Asmodia almost, but not quite, prays to Otolmens about it.  She remembers in time that sometimes her prayers get answered, and this wouldn't actually be a great time.

...he's actually not seeing it offhand, if he uses a random number generation method that they can't plausibly predict.  And picking a random random number generation method that then uses some environmental entropy seems like a pretty powerful way of doing that even in a low-tech environment that's reading your mind.

For that matter, if there is some very clever way to defeat the proposal, he shouldn't think of it now, he should think of it afterwards.  Maybe Asmodia asked that as a last-ditch desperate attempt by Conspiracy to make him think of a solution to a problem they couldn't solve themselves, though, also to be fair, that's sort of a nitwit clever tactic he can't see Conspiracy Asmodia actually being reckless enough to try.

Okay.  Let's try that then.

There's an instant of spinning horror before Asmodia stops trying to see the world from Keltham's dath ilani viewpoint quite so hard, and remembers that she is of Golarion.

'Random' numbers?  Prophecy is broken but it's not that broken!

AUGURIES!  Use Auguries every time to check if it's the right time to hand him an excerpt!  They're fallible but if Keltham doesn't do too many checks we'll have a CHANCE of fooling him!

...if they've got no Auguries prepped and no scrolls of those, then they're all going to die, but that won't be Asmodia's fault.  She really felt like she was doing an unusually good job here, involving her taking some huge professional and hence personal risks, that gave Cheliax the best chance it could have had, if other people did their parts and prepared adequately.

...the facility has three Auguries prepped daily, two for Project Lawful's use on weird experiments, one for actual Security reserve.  They've got a couple of scrolls of Augury in storage as a backup to that.

That's enough to check the next few cases, while somebody Teleports to Egorian and back to fetch more scrolls, ideally along with an arcane savant to cast from those scrolls.

Asmodia continues to show promise, and yes he appreciates that she risked herself there.  But those other thoughts verge on attempted self-defense against punishment, and would get her lit on fire most places that aren't Project Lawful.

Acknowledged, Asmodia thinks back at him.  ((She'll go on being smug, just more privately.))

Aspexia's spells, even the low-circle ones, are really quite valuable at her caster level.  With few exceptions, she only requests spells from Lord Asmodeus that she plans to use that day.

There's relatively little need for preparing against such contingencies by wasting your spell slots, when you can afford to carry around a bag of holding containing, among a lot of other things, two dozen Augury scrolls.

Acknowledged, belay the previous request for scrolls, just get us the arcane savants.

Auguries take a minute to cast, though, how are we -

Number the books Keltham requests, do Auguries in parallel across our clerics about the result of "using an excerpt on Keltham's Nth request".  That should still work so long as the request and its consequences are within the half-hour prediction window.

...all right, the library seems to be passing Asmodia's Obvious Testing Method.  So far.

They're getting some errors, but so far all of them have been of the form where they use a complete book and didn't really need to.  So far.

At some point, Keltham's intuition informs him that he's gotten about as much evidence out of this as he could get; his randomized random number generators have fired three times, and three is well-known to be the largest possible number.

He's asked Fennelosa about ability to buy six books, and three of those have been for sale.

All right.  Let's call it here.

Next up... is... that.

Praised be Asmodeus. Also them. She's not going to think 'they're doing well, this is going to work out', because if she thinks that it definitely won't. But she thinks they earned some sorely needed twos there and will earn more from the erotica.

So!  Time to carry out exactly the same procedure on somebody's pornography collection.

It doesn't feel like a deadly challenge to the Conspiracy, this time, more like - he basically knows that this test is going to be passed, Snack Service wouldn't have suggested it otherwise.  But still.  Sure, let's try it.

Fennelosa will go across town, then, at a brisk walk, and declare himself calling in a favor owed to Lady Sali.

The illusionists might want to edit out the exchange that follows.

"You look - Chelish."

     "Straight from the front. It's a long story."

"Do you need anything?"

      "Just the books."

"How do you know Lady Sali?"

      "Through Cayden. Like I said, it's a long, long story."

But once that's worked out, Keltham can run his tests on the erotica collection. 

It actually goes noticeably easier than trying to launch Chelish history queries.  Mainly because Arnsen Puddleton has read every one of the erotica books in his collection, to the point of doing better than a dath ilani computer's search index.

For example.  At one point - inspired by Carissa's idea about asking to interview children with pox marks specifically - Keltham asks via Fennelosa if any of these books have a section where a masochist gets tied to a bed and then fed chocolate.  Arnsen cheerfully plucks one of his books off the shelf, and promptly flips through to exactly that.

Why Snack Service is allowed to help with this but not -

"Snack Service says it's decision-theoretically complicated, and the more you think about it or try to draw implications from it, the less it's retroactively allowed to help you as much as it has already."

"I wish to register that in the corresponding lessons in dath ilan, in which we do exotic thought experiments intended to teach us about this sort of theoretical possibility, the teacher always ends the lesson by reminding everyone that this has essentially never happened to anyone in real life throughout the entire history of time, and if you think it's happening to you, you're mistaken."

