"Yeah, that's a good thing to check, now that you say it I'm surprised we haven't done it already. Although - can you scry people in an antimagic field, does it interfere with the sensor? Because I think they must be suppressing their arcane magic, somehow, in this scenario, and some ways of doing that might interfere with a scry."

"There's also the question of whether, if the creators there are much more powerful than golden dragons - we're willing to risk the scry being traced back to us -"

"Korva, we're not talking about something that's just slightly much more powerful than a golden dragon."

"Dath ilan isn't a country.  We talk about it like it's a country, because their Civilization acts like it's one country, but it's a planet, with as many people on it as all of Golarion, Keltham showed you the view after getting into space.  The antimagic field would have to be wrapping their entire planet.  Maybe their entire star system, because Civilization set up outposts on dath ilan's moon and on the planet nearby.  I mean, their Conspiracy could be lying to Keltham about that, I guess, but -"

"Keltham thought that history had been screened off decades ago, not millennia ago.  Even if a gold dragon kidnapped a hundred people with Intelligence 18, which people in Golarion would've noticed - well maybe not if it was right in the middle of Aroden's death.  But it doesn't sound like Keltham thought his world started out with much fewer people, a hundred years ago, and then bred really frantically to get a billion people... I guess the kidnappers could be duplicating people, like in Keltham's hints about 'anthropics'..."

"I think the fundamental question is where their knowledge of Law could've come from.  The dath ilani wouldn't have had time to create it, there, it would have to be stolen from somewhere else."

"...yeah, you're right, the timelines don't add up. Although, hey, that's something this theory predicts, that there is some incident in our past in which a bunch of really smart people disappeared at the same time, that neither of us currently knows about. If we do find something about that later, well."

"But they couldn't have gotten to a billion people in a hundred years, no, and if they were copying their population would be way more samey than ours is. - I guess we don't know that it isn't, Keltham's hardly been exposed to the full variety of Golarion's humanity. But it still doesn't really work, does it, even people who are as smart as our smartest wizards with headbands couldn't - forget about the math, he talked about flying machines, he's surprised by disease, he doesn't know how his people got past our level of metalworking because they already had it, when the screen was put in place. They had to have had time to build all of that."

"I can think of explanations, there, but it's hard to say how contrived they are. Maybe there were two phases to the project, one before the screen and one after; maybe it had always been planned that way, or maybe they screened off their origin story because it's about us, and they knew that if anyone ever found a way to unwisely contact us, the whole project could be jeopardized. Maybe there are multiple worlds of stolen people, and - but that doesn't work either, the population still doesn't fit, forget that."

"Could they have - supposing their patron is a god, could that god be the source of their Law? If the god had found some way to sequester a population away from other the other gods, to hide them - Keltham talks a lot about how the gods have a much better understanding of Law than we do, that Lawful gods are things that understand the Law perfectly. If there's some - force, interference from the Chaotic gods, or something, which is why our gods can't just tell us what Keltham is telling us, given that they already know - would that still have held, on a world that had a single godlike protector, and no balance of power between opposing factions?"

"So, several major important concepts, here."

"One, wrapping an entire planet or solar system in an antimagic field doesn't sound to me like any one god.  That takes something on the scale of Pharasma, or whatever other beings are out there like Pharasma.  Rovagug, maybe, had to be on that level, because otherwise Pharasma would've easily squashed it.  So there's more than one thing like that in reality, and if there's two, there's more."

"Second - I don't know what the rules are like, but - it can't be as simple as Asmodeus and Abadar and Irori and Nethys and Cayden Cailean setting up a world somewhere, and cultivating the kind of knowledge that Keltham knows.  They could've done that earlier, if it was possible, if it was allowed.  If it's happening just now, it would - have to be because of prophecy breaking - and then we're back to there not being time, again, unless they're just pouring knowledge directly out of Axis and that has to break the rules - maybe something out of Azlant, another and hidden Aroden, emerging from hiding after prophecy shattered, would know that much -"

"But what makes more sense to me is if they're just - from outside, they're just not governed by our rules at all."

