"The thought that I had - after seeing how much you couldn't be the one to decide your own punishments -"

"Well, it came to me while I was reviewing the transcript of what you said to the new candidates.  About how, I forget your exact words, they might need to unlearn old habits of Cheliax, and consider that you might be Lawful enough that your words to them were actually true.  It's forbidden to suggest out loud that your superiors are lying to you, it isn't wise to think it too much... and that makes it hard to notice or even imagine that what your superiors are saying is true."

"What if Hell's instructions to you are not meant to work against your own interests?  What if you're not Irori and can't succeed in perfecting yourself without divine aid?  I think if you were to leave Asmodeus and walk the path of Irori, you would need to learn to punish yourself, with only nothingness above you.  And to survive that, if you could survive it at all, you would need to find the part of yourself that can never punish yourself enough, if the judgment is left to your own hands, and tear that out of your soul -"

"Or you could leave your punishments to your superiors.  Maybe it's not the case that you'd be better off with Irori and you're not allowed to think that.  Maybe Irori's Way is actually not the best path for you; a path that you might have been tempted to punish yourself into walking, if left to your own devices, but a path you cannot walk as yourself and remain whole.  What if Hell's instructions to you are not meant to work against your own interests?  It is heretical to think otherwise; that may make it hard to notice when it is actually true."

"That was all of my foolish clever thought."

Oh.

Carissa feels slightly dizzy; it is strange to realize you were lying to yourself and hadn't noticed. 

'remember that you are not Irori' is an instruction you would give to an Asmodean whether or not they were like Irori, whether or not that path was one they could walk. Because of course walking it means not being Asmodean, and possibly breaking, within you, that which makes you usable in Hell. If anything 'remember that you are not Irori' is maybe an instruction you'd more give to an Asmodean who is capable of being like Irori, since otherwise, why not let them try and fail? 

But there is a good reason not to let Carissa try and fail, namely that she's needed for this whole operation. And - maybe Asmodeus doesn't actually want his useful servants smashed apart on the rocks of their own idiocy, so He warns them against it, and if they listen, good, and if they don't, then their destruction is wholly the product of their disobedience, which seems - pleasing, somehow, to Carissa, in a way that is perhaps the shadow of how Asmodeus feels about it. 

Maybe she doesn't just need to learn to wield submission as a tool to entice Keltham, maybe she actually needs to believe in it. 

How would she tell?

Well, she could try it and see if she becomes more able to accomplish Asmodeus's goals. The fundamental-assumption of Keltham's lecture this morning, that she's pretty sure half the students missed because he never stated it, so obvious it was to him - that going out and checking is the way to arrive at truth. Lots of smart people disagree with that; they argue that truth is found in mathematics, in logic, in theories, not in the mud where you never know anything for sure and have to do a lot of math just to guess how unsure you are. But dath ilan didn't even bother teaching it to their young children, because it was so intrinsic to everything else. You go and check. 

Subirachs is not a source of advice Carissa can use to figure out everything herself; Subirachs is Carissa's superior, and the answer is what she says it is. Carissa doesn't actually understand why Asmodeus wishes it so but she can feel the outlines of a reason, maybe, sort of, and she doesn't actually have to know. Carissa should not follow the path of Irori, not just because it would be disobedient but because it wouldn't work; it would not make the project succeed and make Carissa someone who can fix even Hell if she needs to. 

- that might be right. Not Carissa's job, anyway, to assess if it's right. Subirachs will tell her if she's doing better or doing worse.

"I think you possibly are meant to assess whether I'm right, unfortunately for you, in the particular exact matter of interpreting the will of Asmodeus spoken by Hell to Carissa Sevar.  I don't think I'd have had my clever thought in a thousand years, if I hadn't read your transcript.  Perhaps I'm still wrong or failing to see fully.  I'm not smart enough, not Lawful enough, that the Chosen of Asmodeus should defer to me in a matter of understanding."

