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."

"Any weird news come to mind involving Cheliax in the last year?"

He's not able to stop his thoughts from mentioning the word 'lead', but at least he got this far, and that's already some evidence against Ordinary.

That's not fair, there's no chance that random priests of Sarenrae would be apprised of Cheliax's leaded pot related initiatives. 

"I've heard a rumor that after the godwar started all the gods agreed not to intervene in Cheliax so as not to tear it apart with their fighting?"

He'll assign retrospective likelihoods later that a medical priest wouldn't have heard the news about lead, inside Ordinary, versus the likelihood that Conspiracy wouldn't think of it until too late and then not want to tip off that they read the plan out of his mind.

Message:  You can answer this one out loud, it's long.  What is Sarenrae's position on Asmodeus's takes?

121 - 1331 - 14641 - if it's too complex - if it's too simple - 161051 - 1771561 -

"I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?"

Message:  Asmodeus has some positions on compacts, on power relations between humans, and on free will.  Does Sarenrae's Church agree or disagree with those positions, and if so why?

"We're in favor of free will, Good should and can be chosen, it doesn't have to be imposed. In intimacy, people should - practice the virtue of concern for the other. That's a classic Good-Evil disagreement, I suppose. For - contracts - I'd say mostly Sarenrae's church has a different focus. Sarenrae is the goddess of the sun, of redemption, of healing, of the good in everyone; I would say that She - agrees that contracts can be important, and should be precise and fair, but only because as far as I know that works out better for people than not doing that."

Well, he's not giving answers as detailed as the paladin, which maybe figures for somebody accosted by weird questions in the middle of a giant amateur-market.  It's not following the previous pattern of the paladin giving answers more detailed about Evil than about Good.

And there haven't been any anomalies in the mirror, or in the apparent symbol from his truthspell that Keltham drew in iridescence or the Baseline script inside it, so either it was an honest answer or they mind-controlled the guy or they ran a sufficiently realistic illusion.

That was mostly what Keltham was expecting would happen inside Conspiracy; this didn't seem like a likely test to blow things open.  It revolved around possibilities of magic, illusion, mind-control, and those are places where the Conspiracy controlled almost all the information he got.

But he tested it, just in case.  Seeing the slave market reminded Keltham, a little, what it means to be involved in serious business, and to maybe make a more serious effort at breaking apart his world if it could be broken.

Message to priest:  Thanks, that's it.

Message to Fennelosa:  Please continue looking for a bookshop.