"Third, we still have the question of why Keltham is landing in a romance novel.  Why not just throw some dath ilani who knew all that stuff better, straight to Egorian, and let Egorian torture or enchant them to give up all their knowledge?  Why a teenage boy who died in a flying-item crash and only had a loose idea of how to synthesize one kind of important acid, why stick him next to Carissa Sevar, why bounce him to an asexual like he'd find in an eroLARP, and while we're on the subject, why did Asmodeus tell us not to enchant him and why did Cayden Cailean curse Pilar Pineda with cake powers?"

"I don't know why Asmodeus told us not to enchant him. I'm not going to try to figure out what Cayden Cailean is doing, not right now, I don't think I know enough about him but I know that he's one of the human gods, he might just - think it's funny, or something."

"But I think there are good reasons to pick a teenage boy who isn't one of his people's best and brightest, if there's some reason I haven't thought of why you can't just enchant him and have to trick him instead. Because we couldn't run this operation on their best and brightest, they would see right through us in an hour, and they wouldn't want to work with us. Keltham is smart, and well-educated, but he's careless, he doesn't know all the right questions to ask, he lets things hang in the air that probably wouldn't get past an even smarter or more experienced person."

"I don't know why someone wouldn't have done this before. I agree that there would have to be a reason, and that the timelines don't work for the whole thing being after prophecy. I did think - I don't know whether something could have happened during Earthfall - but that's a really long time ago, it doesn't at all explain why their history would have been sealed off so recently. So -

" - did he say how many decades? It's not right when prophecy broke, is it?"

"Keltham didn't say.  But that's definitely a probabilistic prediction right there.  Not a certainty given your theory, but more probable - more 'likely' - if it's true than if it's not.  If the timelines matched to within a single year, I'd be certain - not literally probability 1, but fifty times surer than I was before, in the 'posterior' -"

"I am so tempted right now to declare that alter-Cheliax would just tell Keltham about this theory so we could ask him about it, but that's a larger decision than I can make and I don't think I'd be making the decision for the right reasons.  I'm just so desperately curious right now."

"To be clear, this is all well past the point where we'd do literally anything before reporting to Aspexia Rugatonn, but we should loop in Sevar before we do that and see if the Chosen has her own ideas to include in the report, or maybe shoots the whole thing down with some objection we didn't see."

"What's your thought on whether Keltham was placed by something with unbroken prophecy, and whether that required searching through a lot of worlds like Golarion to find one world where events would play out like they did?  If that's true - does it mean that some other part of your theory is false, or less probable?"

"I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. We mean 'worlds like Golarion' as in - the way that Castrovel is like Golarion, or the way that shadow Golarion is like Golarion, or just - copies of Golarion with different people on them, or - ?"

"Whoever placed Keltham had to search through enough - different somethings - that they could find somewhere where Keltham would land next to Sevar and then bounce over to an asexual, some girl who Nethys would want to oracle, some other girl who Cayden Cailean would give cake powers, and also Sevar would try to sell her soul and fail and the government would cover that up from him."

"It could be millions of slightly different Golarions, which Keltham's transcripts suggested he - thought he knew existed?  For some reason I'm not sure anybody followed, but if anyone did it would be Sevar."

"The part I follow is just that you have to look through a lot of places to find one place like that, if you're not just creating it... actually, now that I'm really thinking about it, it has to be more like, trillions of trillions of trillions, not just millions.  Every time you ask for another thing that only happens with 0.1% probability, you have to look through a thousand times as many worlds, and there've been many things like that.  Maybe that's how Keltham knows, like, he looked up at the night sky once when it wasn't cloudy, deduced how large our whole multiverse was using unknown Law, and then knew there weren't enough planets like that for his senders to have found one, unless reality was further expanded in a particular direction..."

"Okay, I'm sorry, this isn't the important thing, but what exactly is an asexual."

"Somebody who doesn't experience sexual desire for men or women, period, no matter who or what you dangle in front of them."

"Well, that only multiplies the number of worlds if it's rare, then, which I'm not actually sure of."

