"Really, Keltham, I'm still coming to grips with the fact that the government went and looked for the most promising students in the whole country and this is what they turned up! None of these people are all that clever or all that competent! I'm used to people not being clever or competent but usually there isn't any reason they should be! Also I'm not sure why you'd call your egg preparation deviled eggs if it's not deviled eggs. There's nothing wrong with calling it 'local artisanal stuffed egg presentation' or something."

"Just to verify my flailing attempts to read you, I'm reading the deviled eggs part as sarcasm because of how I asked the question, but the part about you being disappointed in the competence of the people here is sincere, check?"

"Yes. Should I just simplify your life and tell you at all times if I am being sarcastic."

"Yes, if it's important.  Do I really strike you as being reliably able to figure that out on my own?"

"No, you don't, but usually people are insulted when you point out that you are giving them special assistance because of their apparent incompetence."

"Yeah, about that.  Want to hear a theory based on knowledge out of dath ilan that doesn't actually describe you correctly, is hopelessly wrong about a lot of important details, and that I obviously didn't quite understand when somebody smarter than me in dath ilan explained it to me, but might nonetheless help all the other idiots on this Project feel less insulted by you?"

"They shouldn't feel insulted by me! They should feel disappointed in themselves! - yes, sure."

Huh.  That's not what a usual ???????? would say, but maybe it works out differently if you grow up in Golarion and nobody around you knows what a ???????? is.

"Dath ilan has a number of people who sound to me a lot like you do, what with my being too stupid to tell the obvious differences.  They're called '????????' and are disproportionately represented in more technical fields.  Nobody within 6 INT of themselves ever meets their standards, and obviously only very few people like that will ever find some way to spend their whole day being around people 6 INT smarter than themselves.  All of the people they know and most of the things they can afford are imperfect, and they are constantly seeing the imperfections.  Ever keeping quiet about that feels like they're pretending, lying, not allowed to be themselves."

"Civilization has recognized protocols for dealing with ???????? so they can stick around on your Project being slightly less horribly incompetent at chemistry than everybody else.  Key point one, it's understood that the ???????? doesn't hate you personally.  They act to everyone like that, unless they're randomly dealing with somebody who has +6 INT on them.  It has nothing to do with your individual details, except insofar as all details of your personality are broken and wrong.  Key point two, nothing you do is ever going to satisfy them, give them what they're looking for, or make them act socially happy around you, so you can actually just relax and stop trying.  They don't even want you to try, since your horrible parody of an attempt to interface with them socially is just going to annoy them even further.  You might as well just be your own self around them and speak your own mind to them."

"Leaving aside how much I messed up my attempt to interface with you socially, there, does it sound around as true as any other understanding I could reasonably manage to arrive at about you, given how badly I'm likely to be at phrasing it?"

" - I guess? At least, it's true that if everyone around here got a high-tier headband then they'd be impressive and pleasant to be around, and it's true that I don't particularly care for everybody to try to be friendly, and if you said it to my mother, who actually isn't incompetent, she'd probably say that it sounds about right. Though I could shut up about the project, if you wanted me to, it's just that then everyone would go around being wrongly pleased with how well the project was running."

"Huh.  Frankly, I'm surprised that your mother meets your standards.  I was going to pitch that nothing on Project Lawful would ever satisfy you, but that if Golarion could develop its own Golarion version of Civilization, that might eventually generate some people you could bear to be around and you'd have the wealth to be around them..."

"Does your mother have, like, an artifact headband or something."

"She has a very good headband. Not something like the Queen's that was custom made in Hell, but it's +4 to intelligence and charisma. I was very excited about your proposal for making spellsilver cheap and giving all of the people in the world +6 headbands, I think I'd probably like a lot of them if we pull that off."

"First of all, it's also going to take a lot of Law education, second, +6 to INT takes the average person up to INT 16."

"Based on dath ilan's experience, I would not say to get your hopes that high.  What you're describing isn't even dath ilan, and you would not be happy living in a random city area in dath ilan."

"But there are any places in Civilization where you'd be happier, and Golarion can have some of those, maybe."

"Anyways, I was thinking I should make a quick announcement to the Project about how to interface with you.  You want to be there so you can issue corrections, or not be there so you don't have to listen to me mangle it?"

That feels like a test. Too bad she has so little to go on here. "I'll be there."

Then Keltham will make a general announcement that Lady Avaricia hates all of everything rather than them personally and they don't even have to try to be polite to her!*

(*)  Not the way Keltham phrases it, but...

Lady Avaricia seethes in peaceable silence.

Any corrections with respect to all the stuff Keltham horribly screwed up, Lady Avaricia?

She'll see if anyone does anything really obnoxious because of how they interpreted what Keltham said, and then correct if relevant.

He's sure they will!

...Ione wants to think something along the lines of "That could have gone a lot worse" but she is not entirely sure that it has not.

Is Lady Avaricia actually a trope?  Or for that matter, actually a '????????'?

Pilar should know her curse can't answer that!

After breakfast, Keltham receives reply mail from Egorian.  The basic guideline is that anything which seems maybe-possibly-dangerous, especially if it intersects with Asmodean theology, should be routed to Aspexia Rugatonn.  Unless it seems to be actively driving mortals mad, in which case Contessa Lrilatha should Teleport in.  Meritxell is cleared to discuss this topic with Subirachs; it was not in fact dangerous, but Keltham was correct to check and is encouraged to continue checking.

(Aspexia Rugatonn was in fact a bit nonplussed, and slightly worried, about how Meritxell seemed to think this was an important theological revelation.

There are all sorts of reasons to sort mortals and devils into hierarchy?  Most of which are benefits for the tyranny, rather than benefits allowed to accrue to the slaves inside it; and the greatest reason by far, is that Asmodeus wishes it so.  The notion that hierarchy exists for the benefit of the slave is very much the sort of lie that Aspexia is worried will disintegrate in the wind of Keltham's Law - a point she dares not press yet within Project Lawful, because it is not clear that Sevar herself is ready to hear.

Well, it would be to the benefit of Pilar, perhaps; for all those many reasons including the one that Keltham described.  But most mortals are not Pilar, and Asmodeus does not withhold His hand from them therefore.

It is perhaps a useful fact that Meritxell finds this theological presentation more persuasive?  Useful, but also disturbing, for it accepts dath ilan's premises into itself; not least the premise that secrecy is made for the slave's benefit, and so that what should be done, is whatever is to the slave's benefit.

Future such revelations should indeed go to Aspexia before Subirachs, if there is no emergency.  There is not so much distance in possibility, between the strange case of something proving unexpectedly persuasive to Meritxell, and some such revelation proving strangely persuasive to Subirachs.)

PL-timestamp:  Day 24 (20) / Morning Lecture

Lecture subthread: the alien maths of dath ilan, dealing with Laplace's Rule of Succession.

It should be possible to abandon this subthread and return, if necessary, without missing out on plot-critical developments.

CW:  Dubious infinitary mathematics.