Marius really wants to ask if lying about having a less interesting backstory than he has in real!Cheliax is allowed, but he's not stupid enough to think that it is, even if he was stupid enough to think it'd be a good idea to ask in the first place.

But she does have an interesting background, and she is the main character of a story -

... Pedra notices she is confused. Surely the purpose of recruiting her into Project Lawful was that she does, in fact, have any actual experience with Actual Taldor? Surely her ability to pretend to be Taldane is an important part of her skillset? She assumed that was what she was recruited for, after she noticed that they were pretending that alterCheliax was Taldor. She assumed that she was here to help them pretend. And she wishes to assure humbly desires to make aware to her superiors that, in Taldor, attractive women try to seduce powerful men so the powerful men can provide them with wealth and status?

And, and, surely alterCheliax would have more immigrants than realCheliax, since in alterCheliax Asmodeus is Hell is intelligent people outside Cheliax are more aware of Hell's purifying nature and slightly less concerned with its painful aspects, and so it should have more people from Taldor around to seduce Keltham, not fewer!

As it happened, Alexandre had never for an instant considered that they might want him to seduce Keltham. Keltham, like most men, is attracted to women. (Right?) Alexandre, like most men, is attracted to women. It is not that he has never had to avoid other temporarily more powerful men who might be attracted to him, it was simply that, when he was recruited for this, the prospect that he had been recruited to throw himself at a Lawful Neutral alien teenager did not once occur to him.

Fortunately, it will never happen. He will simply sit at the back of class and do very well, and that will be all.

"The final possibility I anticipate is betrayal. Errors, we are attempting to handle with a light hand, because you are valuable, and it is our desire to preserve your value. You will be corrected because it is important that you be right. You will learn and improve and, hopefully, you will play your part in strengthening Cheliax and Hell. If something is necessary for your growth and confidence and success, you are reasonably likely to get it. 

If you deliberately and intentionally try to sell this project out, self-interest and consideration for your value will take a backseat to ensuring that you regret that as much as it is possible for you, or for a lump of bleeding flesh with distant memories of being you, to regret anything. Other countries would love Keltham, and would pay you generously to deliver him; you will not survive trying that, and if you somehow do Hell will still make sure, when you reach them, that it was not worth it. Her Majesty has arranged already that anyone who intentionally betrays this project will suffer as much as possible, forever, even if this cuts into the profit Hell would otherwise have of you.

I don't expect you to believe this, even after I just said that on this project I won't lie to you, but I say that because I dislike it; one of my own pet heresies is that Hell is wasteful, and could make better use of even the most contemptible and useless of souls. I do not desire that anyone make the kind of mistake for which you will suffer forever. It is not a fate I will condemn you to gladly. I am warning you so that you can avoid that. 

It is absolutely an order I will give, if you do betray us. If I got squeamish, Her Infernal Majesty would order it for me, and I don't like wasting her time.

Are there any questions."

Uh... Selling Cheliax out would be idiotic. Asmodeus is going to conquer the universe. Alexandre does not actually understand how anyone could possibly have needed the warning that anyone who betrayed the project would eventually suffer as much as a lump of bleeding flesh with distant memories of being a person could suffer, since that would happen to anyone who knowingly betrayed Asmodeus, because Asmodeus is not stupid. He is Asmodeus.

(Learning her pet heresy is interesting; Alexandre had in fact assumed that Hell did make the best use possible of contemptible and useless souls, and that using them as paving material was, in fact, a short-term-in-the-cosmic-sense punishment intended to make them believe they would suffer as a paving stone forever, while in fact Asmodeus would actually put them to some menial-but-valuable use in a few centuries, once they knew the price of screwing up. It's what Alexandre would do, after all, and, what, is the strongest god going to be less intelligent than Alexandre?)

... He would like to ask for a headband, actually. He isn't going to ask for a headband; he does not want anyone to think he is That Kid, in spite of, in fact, totally one hundred percent being That Kid. Whoever speaks up first in a public environment after being told 'don't try to get the notice of Authority and screw it up or you will be horribly tortured' is kind of asking to be horribly tortured. But he is still kind of tempted, since being smarter would be tremendously useful, for his growth and confidence and success.

Pedra Casal Laschanessa is really surprised at the lack of the Chosen of Asmodeus being tortured no, she just got over this. If the Chosen of Asmodeus gets away with saying something, it is reasonable to say. Errors will be handled with a light hand, betrayal will result in utter destruction. Fair. Valid. Totally fine.

(Her Infernal Majesty would order it for me, interesting phrasing, fits in with Asmodia's description of her as 'lover of Abrogail Thrune', but still kind of horrifying. Well. Chosen of Asmodeus.)

She has no questions, barring the usual completely silent, "so, when you say necessary, how necessary do you mean? Because I think I'd seduce Keltham do math maintain the consistency of alterCheliax much better with a headband..."

What would selling the project out even consist of. How would you even make contact with - wait, no, this is obviously the sort of thing you do not think about, even as a hypothetical, even if you were obviously going to conclude from the beginning that the entire hypothetical was idiotic.

She has a huge number of questions, obviously, but none that are remotely worth the Chosen of Asmodeus's time. And even if any of them were, she's neither stupid nor brave enough to ask them.

(But if she were going to ask a question of the project leaders, the one at the top of her list is whether Keltham would, actually, help Taldor, which is not in fact a lawful place, and if not, what the reasoning is behind modeling alter-Cheliax on Taldor in particular.)

In terms of heresies, Marius thinks having the pet heresy that hell is wasteful is more of a 'tame wyvern' heresy than a 'pet' heresy. But luckily, Sevar is his supervisor's supervisor and he doesn't have to question it.

Well, obviously, but he doesn't have any questions that he's stupid enough to ask.