"It's more like, one of the obviously Special Girls, which I sort of admit I am, is an asexual.  And then also that Special Girl is the one who - this part is politically complicated, so pay close attention for your own safety."

"If you ask Carissa Sevar, she'll tell you that I came back from Hell with some sort of superpower that Hell told me not to talk about, but Keltham predicted that anyways, which is how she now knows."

"If you ask me, I'll tell you that I don't have any superpower like that.  I'll point out that Keltham also said that the Special Girl who was asexual would sometimes be the one who didn't have any oracle powers and would just be very good at math."

"Also Keltham's - prophecy, it's basically prophecy at this point - said that the asexual would be the one who stands back and watches it all."

"Worlds with asexuals are maybe easy.  Keltham's world has them too.  It's more that Keltham's sender had to drop him off at the Worldwound of a planet that would teleport him into a villa near Ostenso, whose wizard academy would have a top graduate slated for the Worldwound, who was an asexual, and would have the politically complicated quality, and would be the right sort of person to end up running my Wall."

"Do we have a transcript of the conversation where he said that, I think I want to read it. Because I notice that one of the reasons that I'm not persuaded that it's rare is that I also don't want to have sex with anyone, ever, and I notice that I have now been assigned to the Wall section. Not that I find that convincing, but it's information you might want to have. So. That's out there, now."

"Anyway. If I'm going to make a really solid argument about this, I'm probably going to need a written list of every prediction Keltham has made relating to the patterns and likely plot twists of the romance novel that he finds himself in, and which ones have come true and which ones haven't. But my snap judgement is - landing on Sevar, that's obviously not chance, but neither is it prophecy; it sounds like personality filtering of the same kind that gods probably do to identify clerics. If Asmodeus grabbed Keltham, it stands to reason that he would drop Keltham on the Asmodean person most compatible with him in the ways necessary for Asmodeus's goals. I'm pretty sure you said the first prediction Keltham made was the question about his harem having interesting backgrounds or problems to solve, but being an oracle isn't that; as far as I've been told, there's no reason to believe that either of the oracles was particularly special until after coming into contact with Keltham. They're not even clerics, which would constrain their alignments a really improbable amount - I tried to look something up about it after I heard about them, and I don't know yet that there are any known constraints on who can become or be made an oracle. So I'm not inclined to give him many points for that, either. "Special" is a corner fortune-teller's prediction, it's too vague to give very many points for. Still not very sure that being asexual is rare enough that 'one of the eight girls was an asexual' is particularly surprising either, or a higher rate than we would normally expect, and I'm not giving him points for it until someone convinces me that it is. The Chosen of Asmodeus being unable to sell her soul..."

"I have no explanation for that one, it's legitimately bizarre that he would be able to predict that. But it's one prediction, not many."

"So I don't think that unbroken prophecy is necessary to explain most of the predictions I've heard, and if it's only one, I'm inclined to think that there's a less-bizarre explanation that I haven't thought of yet, especially if he's been making a lot of them. But if he is right, and there are - let's say trillions - of Golarions, then - "

"I don't entirely know how that interfaces with my theory. It's a little hard to wrap my head around, someone writing a romance novel not by writing it, but by - what, paging through every possible string of words that could make up a book, and selecting the one that read most like a romance novel? I - guess I'm inclined to say that if more fundamental features of reality do start looking like they would make more sense if they were a romance novel than in any more normal situation - not Keltham's personal interactions, which we and lots of other powers are manipulating constantly, but like, I don't know, the cultural practices of nations, the distributions of traits on our world other than masochism, something that doesn't have as many obvious alternative explanations as masochism - if the world in general starts to look like that, then that should move us towards the romance novel theory and also away from my theory, because if we're being selected that way then I don't think there's any reason why we would also expect Keltham's people to have originally been from Golarion, if you can just generate trillions and trillions and trillions of worlds that all independently have humans in them and every possible combination of events."

"Probably. I guess. Unless dath ilani are all subconsciously into the things that caused their ancestors to have lots of the sex that resulted in their slightly less distant ancestors, and write romance novels that reflect their ancestral environment, even though they have no records of it. Which would loop us back around to - I don't even know."

