"Peasants like passing tests. They want to please their superiors. They want to show that they belong and that they're clever and worthy. They are often insecure about that. They tend to be nervous about saying the wrong thing and sometimes even about thinking the wrong thing. What if their friends judge them? 

Soldiers have noticed which kinds of tests are important to pass because you'll die otherwise, and which aren't that important. They want their superiors to have good reason to be careful with their lives. They want to show that they are competent, and they don't want to overstate their competence because that's how they end up in a situation they weren't prepared for. They tend to be nervous about actually, literally, dying, because they got into a dangerous situation and weren't ready.

Nobles have noticed which kinds of tests are important to pass because projecting competence in that specific domain will achieve specific goals that you have. The domain they operate in is small; they all know each other. They don't care about their reputation in the sense of vague unease about who will like them, but in the sense of which specific traits which specific other people know they have; they care a lot more than peasants about not appearing to bow down to unjust authority, and not seeming eager to please.

And then, with your approval, I would say something flattering about how it seems possible to me that dath ilan lacks this distinction because they train everyone to be nobles without land. Which, to be clear, I doubt; but were Lady Avaricia trying to win Keltham's favor, she'd say it."

"Is she?  Why?  I thought the plan was for her to not seem to seek his approval."  Her flattery won't land, but that's irrelevant if alter-Avaricia wouldn't know it.

"You've got to give a boy a little opening to try to prove himself, even if he's almost definitely going to fail, and yourself a little reason not to call him a peasant, or at least to suggest your judgment is pending. But it'd be lying, so I'm asking. 

He totally is a peasant."

"My model of your attempted flattery is that it would entirely fail; Keltham would neither be flattered nor understand that you were trying to flatter him.  The mindsets you describe for peasants, soldiers, and nobles will all sound equally alien to him.  None will sound like the careful Lawful structures that Civilization teaches.  Parts of all three will sound like things he was specifically trained out of.  The game alter-Avaricia is playing with him, with her lie, is outside his ability to conceive."

"My model of Keltham nods with a confused expression and heads off to ask Sevar a lot of questions."

"Sevar... can probably do a fairly good job of recovering Keltham's sense that alterCheliax makes sense as a consistent universe, even though what you told him made no sense to him... but my fear is that it builds up in him a sense over time, that there is a strange reality you exposed him to, and that Sevar is trying to put him back to sleep by soothing the sharp edges away..."

"Maybe I'm underestimating Sevar here; she knows that as well as I do, and can maybe not give the appearance of soothing him.  She's guided him through a lot of dangerous-sounding revelations successfully.  I'll send her the transcript of what you said, and Sevar will decide if that's a path of explanation she wants to send Keltham down."

"If Keltham was actually playing this game hard against us, he'd find Tonia and ask her next, not Sevar.  But that would be a new class of game moves from him; his suspicions haven't apparently risen that high."

"My guess is that Sevar vetoes the lie."

"Different pathway.  Keltham successfully reads the open contempt out of your voice when you talk about peasants.  He asks about that."

"I think I'm better than them. This might be impolite but I think it's also just true and I can defend it at length if its truth is relevant."

"Keltham gives you a confused look.  He asks you what it means for you to be better than - well, first he asks you what the word 'impolite' means, which has translated into some completely other concept in Baseline, and then he asks you that."

"I think I'm smarter, wiser, prettier, know more, think more clearly, make better decisions, and if I end up deciding to join the project will be more of an asset to it."

"Keltham has seen your Intelligence and Wisdom scores and is confused about your belief that they're the highest on the Project.  He doesn't think it's a Conspiracy sign, though, because it's so obviously contradicted based on evidence the purported Conspiracy seems to have voluntarily given him.  He goes off to ask Sevar what's up with you, and Sevar explains to him about overconfidence and people overestimating themselves, which Keltham then remembers getting taught about in a class when he was seven years old."

"That seems basically innocuous to me as a sequence of events.  I predict Sevar approves.  I mark that it lowers the chance that Keltham hires you.  You can possibly get in anyways if you keep on outperforming at chemistry."

"Keltham asks you to do something, at some point, and you say that you need to paint your fingernails instead - feel free to substitute in whatever you'd actually say there.  Keltham completely fails in every possible way to take anything resembling a hint, and asks why your fingernails are more important than washing the sulfur bins or whatever."

"Well, I don't want to wash the sulfur bins, and would rather do things that are fun for me than do that, which is not fun for me."

"I have a sense that there's something that potentially blows up, somewhere in this vicinity, but I don't know what to ask you that will expose it.  Maybe I ought to call in Ione, she has a good and possibly divine sense about things that might explode..."

"Something like, the way that all the rest of us have acted towards him, will have created an implicit sense in him of what behavior Cheliax expects from subordinates, or as he would see it, employees.  You're going to violate those implicit rules, and it's going to bring the existence of those rules into sharp relief and the focus of his attention.  You're - going to violate the rules in a way that shows off that you're better than them and the people who obey them; Keltham - asks you why the rest of us are jumping to obey him when you're not, and have given him such a reasonable-sounding reason why he shouldn't be obeyed?  It's not what I predict actually happens, but maybe that question still gets at the - repulsive energy at the center of the molecule, that would make things fly apart and release heat..."

"Respectfully can you shut up for a minute, I'm thinking."

"Not how respect works, Avaricia, but you have the minute."

She is quiet for a moment.

"Keltham is accustomed to a world with practically no coercion, right, that's the core of it. He hasn't noticed any of the other students are utterly terrified of being rejected. He says things like that the homework is 'optional'. When he gives orders, they're followed, and he throws lots of money at everyone, and in his world there wouldn't be - couldn't be - any threat there. He has not thought about how much coercion everyone everywhere is subject to even in alterCheliax. Yes?"

