"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.

Fennelosa will pay the guy five gold and then keep looking for a bookshop. This end of the bazaar is more upscale: fancy textiles, food vendors, shoeshiners, jewelers. 

There's a bookshop over there! The proprietor has been knocked unconscious and is sleeping upstairs. There's a new, temporary proprietor. 

In he goes.

Is Keltham in range to see what kinds of books this bookshop carries?

Like most bookshops it carries an eclectic range of books that the proprietor got her hands on to copy! The sign on the door just says 'books from all around the world'.

Any foreign-language titles visible?

It looks like she carries Taldane and Kelish, mostly, and then one shelf up high is labelled 'distant shores' and has some Tien and some other harder to identify languages.

He'll save his Comprehend Languages until he finds a bookshop that carries more foreign titles, then; it doesn't last as long when cast from scroll... no, that's the wrong way to think about it, that potentially gives the Conspiracy too much time to catch him if his thoughts slip up.

Message to proprietor:  Hi, I'm shopping by scry today!  Sorry for this weird request, but if you can immediately go over to one of your books and open it to a section with something inside critical of Cheliax, in any way at all however minor, I'll immediately buy that book.  Bonus points if it's in a language that isn't Taldane.

(Yes, this is also testing whether the proprietor is being mind-controlled in a way that doesn't permit the controller to access native knowledge about their own books.)

The person at the desk, who appears to be a boy of about fifteen, startles. "Is this some kind of scam," he says suspiciously. "I'll call the watch." I need to be directed to whichever of the books we placed contains criticism of Cheliax.

      "No scam. My patron's just - very secretive and somewhat eccentric," Fennelosa says, and sets two gold coins on the counter. "Please do whatever he asked."

The boy snatches up the two gold coins. Bites them. "Alright then," he says. "I don't speak any other languages so I'm not gonna get the bonus points." 

And he picks a book off the shelf and starts leafing through it. "There's got to be something in here, because this is from Andoran and they don't like Cheliax one bit. Just give me a minute, okay?"

Sure, he'll give a minute.

- establishes baseline -

- too slow -

- too fast -

- how much should a bookstore operator know his own books -

"Ha! From a speech by the Supreme Elect Andira Marusek. 'If Cheliax declared the slave trade over, it would end without a shot fired! But Cheliax has embraced as their national philosophy this: 'it's not our problem'. And secondarily this: we're already saving the world, stop complaining. As if it would cost the ships that already patrol these seas a single penny, to make it known they'd stop slavers! They will tell you they have no means to, but the truth is this: they don't care to!! - 's pretty critical, I'd say."

      "Seems kind of unfair to me, really," Fennelosa says. 

"Does it have to be a fair criticism? I don't know what you'll count."

Keltham doesn't really have time to consider whether it's fair or not, he'll consider that later.  Right now he needs to spring his next test before hypothetical mind controllers have too much time to consider it.

Message to Fennelosa:  Buy that one and start flipping through it, random pages for me to read.

Message to proprietor:  Okay, now something critical of Qadira, fast as possible, will buy if you find it, same principle.

Keltham knows Qadira exists mainly because of browsing the Absalom history, not because anybody from Cheliax made any statements about it that they'd want to back up; and Qadira is pretty near here, and people in this region should have political opinions about it.  If they planted books about Cheliax here, and the mind-controller only knows about those, this request will take longer.  Likewise if it's all an illusion and they have illusions ready of particular books.

"I'll buy it," says Fennelosa. None of the planted books cover Qadira. 

       "Five gold." That's fine; any book from Taldor on recent history is going to say some critical stuff about Qadira, they've been having border disputes. 

"He's overcharging you by a factor of two or three," Fennelosa Messages the scry irritably. "Probably because he's noticed you're rich and eccentric. Should I haggle."

Message:  Just pay this one and mention that you'll only be paying 150% of the fair price on the next one.  I do owe him something for incidental exposure to all the weirdness around me, and a bonus for not being able to ask him about that part explicitly for information-security reasons.

Fennelosa counts out five gold, takes the book, and starts leafing through it. Publication date five years ago. It's about Andoran politics, mostly following the political rise of Marusek and a series of near-conflicts Andoran got into because its neighbors consider it to be sponsoring piracy. 

The proprietor looks for a book about Taldane military history, that should have some Qadira and some criticism of Qadirans.