"I'll get you the transcripts, though... I suspect that it has a lot more impact when you're living through it yourself.  I found my own personal interactions with Keltham and his predictions to be, uh, extremely convincing, especially given the way I had to hide all of Keltham's correct predictions from him.  I'd guess it was that way for, like - Sevar, coming back from having faked selling her soul, and hearing Keltham call her out on having faked it.  That probably left an impression on her too.  And then there was some whole thing with the Queen of Cheliax that we are not really getting to hear about for... what I suspect to be... obvious reasons... but, uh, maybe if the Queen shows up, don't say right in front of her that you think the tropes aren't real, it might not be... entirely wise."

"So... now that the topic of Special Girls has come up..."

"Keltham's romance with me isn't predicated on him ever having sex with me.  It's apparently fine for him if we just lie in bed clothed and talk, or sometimes hug."

"And you, possibly, hit on an important possibility that was missed by myself, Carissa Sevar, Aspexia Rugatonn, and the Queen of Cheliax."

"Would you, possibly... um.  Be on track for your own divine empowerment?  Though if not, you could also call that a successful prediction of the eroLARP theory, that Keltham would only end up with one asexual..."

"I'll just ask about your current opinion on Keltham as a boy."

"I think he's callous, cruel by the standards of his own society, annoying, careless, thoughtless about the consequences of many of his actions, kind of a shitty cleric of Abadar, kind of a shitty teacher, unnecessarily full of himself, that his judgement of me after one very mild bout of tears was that I am some kind of emotional leper who is going to infect the entire project and take advantage of everyone around me, that he's a sadist who gets off on injuring people badly enough for them to need magical healing, that he's already dating like eight girls and shouldn't have time for any more, and that in the middle of my crying fit about an hour ago, I fantasized about cutting out his eyes in retribution for having placed me in this position."

"I'm over that, to be clear, I'm not actually at all tempted to hurt him. But I'm kind of ticked off."

"I am fully aware that this is a romance novel pattern. I might forgive him, I might get to the point of enjoying working with him, but if you see me change my assessment of him to the point of wanting to have a serious romantic relationship with him, or, gods forbid, falling in love with him, and I'm not doing it because someone has a metaphorical knife to my throat, throw out all of my arguments and consider it a major piece of evidence that we're in a romance novel. Or that someone is mind-controlling me to make you think that. But I'm very confident that it won't have happened naturally."

People who seem to passionately hate you at first, and then fall in love with you, are also a frequent plot development in State-approved Chelish romance novels!  Of the sort that are safe lunchtime discussion topics in Ostenso wizard academy when Paxti and Ione start going on about them!

"So I know that having an enemy who hates you, and then they fall in love with you, and then you get to wreck them, is a romance novel pattern.  But now that I think about it - do you think it'd be a dath ilani romance novel pattern?  Though maybe we're in - the kind of romance pattern that their Keepers get to read about, and Keltham only got to read the censored kind..."

"How about, if Keltham doesn't know, that you hate him, for a while.  I mean, that might be a good idea even for other reasons, but... definitely it's a good idea because we're still hiding the tropes from him..."

Asmodia is feeling sort of queasy, for some reason.

"The problem is, Sevar's going to think that would be incredibly important for her corruption plan, if there's some way to get Keltham to be into it.  She'll offer you anything you want, to go along with it, if it gets that far.  You could ask for your sister back and Sevar would make it happen in a heartbeat, but - Sevar's not actually going to take no for an answer, I don't think."

"At least nobody's going to try to nudge Keltham into that until after he's been raping Pilar for a while, I think you're safe until then, at least.  It's not a certain thing the corruption plan ever gets that far at all.  You might not even be one of the destined girls period."

I'm sorry.

"Well, if she's not going to take no for an answer, then I guess it doesn't matter whether I'd trade it for anything."