"Sevar's domain, my understanding here is inferior to hers.  But yes.  Keltham does not know where alterCheliax - no, where the true Golarion is, inside the spread of possibilities.  He's given Sevar explicit permission not to tell him right away, when the truth will seem that dark to him."

"He hasn't noticed in part because he cannot read our expressions, he cannot read our voices, unless we show it to him very loudly by Chelish standards; the edges of that which slip around our control are wholly invisible to him.  It may be related to how he has difficulty telling apart new non-dath-ilani without nametags."

"So the problem is that anyone acting genuinely uncoerced around Keltham, anyone declining to shovel his acid pits or inhale his noxious fumes, shatters the whole illusion. I don't care if that's Sevar's domain, it needs to be on that wall. 

Have you considered that maybe you have your job because everyone with sense refused it?"

"I have my job for the same reason that Sevar has hers, because literally nobody else can do it, and I already told you all that the job drives anyone who does it insane."

"Keltham thinks we're shoveling his acid pits for our generous salaries and the promise of vast wealth if the Project succeeds.  Or that Ione is there in hopes of following him when he leaves Golarion - that part's probably true - or that Pilar is in it because it's what Asmodeus wants from her - again true - or that Sevar loves him and wants to create Lawful Evil Civilization here."

"Dath ilan has histories about people like us, doing grand projects like this, who aren't there out of fear, and who'd inhale his noxious fumes for money if there was going to be healing afterwards."

"Showing him that the world is not like that would be a huge step, Sevar's game alone, her call absolutely and her timing on it.  I expect we're supposed to time it for after Keltham is turned more than halfway Evil, if he ever is.  If you can't figure out how upset the Chosen of Asmodeus would be about you usurping her moves there, I'll have Security float your torso over to her and Sevar can explain in person."

"'We're doing this because we're getting paid' and 'nobody is threatening us' are already on the wall, almost the first sentences I wrote, but I'll rewrite them at greater length and larger letters.  I suppose it's hardly adequate to the depth of the orange."

"That's the wrong thing to write on the wall. You don't want us to act like we're not being threatened; if not threatened, I don't shovel acid pits. You want us to act like the consistent obedience Keltham has experienced from everyone up to this point was the product of some kind of - non-threat-based-social-habit-against-insubordination that you haven't invented."

"The existing Tiers were slated for the Worldwound, before Cheliax pulled us for the Project.  We are all the sort of people who were expecting to accept much harsher regimens of obedience, as Keltham has now heard, in exchange for pay and the chance to grow as wizards and because somebody had to do it."

"In honesty, Lady Avaricia, I find myself thinking that the truth of alter-Cheliax was that Avaricia was an interesting candidate but a poor fit for Keltham's Project.  She's not the sort to shovel acid pits, not for knowledge like Ione, not for Asmodeus's interests like Pilar, not for pride in outperforming like Meritxell, not angling for vast future wealth like Asmodia, not in exchange for more present wealth than she ever imagined like Tonia, certainly not for love like Sevar.  What other motive could alter-Avaricia have, in alter-Cheliax?"

"It'd be unfortunate to see you go, and take your knowledge of alchemy with you.  Maybe Keltham would be willing to create a non-acid-pit-shoveling position for you, I don't know how dath ilan feels about that."

"Alter-Avaricia wanted to see if anyone here was smart or competent. I'm indeed reaching the conclusion that none of you are, and that your project is so doomed it's probably better to get clear of it now than die spectacularly with it when it dies spectacularly next week. But I assume you disagree with me, and think that if she talked with her fellow project-members she'd think some of them were smart and competent after all? And in that case she'd stay; competence is a precious thing."

"I fear, Lady Avaricia, that we are too busy about our god-given tasks to prove our worth to you.  I hardly know how I'll find time to train the Most High's successor, when the Most High presents me with a suitable candidate, at this rate.  Sevar must scarcely ever get to see her other lover, the Queen, as she plans out the new form of Asmodeanism..."

"I have the strangest sense that I ought to send you out with Pilar Pineda on some sort of life-changing journey?  But Pilar's also busy.  I'm not sure she's even around, right now, tonight might be her weekly night for sweeping Egorian clear of any new spies."

"- that's not how to impress people if you haven't tortured them at length first. Just so you know."

She was sort of hoping Pilar would suddenly be here, with a cookie and a solution, but apparently not.

"I'm not trying to impress you, Avaricia.  Carissa Sevar doesn't, Keltham out of dath ilan doesn't, I rather doubt I can.  Just being wry about how you'll never match a fraction of our actual accomplishments."

"But it's not my job to correct you.  Only to correct your story."

"My sense is that this story currently ends with Keltham choosing not to hire you, unless you keep up an Abyss of a lead in chemistry."

Asmodia's sense is that Avaricia is a liability to Project Lawful and alter-Avaricia should quit it in disgust before real-Avaricia blows it up, but this need not be said aloud.  It is, in fact, not Asmodia's decision.

"If you have some other specific personality you are authorizing me to have instead, I'm listening."

"I'm a peasant and Sevar's wearing a dress that isn't bespoke enough.  Neither of us seem likely to be able to envision a coherent alternate way for nobility to be.  Maybe Maillol or Subirachs will have ideas that aren't just 'In fact, inexorable logic has now revealed that alter-Cheliax nobility is as useless as Taldor nobility, given that nobody in alter-Cheliax is threatening them into working.'  I'm drawing a blank."

That's not what she said.

What she said was important for the project and this idiot peasant is too self-righteous to even hear it.

This is such a waste of time and she can't just walk away from it. 

"I see. Well, absent authorization to do otherwise, I will as ordered act as I would in alter!Cheliax. It is my sincere and heartfelt hope that this will not continue to be as confusing to you as it was today."