...Asmodia is confused by why they don't want Keltham having a full-scale meltdown about child slaves in Absalom, to the point of changing the fabric of local reality in a possibly inconsistent way about that; but she realizes this may not be the best time for Sevar to stop and explain her reasoning.

"Go for it."

Carissa would love Keltham to have a breakdown if it meant he'd stop pursuing Conspiracy. She suspects it instead means he demands Owl's Wisdom and Fox's Cunning.

"Good Wealday," says Fennelosa to a stall vendor. "I am looking for booksellers, where would I find those."

"You're on the wrong side of the market, sir, they're uptown from here."

"Thank you."

There sure are a lot of different people in Golarion.  Less variety in clothing, compared to dath ilan, of course; but the people inside the clothes sure are different - does that person have scales?  She's pretty.  Keltham will have to think about whether or not he's perverted enough to ask Meritxell to look like that next time.

A toad breathes fire at him from one of the stalls. A woman wrings a chicken's neck and hands it off to a tall, green-skinned orc. A beggar grabs at his feet and starts a spiel about his dying wife. 

And if he has a go-ahead from the lead team (which is covering up any Abadaran holy symbols they see as well as any child slaves) he'll cut through the slave markets, on his way uptown.

Go.

Absalom has periodically debated abolishing the slave markets. Not the institution of slavery, nor even the slave trade; both bring Absalom much prosperity. But the markets, yes. They're an unpleasant place, an eyesore both literally and metaphorically; they make people who don't mind slavery in the slightest uneasy. 

The slaves are mostly very minimally dressed, in some cases nude. Some are in cages, but most are for efficiency just chained to each other, shackled hands and feet. Most of them stare at the ground, or at the wall. Some are crying. Some are struggling. There's an auction block, where a man with a booming voice is collecting bids on a lot just arrived from distant Casmaron. 

There are no children. This required ripping some babies out of their mothers' arms before Fennelosa got there, but their owners were duly compensated.

And give the babies back, afterwards. Even nearly-fully-corrupted Keltham will care about that, not to mention that Snack Service is about to threaten me about it.

Snack Service would otherwise have advised Carissa Sevar against disrupting future relations with Keltham, had she been that silly!

The suspicious Asmodeans should really have enough evidence by now to update about some things!  They should not feel constrained in how they serve Asmodeus by Snack Service's presence, even if Cayden Cailean wouldn't like something.  Snack Service will warn them if they're about to do something that is about to significantly harm Asmodeus's interests simultaneously with Cayden Cailean's.

He closes his eyes after a few seconds.

(Whatever this is, if there's a reason for Conspiracy to fake it, Keltham shouldn't cooperate with that reason and give them a retroactive reason to arrange this.  That's a reason to keep his eyes closed, right?</motivated-cognition>)

"Carissa," he says not by Message, "tell me when he's through."

That does not particularly look like a situation that sane people would not suicide out of.  Maybe if it was temporary.

Maybe those are Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, or Chaotic Neutral people and this is the section of the market where they sell people who can't say no.  In which case blowing up Absalom to stop this wouldn't particularly be helping them.

...or maybe they lied to him about afterlives, that's rising in prominence too.

He'll give them this, it doesn't feel like Conspiracy so much as it feels like an Ordinary that is wronger than they told him yet, in ways that they have, per his own request, held off from rushing to tell him about.

She squeezes his hand. "I'll tell you."

Fennelosa could teleport out now, while Keltham's not looking, but it's not like they have an entire approved bookshop in Cheliax for him to go to either. If anything, a bookshop in Cheliax would probably reveal more. Fennelosa should proceed, and the team that came up with all the Keltham-approved books should put those Keltham-approved books in Fennelosa's Bag of Holding for ease of swapping in either at the bookstore or subsequently. 

As soon as they're out of the slave markets, then, and just entering a section of bazaar that's full of animal skins and leathers and furs - "okay, it's over."

Keltham doesn't answer; he's running through basic possibilities for abolishing the slave trade in Golarion, just in case he's missing something obvious.  Some of the thoughts are along the lines of 'maybe don't sell any +4 intelligence headbands to Absalom' and 'if this is what Cheliax was like before the Church took over, they might have done some pretty extreme things in the takeover process that they'd want to conceal from me until I understood why that was necessary', both of which are explanations for why the Conspiracy would want to fake this.

If he decides this world is real, among Keltham's next steps is going to be talking to that paladin to find out what Good's current plans are on this slavery thing.

...if Ordinary were deliberately protecting him from this, though, they should've warned him about it.  Not just walked him into an abused-people-market.

He's going to focus on this test.  Needs to focus on this test.  It also matters, even on this scale.

And something about him is taking all of this more seriously, now, even to the point of being willing to inconvenience bystanders.  But he's not - quite - seeing what he should - the Conspiracy has obvious responses - no, he's not thinking clearly, even if they have obvious responses, he should run the test anyways - the trouble is not thinking about things -

Keltham is looking for somebody in his field of vision who looks like they might be the local equivalent of a Security wizard, or police officer, or the non-Nidal version of a person carrying an expensive sword.

He's not able to stop himself from thinking that the point is to find somebody who'd be difficult to mind-control, or who it'd be a very big deal to mind-control.

And now that he's gone and thought that, he needs to pick a subject immediately if possible, before they have time to cast an illusion about it.

Is he by any chance going to pick the Chelish agent on the lead team who is disguised as a priest of Sarenrae and who is purchasing blankets at the stall right up ahead? Or the Chelish agent on the lead team who is disguised as a powerful Vudrani wizard flying lazily overhead shouting instructions while his harried assistant makes purchases for him?

Or the perfectly legitimate but low-level guards stationed at the edge of the slave market?

Yep, totally going for the Sarenrae priest.

Message:  Can you ask that person buying blankets if they'd be willing to answer some quick questions for 5gp, or more if you think it takes more?

(Keltham is substantially increasing the amount beyond what he'd have to offer in dath ilan, because low-trust environment and also he might be about to get some innocent mind-controlled with hopefully low probability.)

Fennelosa will head over to the priest of Sarenrae. "Excuse me, father, would you be willing to answer some questions on the spot for 5 gold pieces?"

"Well, I'd have to say that it'd depend on the questions," the man responds in Taldane with a distinctly Taldor-Taldane accent.

Message:  They'll be about Cheliax, Nidal, Zon-Kethon, and Asmodeus.  Also ask him if he's okay being Messaged directly by someone he can't see, and replying in kind.

Fennelosa repeats this faithfully. 

" - well, I don't mind someone Messaging me with questions," the priest says, "but I don't know that I'll have very satisfactory answers for them, and wouldn't want them to feel their gold was misspent."

Message directly to person who looks like he'd be hard to mind-control:

"Assuming I otherwise got here from very far away and am pretty ignorant of things, what would you say are the most interesting things that happened with Cheliax, Nidal, Zon-Kuthon, or Asmodeus over the last year?"

"Well, they went to war," the priest replies immediately. "Zon-Kuthon's army attacked Cheliax, or so I heard at least, and then the gods united against Zon-Kuthon." Message doesn't permit long replies if you can't cast it yourself, and he can't.

"Any else?"

"The gods locked Zon-Kuthon away. The war is still ongoing, the church of Sarenrae is engaged by Cheliax for healing."

"Any else?"

"Not that I'm thinking of immediately, no. Certainly nothing as momentous as that."