"For what it's worth, I don't think I'd have that many trained kids ready to go, unless the world is a thousand times larger than Keltham has been told.  I don't think dath ilani rules, or, Keltham's version of those, say he's supposed to hide for the rest of his life because if he leaves and goes to a city, where there'd obviously be kids, the Conspiracy might have an incentive to - I mean - I guess if there just wouldn't be any such thing as beggar kids in the first place except for the elaborate lie the Conspiracy is using where beggars exist - but then the Conspiracy wouldn't necessarily expect Keltham to realize they might be producing beggar children for him, because a dath ilani doesn't easily think that way, and in that case, the beggar children were produced already, to be ready for him, so it doesn't make a difference if he goes ahead and visits - or is saying that the beggars were produced already, bad decision theory -"

"I don't think I really appreciated up until now what it must be like to have that much uncertainty about which world you're inside.  I'm trying to figure out what the Conspiracy looks like to Keltham and I'm obviously not allowed to ask him and it's just... a lot of uncertainty, though he's had longer to think and would've maybe narrowed it down more than I have."

"Thinking about complicated meta, pause."

Is Asmodia trying to prompt him into thinking about his current Conspiracy forecasts for mindreading purposes?  Probably not?  The mindreading Conspiracy knows he's wary about that possibility, that the reason why he doesn't know what the Detect Intelligence spell does the same way he knows the effects of Detect Wisdom/Anxieties and Detect Splendour/Desires, is that the third member of the trio is declarative beliefs or something, and they blocked his god from giving that one somehow - something like Spell Immunity that excludes a single spell from clerics?

Of course if Keltham reasons too much about how the mindreading Conspiracy should know better, they know he's reasoning like that, and are more likely to do it, so there's probably a self-referential equilibrium around... call it 1.1x for Conspiracy over Ordinary.

Oh, fuck him!  AlterAsmodia legitimately hasn't thought about Keltham thinking he might be getting mindread, she was told to start thinking about this like a minute ago!  AlterAsmodia actually just said that!

"Very minor blunder Asmodia, I'm worried about the world where they've got mindreading magic being used on me, so please don't say things that sound like they could be prompting me to think about info the Conspiracy wants to know."

"Oh.  Sorry."

"It wouldn't surprise me if magic like that existed in Ordinary somewhere, it'd just be above my access level probably by a lot, so, very good point."

"Lead hat - oh, if not for the brain damage. But remember that emanation divination spells, which mindreading would be if it exists, are blocked by a thin sheet of lead or an inch of iron. Wearing a helmet an inch thick sounds miserable...I think if I was worried about mindreading I'd put Lady Avaricia in charge of checking if other metals on our elements table have the divination-blocking effects of lead."

"Okay, I'm going to put on hold figuring out how weird it is that the alleged simple solution risks brain damage, what with my having only the Conspiracy's word inside the Conspiracy worlds that it's even a solution, though I guess that blocking emanations was previously listed among problematic uses of Element-82 -"

"Everybody just pause.  I am going to finish eating, then go to Maillol's office with you to ask about a thing, we can have the freeform suggestion session later.  Right now, doing the things that I thought of before the Conspiracy can react to them, is the priority, anything you suggest is something the Conspiracy has had unlimited time to prepare for."

Keltham's thoughts show that he's been reminded to ask for a scroll of whatever Carissa used to determine his Intelligence right after he arrived in Golarion.

They have a lie prepared for that! The spell Carissa used is second-circle, here it is, it just detects Intelligence. he's welcome to try it. 

(None of Carissa, Maillol, Asmodia, or Security are at any real risk of failing their will saves against a scroll-cast Detect Thoughts.)

Maillol will, at need, send Carissa and Asmodia out and then tell Keltham flatly that yes, there's a third-circle spell that corresponds to Detect Anxieties and Detect Desires which does Detect Intentions, it's illegal, the second-circle spell he just used was invented by wizards as a way to get the useful Intelligence-detecting ability without the illegal components.

Keltham will eat, trying to maintain his continuing momentum and enthusiasm about what is, in fact, an attempt to destroy his new reality.  His mind will show a lot of repetitions of 'If the Conspiracy is real, I want to know the Conspiracy is real, if the Conspiracy is not real, I desire to know it is not real' and 'In worlds where this is actually a Conspiracy and Carissa never loved me it is better to know earlier rather than later' and the like.

He's trying not to think much about his plans for the Ostenso trip in the unlikely event that's allowed.  His mind briefly thinks something about Ostenso Academy and then deliberately thinks about how he's trying to throw out some false thoughts to confuse the Conspiracy and sometimes thinks this thought after both the accidental thoughts and the deliberate ones, and then he successfully refocuses his attention on the food and how much he doesn't want to lose Carissa.