"I do think that particularly hating your love interest is a more general - it's not just a Chelish thing. I don't think. I think there's something with - it's a way of introducing conflict to a story that otherwise wouldn't have it. But dath ilani writers might be better at coming up with conflicts and not need a crutch like that."

"Sevar is a lot more concerned with the Project succeeding than with us being good Asmodeans.  If she thinks she can get a 10% better chance of success by having you on her side and not just forcing you into things, she'll go full heretic on whatever it takes to get you on her side."

"I - do think we probably have at least a month, before it becomes a possible issue, even at the rate Keltham is going."

Having a love interest who hates you, and them not falling in love with you, and you getting control of them anyways, is also a romance novel trope.

"Anyways, I think we're at the point where we actually do loop our superiors in on things, if Sevar is free."

(Keltham is now working up the Project's non-disclosure agreement with the professional alchemist who was brought in.)

" ...callous, cruel by the standards of his own society, annoying, careless, thoughtless about the consequences of many of his actions, kind of a shitty cleric of Abadar, kind of a shitty teacher, unnecessarily full of himself, that his judgement of me after one very mild bout of tears was that I am some kind of emotional leper who is going to infect the entire project and take advantage of everyone around me," she reads aloud off the transcript. " - the point I do want to make, Tallandria, is that at least half of those traits in my assessment are not innate but are purchased through really quite a lot of effort. 

Actually, based on some of the things he said this morning, my current theory is that our lives are being made significantly easier by some ways dath ilan weakened him for us in advance. The - warning about emotional lepers thing felt like that. What kind of Lawful Good society thinks that way? If I imagine the question being put to a paladin, 'I'm supporting my ill friend but it's stretching me beyond my means', I imagine them saying - and maybe we should have someone run out and check this right now - 'good for you, but remember that if you take ill yourself you help no one, so pay yourself enough attention to stay healthy'."

Korva isn't really clear on whether she's supposed to say anything to that or just listen to the lecture, so she's going to opt for just listening to the lecture, until that's cleared up.

(Asmodia didn't ask whether she thought the Chosen was doing a good job. Obviously she is. She asked what Korva's opinion of Keltham was, in the context of wanting to date him.)

"So what's dath ilan doing? A wild guess that recently occurred to me is - I think it is the conceptualization of Golarion Good people that Good is effortful, that it is not intrinsic to human nature, and that we ought to fight our intrinsic selfish nature in order to do the right thing. Dath ilan instead seems to have tried to breed people for - what would you even breed for, if you were breeding for Good?"

"If they're from outside the reach of Pharasma, they may simply not have our concept of Good as something to target.  Keltham didn't have a concept that meant Evil as in the alignment, for the word to translate into, and that's why this whole Conspiracy wasn't blown in the first hour."

"They're not breeding for Good, they're breeding for - something else they, or the Keepers, or the real master of the experiment, decided to target."

"I don't think we know very much, from the transcripts.  Intelligence, probably also Wisdom, and they thought Keltham was too selfish."

"...servitor race?"

"Doesn't quite fit. They seem to have had the impulse to service trained out of them as well, and not just sexual service. 

But I think at minimum they selected on - a kind of interpersonal squeamishness, a deep dislike of harming the person right in front of you. Built the kinds of people who'd have a hard time in war because they'd think about how all the enemies have wives who'll weep for them, who find it painful and stressful to fire people, who - are manipulable by people being sad at them. And then they noticed what a horrific weakness that is and tried to counter it by telling everyone very forcefully that they must tone down their natural impulse towards sympathy for sad people, and show them only indifference; that it takes expertise to ease human suffering and non-experts shouldn't even try...

Tallandria, you're supposed to talk, when I speculate on these things. Three peoples' random guessing will be worth more than one."

"Oh. Um, well, compassion for suffering right in front of them, right, you could probably measure and select people for that, and - maybe like, if the entire world were made of people from Lastwall, except smarter, and also they had solved all of their problems, but they still had the - discipline, left over, from when they did have problems, and they were still all kind of organized in many of the same ways? Except that really doesn't mesh with how Keltham is at all, he doesn't act like someone from a planet that was just sort of, uh, residually full of military norms."