".....no? And I have no idea how you got there? I think you probably shouldn't hire her, like I said. I'd think it was fine to hire her for a normal chemistry project but not one where we get attacked by Kuthites and might all end up half-Keepers."

"Okay, but the conventional wisdom out of Civilization is that a project like this one would end up with a lot of very weird people, and you still want to exclude the mentally unstable ones but you've got to be really careful that you're not excluding, like, Lady Avaricia..."

"Does Golarion possibly just not have the whole thing where four top chemists in the world marry in pairs and their kids marry and one of their kids is an unbelievable genius chemist and the other one manages to commit true-suicide at nineteen."

And it's not that the one murdered the other?

"If I heard that I wouldn't be very surprised but I also don't know of it as a - known phenomenon?"

"So basically your planet doesn't have any geniuses except maybe via artifact headband, but, on the flip side, it's fine to go harder on screening mental traits in your employment process..."

"Not the most urgent question, I guess."

"I'm - continuing to feel very much out of my depth, here.  Carissa, Ferrer, you're both satisfied that things are proceeding here - basically as they should be proceeding, in Golarion?  I'm not supposed to administer a new math test to her in private and see if that makes a difference?"

"I bet she'd do better on a new math test in private, at least plausibly so, but the whole reason I think you shouldn't hire her is that this is an incredibly weird isolating destabilizing project and you should hire people who are unusually stable and capable for it."

(It took him a split second to remember Keltham expected the lower-ranked person to speak first, and cross that with the Chosen being beneath him in alter-Cheliax.  But Maillol did remember in time to speak in the correct realAsmodian order, which is also the correct alterCheliax ordering.)

"I'd mostly say things are proceeding as they should.  Except for a slight concern about how this makes two of them."

"Asmodia first, though that was seemingly very different in nature.  Then Tallandria, who plausibly could have looked like a stable candidate up until this point, and than cracked for the first time when she was under more pressure than ever before."

"Neither case by itself would worry me the way the two do side-by-side."

"I am having Tallandria privately go through a light Security screening, to truthspell her about whether she's said everything she knows to be relevant.  But if there's nothing in there that Security decides we need to know, they don't tell us."

"My understanding is that Tallandria has had relatively little Law exposure.  And I do think there's a tendency for more talented wizards to be a little less stable, sometimes, in Golarion.  The state did send us an assortment of interesting people."

"I only ordered the screening because - how did you put it?  'Why trust what you can verify?'  I have made it clear to Security that any previously undisclosed involvement of Law-based reasoning in Tallandria's breakdown is something we need to know about."

"Well handled, then.  On that part of it, I don't know enough to judge your performance on the rest."

"What'd you decide about Asmodia's request to hire her?"

"Unless you know something I don't about Tallandria being more volatile than she looks, I'm leaning yes, but with my watching the situation.  Closely enough that, if it starts to go wrong, I can shut it down after Asmodia learns a valuable life lesson and before she loses significant usefulness to your Project."

"What does shutting it down, in that case, entail for Tallandria?"

"Stowing her in some other high-Security installation that could use another second-circle, and isn't quite as massively vital to the future of Cheliax and Golarion."

"Or Hell for a couple of years.  Which I personally think is an option Tallandria ought to be jumping on, given that she has a rare option to do that and get resurrected at state expense.  But that's an option I haven't pressed, beyond gently mentioning that it exists.  Compared to most people, priests of Asmodeus are known to have unusually correct opinions about that."  Maillol smiles slightly, but visibly.

"Why are most people wrong about that, though..."

"Let the Church know if you ever figure that out."

"Any else?"

"No.  Thanks."

"It's my job."  He departs.

"Seeing him always makes me feel bad about how much nonsense our project gets up to that he has to write reports to Egorian about."

"I figure any week we haven't started another godwar yet is a week Maillol ought to be grateful to us.  After all, he's the one who said that the key to happiness is to start with low expectations, and then, presumably, never update them so you're constantly pleasantly surprised.  That part he didn't say explicitly but I don't see how else this trick would work."

"Yes, I think that's it. Wouldn't work for a dath ilani, but works quite well, if you're Chelish. I don't know if he's managed to keep them so low as to be pleased with the lack of a godwar, though."

"Yeah, if we don't start another godwar soon, or some sort of project disaster, Maillol may start taking current conditions for granted.  Then his" hedonic treadmill "niceness demand level will adjust.  We can't let that happen."

"Any gods out there that would be really easy for us to annoy?"

"Hmmm. Calistria's supposed to be quick to anger?"

"And what pisses off Calistria?"

Raping people. Abusing your wife.  That's probably not the most strategically useful answer to give. "If I were desperately trying to translate into dath ilani I would claim that She hates it when someone defects against you and you don't defect back, but I suspect that if for some reason you were to spend a week studying Calistria's teachings you'd tell me that's not the right translation exactly."

"Right then, well, there's one god whose teachings I agree with too much to offend in that particular way.  Though I continue to have no idea how she's not Lawful Neutral."

"And that's today's first crisis done with!  Welcome to Project Lawful by the way.  At least we have cookies."

Why is Asmodia feeling so weirdly cheerful about having Korva assist on her Wall?  It's not the first time Asmodia's had minions!  Asmodia in Ostenso would sometimes force other students to do things for her!  Because if Asmodia didn't sometimes do that she'd obviously be one of the academic victims who got forced to tutor and serve more vicious students!  Is it just that she's got more leverage over Korva than Asmodia has ever had over anyone before, and now she can invest in training Korva to be more useful and have that actually pay off?

(The Chelish dialect of Taldane does have a word for 'friend'.  It just doesn't use it for anything.)

"Yeah. Uh, sorry for causing you a headache already. So - I know you have visible and invisible things to juggle, but are there specific things we know we need to get out ahead of right now, while we can?"

"I think at this point, I sit you down and explain to you about the tropes.  It's an unexplained part of the entire Wall, from your standpoint, and you can't work without knowing."