Is this a time when you're not supposed to ask a question because it'll make you look stupid, or is this the first opportunity to ask an insightful question and be on a commendable trajectory? It's a thorny thing to think about.

Ultimately she has to try, because if you don't try to be the best then instead of getting superpowers then maybe you end up being the one everyone kicks.

"If this secret project really is the path to world domination, are we all getting intelligence headbands to make it more likely to work? I know everyone's probably thinking that already and too afraid to say it, but if I believe that we're really going to take over the world if we can all do this well enough, then the only reason we might not have headbands yet is because they're still being crafted up and collected together. Am I right?"

She starts strong, with the wavering fear in her voice only starting to be clear by the end (at least to Chelish ears.)

... Oh, that is a fascinating suicide attempt. Questioning the Chosen? Asserting that her story may be false? You have courage, doomed girl, albeit no goddamned sense, and Alexandre Esquerra salutes you even as he is going to enjoy watching the Chosen disassemble you for parts.

Ione is just going to openly facepalm while kneeling.  She's pretty confident she won't be tortured to death for facepalming, and in this context of being introduced to some new faces, it's worth the extra note of dominance for demonstrating that confidence.

...uh, Korva can think of another reason. Because they're still weeding out the people they're not going to keep on for long enough for it to matter. Maybe because they ask stupid pointless questions.

"The only reason?" asks the Chosen of Asmodeus. "That would be, in Keltham's parlance, very strong evidence, then, that this project was not actually important or a priority of the Crown, if in a week no one has Intelligence headbands. No, not even very strong evidence, it would be irrefutable proof. Her Infernal Majestrix could stand here herself before you in all her Splendor and say that this is something of a priority and you would think to yourself - not too loudly, one hopes - that, well, if it were really important you'd have a headband. 

I wonder if anyone else can think of any other reasons to run a project like this with bright-eyed wizard students who don't have headbands even though they really want them."

Alexandre can think of several thousand, but showing off to try to sound clever and attract the attention of your superiors was one of these things that he was literally just warned against, so until such time that his superiors clarify that they only mean Keltham and not also themselves, he is going to remain silent.

She wilts more than a little inside. She can see the mistake now, or at least its edges, but trying to correct it would just make things worse. She asked for 'anyone else' too, so it least she can stay quiet now and not have to angst more about it.

Beating questions like this out of her didn't quite stick as well as beating Nethys out of her did. She's still not sure if she wishes it did.

- well, yes. To test how well the brightest Chelish humans can feasibly learn the Law without intelligence enhancement.

Korva tentatively draws herself up to a kneel and takes a deep breath. She's not totally sure whether she's actually going to succeed at saying this, it might be even dumber now than it was before, but it is a good reason, so -

"Headbands are good for magic but bad for Law," says Pedra immediately, snapping out a possible answer with the reflexes of a jackal whose entire pack has just scented raw meat, and who wants to have her own mouthful first. 

(Only after she says that does she realize that the Chosen is wearing a headband. Oh, damn me fills her head, but drawing attention to the mistake will only make it worse.)

...that's a dumber reason but she's not going to give hers now.

Silence. 

Well, it's probably a lot to expect of them to eagerly shout answers to the question when she just got visibly irritated at the first person to ask a question. Too bad about the first person to ask a question asking a stupid question.

"If Keltham gets a headband," she says, "this scaffold of ours will collapse immediately. Therefore significant efforts have been made to convince him that throwing intelligence enhancement at people in the middle of the process of learning Law is not a good idea, that it is destabilizing to them and causes rapid personality change of a sort Keltham prefers not to cause, in people he's had the chance to grow attached to. 

You will have access to Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom, as you require them; you may, in later stages of the project, have headbands you wear when Keltham isn't around, though it's not actually a good idea to develop habits of thought you won't be able to employ in his presence.

Keltham is no more intelligent than most of you, and no more wise. What you need to surpass him is not actually intelligence, or wisdom, though both help; it is the habits of mind that dath ilan trains even into their average unremarkable children, and then the habits of mind that dath ilan offers to the best of its children. 

One of those habits of mind is asking lots of questions and challenging one's teachers, all the time. At the moment," to Willa specifically, "you might be glad that dath ilan has such a habit, as it is presently saving you a great deal of pain. But in the long run, I think, you will come to despise this fact about dath ilan, because it means you have to ask Keltham questions and challenge his answers all the time, and at no point will you have the slightest affordance to ask a question that is stupid or ill-considered or premised on something you didn't even notice you believed."

... She just survived that. Stranger: Willa just survived that.

Pedra will quietly faaaade into the background and hope that nothing stops her from continuing to survive that.

That's TERRIBLE.

(...maybe Keltham will appear to be making as many not-obviously-not-dumb assumptions about what she's thinking as everyone else here has been, and she can just challenge him on those?)

The idea that Keltham is no more intelligent than them is comforting, though. If the outsider isn't actually focusing on the kind of math that you need to be fundamentally sharper than everyone else around to be able to understand at all, then maybe she'll be able to hammer her way through that part.

They're probably not in fact supposed to ask questions right now, then? Or maybe they are? She's not going to be the next one to test that again.

She doesn't like pain, but it might not be as bad as everyone staring at her like this. Then again, the alternate would be this, and then also pain, so she decides this must be better.

It's possible that keeping Keltham in the dark is going to be more challenging than she thought, even with all the helpful colored walls in existence. Asking that question at all was hard enough to make herself do. Being the imaginary person who can ask a question like that without messing it up seems like it must be almost impossible.

Marius has been watching this all in a kind of dazed horror. The chaos has crept in so quickly that even people just recently exposed to the transcripts are being warped by it, clearly. They're all surely doomed.