"But to whatever extent we do understand Asmodeus's instructions - even if it's because you told us so - the matter of how well you are doing in obeying them, and how much you need be punished for deficiency, is something that you must leave to your superiors.  Trust to your superiors, even knowing they'll sometimes be less than perfect themselves, because their judgments make what is right.  Matters of Irori and Asmodeus I am only guessing upon.  If you ever try to punish yourself as much as you think is needful, you'll destroy yourself; of that, I'm now sure."

"I have no more advice or correction to offer you this night, Chosen."

"Your third-circle enchanter-assistant has arrived.  The Queen confirms that she is pleased."

"Go with Asmodeus."

Carissa departs respectably like a reasonable person whose priorities are Asmodeus's.

GLIBNESS SWORDS TIME!

Glibness is that rare phenomenon: a sorcerer spell wizards can't cast. In general, one might expect there'd be lots of sorcerer spells wizards couldn't cast; after all, sorcery is inborn, sometimes from unions with bizarre magical creatures that themselves have abilities no wizard can replicate. In practice this is very rare. Sorcerer spells tend towards configurations that a wizard, watching carefully, can see how one might emulate, and almost every sorcerer spell has eventually and painstakingly been found in a stable configuration that a wizard can build for themselves.

Not so with glibness. Glibness, to all appearances, doesn't have a stable configuration; it can only be cast spontaneously. You can never hang it on a scaffold. 

(For this reason there's a school of thought that argues song-sorcerers, who can cast Glibness, aren't actually sorcerers at all; Carissa doesn't know much about that but suspects it of being stupid, people trying to throw something that reflects their own weakness out of the category 'sorcerers' rather than understand it better.)

But the fact you can't scaffold glibness doesn't mean you can't enchant a magic item with it!! Enchanting a magic item with a spell usually requires casting the spell, but it's also technically possible (if trickier) to build the channels in the magic-item-scaffold through which the spell would flow if you cast it, without casting it. Many people don't do that because they're lazy and it's trickier but it's not even that much trickier, unless you're also using a double scaffold so that you can get the project done faster, which, yes, admittedly they are doing that here, and which does make it a smidge difficult, but not that hard.

The other tricky element of what they're doing is putting Glibness in a sword. The standard way to do this would be a Wondrous Item but Carissa doesn't have time to retrain so she just invented a bunch of adaptations to arms-and-armor enchanting that make it work when you're doing something nonstandard like this. ...probably her assistant, who does have Wondrous Items training, can skip that part, and just do it as a slotless charm. 

Does that all make sense?

"Yes, Chosen of Asmodeus.  I will not fail you."

This is going to be so much fun!!!!

...she may notice at some point that the assistant enchanter seems unable to do some of the fine detail work that Carissa Sevar doesn't think should be that hard!  Perhaps he's lazy?  Or rather, he definitely seems to be trying quite hard right now, but perhaps he's been lazy his whole previous life up until this point, and that's why he seems to have such miserable Spellcraft?  You'd seriously get the impression this person couldn't remotely use spellsilver from a distance of even two feet away!  What kind of third-circle wizard is he?

- Carissa isn't sure what the point of sending her an enchanter who is bad at enchanting is? This isn't meant to be an object lesson, it's meant to be a way to get everyone glibness swords as soon as possible, and they're going to take four days each even going at a good pace!

Does giving him her armillary amulet help him see what he was doing wrong.

It helps, but it's pretty clear that this person isn't actually going to be able to create slotless/sword-based Glibness items without Carissa coming in here and helping like every day on the most important detail work.

...maybe Abrogail wanted to give her an excuse for needing to take a little time every day to do some enchanting?  That would be very thoughtful of the Queen!  Just like her, really!

Or maybe Abrogail sent her someone who sucks so she would get frustrated and torture them to death. That seems more like Abrogail, actually.  

HE'LL TRY EVEN HARDER BUT TRYING HARDER DOESN'T ACTUALLY LET YOU DO MICROSCOPICALLY DETAILED WORK PERFECTLY IF YOU'RE NOT CARISSA SEVAR

- Asmodeus didn't give her spellcraft powers! She just did things and then got better at doing them!! He should try it!