His thoughts will also briefly cover how he's not even thinking, honestly hasn't thought about it, about whether making a hard try that ends up finding no Conspiracy would be enough info for him to think about kids.  He is not that absolutely confident that tropes don't exist.

Probably the Ostenso trip is a bad idea but in addition to the three bits it also buys them several hours. Carissa is torn.

- Korva's manning the Wall, can she work up a list of divergences between Ostenso and a similar city in Taldor and her best projection of alter-Ostenso.

When Keltham tests Detect Intelligence Carissa's needs to reflect her expected +4 and not her current +6. She could have herself dealt two points of Intelligence damage (temporarily) or swap the headbands out (this is painful to think about).

Aspexia is utterly confident of her ability to bestow a curse that precise, if none of the other clerics here have the spell prepped and are confident of their own skill.

Asmodia can feel a tiny note of terror in herself about the Ostenso trip.  Why.

It's huge, chaotic, hard to plan.  That, obviously, from Keltham's perspective, is the point - but it doesn't account for why he'd think Conspiracy was eight times less likely to -

If Ordinary probably won't go for it, maybe Keltham assigns 40% to that, so then he'd have to assign 5% to Conspiracy -

Asmodia is an idiot.  Either Keltham planted that thought for them to find, or he actually is that confident that this is an incredibly terrible idea for the Conspiracy for reasons the real Conspiracy hasn't seen.

.... Ostenso trip tomorrow. That's the solution. Keltham doesn't have any reason to think tomorrow's lots better for the Conspiracy than today, and there are obvious reasons even Ordinary would want to wait a day, so Security can have their spells prepared and additional Security made available. And that gives them an entire year to figure out why the trip is so dangerous and if necessary to completely rebuild Ostenso. 

Can alterCheliax really not secure a spontaneous version of that trip right away, if Keltham is calling in nation-level favors on it, if it's possible to do it 'tomorrow'?

There might literally not be any high level wizards or clerics with the requisite spells to make it safe, since they prepare their spells in the morning and already did so; it's not like Greater Teleport which you have other reasons to prepare. You'd probably want Teleport Trap to stop people teleporting in, which is seventh circle wizard and not prepared routinely, and plausibly Shield of Law or something which is cleric 8th. 

- actually, Carissa is delegating, to the Most High and whoever is the most senior wizard now on site, thinking of the spells that their alter-selves would use to make an Ostenso expedition safe.

Acknowledged.

Done with breakfast!  Off to Maillol's!  He really wishes that mindreading!Conspiracy hadn't picked up this much relative probability mass, it's going to make the whole day harder and less fun.

He deserves a cookie about that, really.

"Here.  I'm not actually comfortable with not knowing what Snack Service is doing using my body, so if possible and if it doesn't cost Ordinary anything, I request that sometime after this is over I get told what went down just now."

Keltham is already quickly biting the cookie, verifying the taste.  Apple-flavored, great.

"Snack Service says that the decision theory of this is too complicated for it to be telling me much, which is mostly what I expected."

So, on the one hand, that's better than Snack Service not being able to do that, which would've favored Conspiracy a lot - Snack Service is pretty high on the list of apparent-things they'd be faking.  But it again means that, in the Conspiracy worlds, it's narrowing down even more strongly on the mindreading Conspiracy and on them being relatively better at mindreading.  What with 'Snack Service' having apparently just read a thought, and one he was trying to hide.

Off to Maillol's office.

"Sudden trip to Ostenso.  I'm not going to ask whether it's possible, because it's obviously possible in principle, I'm asking you what ends up being the minimum cost and minimum risk."

"I'm not going to hide it, Keltham, I was wondering if you were going to ask that and I have literally had nightmares about you asking that.  Cheliax is still fighting the war that started when you went on one quick, tiny, almost certainly completely safe excursion three steps outside of our Forbiddance.  Don't get me wrong, it's a good war, a great war, the best, really, glad it started, but we are still in the middle of that one and I was sort of hoping to finish it up before you started the next one."

He's not lying.

"Ferrer."

"The main risk here is that this Project is cursed by Pharasma with respect to what happens whenever anything like this goes down.  I don't know how I protect you from that.  Intuitively, the way things go around you, it feels like literally nothing we can do is going to make there be a, in ilani-style numbers, less than ten percent probability, of Rovagug cultists or a Kuthite cell planted in Ostenso to get you or something completely unexpected going wrong."

He's still not lying.  AlterMaillol says it too.

"Is this a tropes-based prediction?  Because I'd mostly lost probability on those."

"It's a PROJECT MANAGER prediction."