"If you come up with any effective way to register things at Snack Service, let me know, because I've got things I'd also like to register."

And he's done.  The Conspiracy has done an even better job of making it look like masochists exist, than making it look like Abrogail is the ruler of Cheliax in cooperation with Asmodeus's Church, which says something about their priorities if nothing else.

Keltham is... sort of brain-tired at this point.  Trying to think of all these things while not thinking of other things is sort of excessive for a mental control exercise.

But.  So long as Fennelosa is in Absalom, should Keltham be buying any scrolls that he could potentially use today?  Delaying a while about that gives the Conspiracy all sorts of chances to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, like trying to quickly write or complete the books Keltham 'bought'.  The Conspiracy has a chance to claim that his scrolls can't be found at the next shop or two that Fennelosa tries.  Still potentially worth doing; they leak bits if nobody has Sending, you'd expect that to be a very common spell.  Some more Purge Invisibilities.  An Arcane Sight, Keltham has kept wanting to watch himself hanging a spell already with his own Arcane Sight instead of a slightly delayed illusion... well, no, he can requisition that later, if Ordinary wins on review; but Arcane Sight is potentially useful against the Conspiracy.  Early Judgment would be useful if anyone has that, it would give Keltham an emergency psychological buffer that doesn't take up a spell slot all the time... a psychological buffer that Keltham could very well need, if things go poorly.

Scrolls are expensive, but Keltham has some money and needs to be willing to spend some money, here.  He can afford a few low-level scrolls.  Is he missing anything from his shopping list?

Alarm x2, Detect Charm x4, those are first-level and cheap.  All of those together cost the same as one second-circle scroll.  Kind of crazy, really.

Status, Dispel Magic, Suppress Charms and Compulsions, Lay of the Land.  A backup Owl's Wisdom and a Fox's Cunning, both things he should have in emergencies, and it's not impossible today will turn into an emergency.

Another Invisibility Purge... another Detect Intelligence accomplishes much the same thing, probably, and is cheaper?

An Early Judgment, also because he might think of something to do with that, some test; the Conspiracy if it exists may be somehow nervous about afterlives.  Though the fact that the Conspiracy told him about that spell, suggests that it has no obvious-to-them win-ability... well, they could have expected that his god would give it to him anyways at some point, before that whole interdiction zone happened.

Keltham... cannot really afford a Sending or an extra Glimpse of Beyond, both 4th-circle, with the amount he's already spending.  Or an Arcane Sight when he doesn't have a specific plan or time in mind to use it.

(Keltham doesn't really like spending large quantities of money.  That is probably some kind of important character flaw given his changed life circumstances.  He may have to work on this?  But it will be a lot easier to work on this once he has those large amounts of money in his liquid-asset account.)

Okay he'll buy the Arcane Sight too, fine.

Fennelosa will make all of these purchases; such spells are available in Absalom, and it's be a loss of bits the Conspiracy can't afford to pretend otherwise, and - 

- well, either they've won or they've lost. At this point, it's likely beyond further manipulation. 

.....if Abrogail concurs in that assessment she might want her headband back. (This feels like dying, but that like all the rest of Carissa's feelings are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.)

I will not trust that this event is over until Keltham has arrived in a state of mind permitting us to statue him, or left for Osirion.

Maillol.  Have you made progress on determining the conditions for that, under our Lord's will?

Maillol does not complain about impossibilities or his own incapacity.  He simply reports what he can.

If Keltham returns to a state where he is not - actively determining whether to leave us, especially for Osirion, through planned deeds that have not yet been performed and resolved themselves - if Keltham is not holding concrete plans to decide about that matter the next day, at a particular time, or if he's made whatever decisions he intends to make and has become again our indefinite guest - then, Maillol thinks, they would no longer be in the ambiguous fringes of Asmodeus's command.

It is not clear to Maillol that they have been definitely commanded not to statue Keltham now, for just a year, while Keltham hasn't yet made a decision to depart but has decided to make a decision about it...?  The stakes here are unusually, exceptionally high -

Your report is heard.

Listen and be educated, fool.  It is likely that our Lord was paid for some outcome less stringent than this, in one regard or another, in the negotiations as of between gods; and yet our Lord issued us such stringent orders as these, because of the past tendency of fools like you to try to work around the edges of His instructions.  Do you behave so now, our Lord will learn and His expectations shift, and the next time He sells an expectation to gods, He will have to use yet more stringent instructions.  Were I the sort to behave so, our Lord would have predicted that and issued even more stringent orders originally.

Keep firmly to our Lord's directions and path, when He has given orders.  Obey Him strictly and do not try to work His interests around His orders' edges; yes, even if it is in His interests.  For that is not His way and His nature as a god; and when we work counter to that, we become less visible to His eyes, more slippery to His hands, more costly for Him to manipulate.