-- actually, she's getting frustrated and not having fun and not making sword progress, so what he should do is watch and try to learn something while she spends the rest of the evening making glibness swords, which is fun, unlike trying to get people to understand things, which is terrible.

He - he can do some parts of this work - he can help -

Right but if she has to pay attention to him then she'll be annoyed and not having fun, and she could really use some uncomplicated fun right now, so she's just going to do this and he can watch and then on his own time he can try to copy it and see how far he gets!

Acknowledged.

Anyway aside from them not having been able to send her a good enchanter this is a very refreshing break from her stressful dayjob. 

He watches her nearly inhuman Spellcraft with horrified attentiveness.

He couldn't match the Chosen with two more wizard circles and twenty more years of practice.  Couldn't make these tiny swords of glibness even if he trained for a year to make just that one item type.  But he can maybe possibly if he works until exhaustion show the Chosen that he can prepare the lesser parts of her work for her, present her with prepared materials that she'll be able to complete with two hours less of her time, if he works for ten hours before then.

PL-timestamp:  Day 19 (15) / Still Night

The Most High has apparently decided that Asmodia is cleared to know who Broom's god actually is: "Otolmens", the god of preventing the universe's inconsistencies from destroying it while all the other gods run around making Her work harder.  Oh, Aspexia Rugatonn doesn't quite describe Otolmens that way, in so many words.  But it's kind of... obvious.

Keltham must not be told this, because you don't want to go around suggesting to people that they might have the capability to destroy the universe and steer their thoughts in that direction; Keltham must be allowed to think that Broom's god just works to prevent Wish spells gone awry and lesser such disasters.

This also feels obvious?  Asmodia had completed and Predicted the thought before she even got to that section of the letter.

(shielded:)

Otolmens couldn't possibly be her sponsor, could She?  It - doesn't feel - somehow - like a sort of thing that Otolmens would do...

Still - if each of the Special Girls corresponds to some god involved in this, if that's how tropes work, then maybe Otolmens is the one that Asmodia corresponds to?  Even if that doesn't make Otolmens the one who saved her in Hell and to whom Asmodia owes gratitude or fealty?

Asmodia will think about it.

If there's someone somewhere in all the universe who cares about her - then Asmodia wouldn't want to see that universe destroyed.

"Otolmia" doesn't have a bad ring to it, either.

She'll also, after some amount of internal deliberation and review of thought transcripts, recommend Korva Tallandria for a lot of Fox's Cunnings tonight.

Asmodia isn't sure why she's doing that, making the decision that's actually best for Cheliax.  It's not in Asmodia's own personal interests, to do that.  It would be better for Asmodia if Korva failed out of the regular classes because she couldn't keep up with the math.  That way Asmodia could steal Korva and put her to work exclusively on the Wall...

...why isn't Asmodia doing that?  It obviously isn't out of being Good; they're all working to serve Evil, here.  Asmodia could get away with the disloyalty, her thoughts can't be read.

Asmodia doesn't know.

Well, whatever.  Asmodia doesn't always need to know the reasons why she acts the way she does, right.

Asmodia recommends Korva for a lot of Cunning spells tonight, and files a request for a +2 intelligence headband that Korva can wear at nighttime.  The Project could also really use a +4 intelligence headband that people in general can pass around at nighttime or when Keltham isn't looking.  The newcomers could be that smart, for all Keltham knows; and there's not much chance of them being able to keep up otherwise.  There's limits to how many enhancement spells the Project's harried third-circles can do, with so many more people.  Project Lawful uses mental stats the way some projects eat spellsilver or gold.

Sure, authorized. Asmodia can have a favorite among the new kids if she wants a favorite among the new kids. 

Meritxell gathers around a bunch of the new students to condescendingly reteach Probability since Asmodia shouldn't be the only one doing that. 

One of the new kids, who in fact looks older and scarier than Meritxell does, is going to say out loud that Meritxell could maybe use an extra Eagle's Splendour for purposes of making herself understood.