-timestamp:  Day 17 (13) / Yes It's Still Nighttime
PL-placestamp:  Osirion / Black Dome

"Prediction markets work," Merenre says, ecstatic. "Ninety percent chance they have them in Keltham's world of origin and the rest is mostly 'they have something in that genre but even better which I'm not thinking of'."

The Pharaoh of Osirion has a really appalling headache, because of Abadar directly communicating detailed information again. He's grateful for the detailed information but sort of vaguely wishing that 'conduit of the will and knowledge of Abadar in the Material Plane' and 'person in charge of running Abadar's country' were separate jobs. And that he had the second one. 

"The Chelish prediction markets are even smaller than ours and ours only work a little bit, they're not really better than just having you guess. And Cheliax doesn't have a you. I hope."

"Oh, yes, the Chelish prediction markets are probably doomed," Merenre says cheerfully. "Unless there's something substantial missing from what You conveyed, they don't have good liquidity, and they're far too small for anyone to earn good money by spending all their time betting on prediction markets, which I think is the key ingredient for prediction markets to be better than useless. The only thing Cheliax is achieving is making themselves perfectly legible to You, and doing their small part to rebuild Prophecy out of contracts so as to restore it to Abadar. But they almost certainly got the idea from Keltham, and that is almost certainly because Keltham's world has it; it's one of the early things you'd reinvent, if you were reinventing, and it's not something you'd invent like this from scratch if you weren't accustomed to it. So prediction markets work, which is why Keltham told Cheliax about them, and Cheliax knows they're ill-equipped to lie to Keltham, which is why they now set up their own presumably-secret markets on whatever the markets are on."

"I, uh, actually think that the interesting part of the picture here is what the markets are on. 'whether Yaisa ends up with an incredibly interesting background or problem or superpowers on account of tropes, since she apparently matched one of Keltham's fetishes.' 

I mean, what????"

"I see no further than what I said."

"What is a tropes."

"Have we called in the Chelish specialist?"

"They'd never heard of it."

"Is it a...sex...thing? It's got to be a sex thing."

"Do you want a market on that?"

"Are we sure that this isn't just leaking our intelligence directly to all of the gods - I was not aware that prediction markets were an avenue of vulnerability like that -"

"Only We can see the mortal world so clearly where it is engaged in contracts and bets, and only through Us can Abadar convey what We see." Otherwise this could keep happening to SOMEONE ELSE. 

"And it's very costly, obviously. We're spending thousands of years of normal-intervention here. Another god willing to pay such extraordinary costs might be able to spy on us, but not through the markets; They'd see through whatever lens They see through best. That said, 'are 'tropes' a sex thing' does not sound like a useful market in light of the limitations of low-liquidity markets previously discussed."

"How about, uh, 'whether Cayden Cailean is actually backing the Project in exchange for a Hell that Cayden Cailean considers improved, or if Cayden Cailean / Pilar's curse is planning to outright betray the Project at some point, or if something else is going on.'"

"They're plausibly right about that one, something else is going on. Cayden Cailean wouldn't tolerate Hell in anything like its present form. I think they're operating from the assumption that Keltham's presence means they already win, but I'm actually at less than 10%, on them winning. They can't sustain this for long. So Cayden Cailean's unlikely to be negotiating the terms of His surrender. I don't think He can use his oracle as a slave towards values she doesn't have, it's not in His nature. As for why He's helping fence out Iomedae - I have no idea."

"I think it has something to do with Nefreti's songbird story."

There's a long silence.

"I have no further analysis; perhaps if We needed to do fewer things that cause terrific headaches I'd be able to think more."

"The songbird is...Cheliax? And Cayden Cailean is - metaphor-Cheliax, which sent the songbird to metaphor-Osirion, which is...Asmodeus?"

"We have a pretty strong consensus in the direction of the songbird being Keltham."

"I strongly suspect that trying to make sense of Nefreti Clepati not only won't work but is the kind of thing that can't work; if she wanted us to understand what's going on she would have told us what was going on."

"Then why tell us the songbird thing at all??"

"I don't know! It was almost like she wasn't talking to Us. This is worsening my headache. What's the third market."