Doesn't work for Pilar.

Works for Asmodia.

Right, well, that's actually very encouraging in terms of being able to eventually figure out what's going on here.  Much more informative than everything just working reliably, when you think about it.

Feeling competitive is NOT beneath Korva. If she isn't competitive with everyone else here about SOMETHING that isn't math, she's pretty sure she's going to fail out of the project, and possibly in some important sense kind of fail out of hell.

Prestidigitation she can do, though. She doesn't want to copy the copper thing, now that it's been done, because it's much less impressive to be second at something. What other things burn weird colors that aren't green. Potash, she's pretty sure, but she doesn't know what potash is doing at the tiniest level other than that it's a kind of salt.

...sulfur burns blue, she's pretty sure, and it's definitely a pure element because Keltham was talking about it. She's just gonna go for broke and try to directly simulate sulfur. Sulfur has a lot of prestidigitation-worthy traits, actually; it has a smell, a little like eggs, and she's seen it before, knows its texture and the shapes it forms and a few of the things it mixes with, knows that it makes some mildly poisonous smoke - 

After a few minutes of intense focus and blocking out everyone else, she gets a blue flame, and then starts coughing.

Somebody hit her with a Dispel Magic and see if that immediately stops the coughing, he'll do a radius healing after that and after any lingering smoke has had some time blow away.

It takes a little bit for her lungs to calm down again, but after that she seems fine.

"Uh. Sorry."

Giant positive healing energy burst!

"For what?  You didn't kill yourself at all, let alone in an unusually expensive way, and I think we probably want to plow ahead and not be too cautious until the first really costly injury.  Nice blue flame, by the way."

"Keltham -"

"No, I'm sticking to theme on this one.  Premature caution is expensive, slow, and not fun.  We keep pushing until we find out what's actually dangerous.  If we get through all of Project Lawful with zero experimental fatalities it means we were being much too safe."

Korva personally thinks that dying prematurely sounds way way way less fun than being the level of cautious that it takes to avoid that!! Actually it sounds terrifying!! She barely knows anything yet, so there's no actual reason to resurrect her, which means she would be stuck in Hell not having made adequate use of her time as a mortal, which might mean an extremely boring eternity as a paving stone when compared to all of the people who actually got a head start on making something of themselves!

Obviously this just means that she's going to have to look out for her own safety, though, since it isn't remotely reasonable to expect Keltham to look out for it. Finding his assistants' lives expendable is really perfectly par for the course for the sort of person that he seems to be.

She's a little baffled by the claim that he isn't evil yet, though.

She'll just... nod.

Keltham has all the best opinions! Needless fretting about possible grisly death would probably make this so much slower and also less fun.

She is game to race ahead licking stuff and making fire until some of it blows up in her face, and then to race ahead some more.

"And just to clarify explicitly, any casualties get resurrected.  Even people who have not yet signed contracts with Project Lawful, who are second-circle wizards, who Cheliax couldn't afford to resurrect as a matter of routine, especially not during a war.  Yes?"

"Yes.  Would anyone have seriously thought -"

"Not everyone had a nice comfortable life before coming to this fortress, Keltham."

"Fair.  I stand corrected."

She really needs to figure out whether or not this is a sex thing for her, at some point.

Quietly, but not too quietly - it's a conversation they could have in alter!Cheliax, the version of it reserved for real!Cheliax would happen at night:

"It cannot possibly come as a surprise to you that no one likes you and that most people remember you as an obnoxious stereotype."

"No one ever remembers anyone else as more than a vague stereotype, unless you've attracted wildly more of their attention than is smart."

" - so, you want people to assume you're frivolous and obnoxious since they'll round you off to something and it's not particularly dangerous?"

"Oh, no, I am frivolous. And obnoxious."

In alter Cheliax she wouldn't light this person on fire. She probably wouldn't even be tempted.

"I think there's a dath ilani way of looking at it, actually, if you like that better, if it allows you to feel like your vague sense that I'm more important and better than you've accounted for is grounded in something. People who have better Sense Motive than Bluff don't choose what to claim; they choose how to be."

"I don't - have - a vague sense you're better and more important than you're pretending to be." I have a vague sense that you're not doing something that makes sense to me and that's a threat to my project. 

"Huh. I am better and more important than I'm pretending to be. Do you want me to walk you through what should have tipped you off?"

"I'd be delighted."