what the truth can destroy | Glowfic Constellation

first-of-?

"Only if there exists some tiny probability that you're wrong, so zero probability is bullshit, and the part of you that's afraid to compact knows that what another part said in words is bullshit."

"You think you have your own special brand of thought, unLawful but whose power is on par with that of the Law that Cheliax is so desperate to obtain? Go build that giant Radiance not-weapon. You think you can just not take it seriously? Go tell Pilar that, she'll be very relieved that the answer was so simple and she can resume her lessons."

"They obviously haven't told you the truth about why Cheliax is playing so gently with Keltham, why they're not just hurting him into obedience instead of plying him with the Queen's own bedmate, why they're not Suggesting him or using Geas or Scribe's Binding or a hundred other tricks. I expect you know nothing at all about the real forces behind this, the 'tropes', the reason why Cayden Cailean is giving out snacks and Cheliax is apparently fine with that, why there's a random halfling hanging around."

"You are a disposable Security guard, sent here to die, to get information out of me while knowing nothing yourself, and the reason you're not allowed to read my mind is that they know you'd see that in there."

"Yeah, I know nothing about any of that. I don't need to know anything about any of that. You also know nothing about several dozen other things that are like that which didn't happen to come to your attention. That's kind of how it goes."

first-of-?

"It begins to seem to me that my own best interest is to allow you to fail at this interview, so they have to send in somebody I'd find more useful to persuade. You, I now expect, have been placed within some surrounding prison of your own; you're not thinking about what I'm saying because you think there's nothing you can do about it even if you want to."

"Thing is, disposable people like that? They're obviously disposable, to everyone except themselves. Even to themselves, they just can't think it. And it's not in my own interest to talk to someone if the whole plan is to kill them before my own words can have any effect. I suppose I could start figuring out what I'd want you to report, if nobody's going to read my mind to check on it."

"I am sure someone's reading your mind, because whether reading your mind is dangerous and whether talking to you is dangerous are separate questions worth checking separately. I do think we're about done here, though. Maybe they'll kill me, once I head out and report that you're just sad and pretending you know things you don't; I kind of bet not, because they don't have an infinite supply of Security, but we'll see."

first-of-?

"They'll hurt you less before you die if you don't say anything that stupid, that you couldn't even possibly know, while reporting that you failed to find the answers to any of their questions."

"Let's see who's up next." And if she can work her way up to somebody with the power to actually get her out.

"Almost certainly what's up is that we hurt you very, very badly, and that part we let Iomedae watch. I'll check, though, just in case there's anything else to ask while you still have the ability to string together sentences."

He steps out.

first-of-?

She has in fact been trying not to think about that.

"Well?" says Elias Abarco.

"I don't think she's dangerous to you but she thinks she is, to the point of saying she should play along until she gets someone in there who has the power to decide to defect with her. - do you want a more detailed summary -"

"Yes."

"Other countries can become ilani and Chelish people can't, we're doomed, she's on the winning side, it's all obvious once you're ilani enough to see all the hidden patterns, we're disposable, Cheliax is going to kill us just for hearing her so we have nothing to lose. I do think it'd work better on anyone who's been trying to adopt the ilani mode of thinking, she's pretty good at arguing within it."

"You're scared Cheliax is going to kill you just for hearing her."

"I mean, yeah, no kidding. She's wrong about all the other bullshit."

"Go write it up and sit until I come out."

"Yes, sir."

"I hear you were hoping to see me," Elias Abarco says brightly to Peranza. "Or, 'someone who could defect if you persuaded them', and I'm going to consider myself qualified. Of course, I'm not actually here to talk, but you can make noises with your mouth if you want. That's how I'll tell if I've hurt you enough yet."

first-of-?

"Are you authorized to read my mind? And if not, is there some other reason why anyone would trust anything I'd say under torture?"

"I'm authorized to read your mind but I'm going to do it by having someone else make a transcript and read it out to me, simplifies my report after the fact. And it means I can tune them out and just enjoy myself without worrying I'll compromise the accuracy of my summary. You're very pretty, you know that? If I were Sevar I'd have tried to break the ugly ones first, less wasteful."

first-of-?

"Are we just playing the game where you're straight-up lying to me? Seems like quite the waste of time. You're not incompetent enough to have priorities like that, and if there's nobody giving you continuous updates on whether I'm lying, it means there's nobody reading my mind."

"Tsk tsk, and here I thought you wanted to be ilani. Any level of competence can go with any given priorities."

torture

He surveys her thoughtfully and then calls a knife to his hand and starts cutting from her jawline to her forehead, across her eye. "See, that's a little better already. You know how in Hell there are just those seething balls of tortured flesh? I've always wondered if you can get that effect in Golarion, if you're willing to throw enough healing at it, but I've never had occasion to find out."

first-of-?

Peranza grew up in Cheliax, and has good-enough pain tolerance to make it through Ostenso academy without being one of the very brightest students, and then Subirachs trained her in case Keltham wanted to use her. This isn't a level of pain that would break her.

torture

Losing sight in one eye is unnerving, the prospect of being blind is unnerving; but that's the obvious thing for a torturer to do, right, it doesn't cost them anything, it's not even evidence about whether you're about to lose the other eye, which they won't do because then they can't show you things to scare you.

But she's invented an ilani theory of being tortured over the last few minutes. It says that your reaction to any torture should be the same as your reaction to the most severe possible torture, so that you're not giving the adversary any probabilistic evidence about how much something hurts or whether they need to torture you any harder or whether anything you're saying is true.

So Peranza is screaming like her soul is being ripped out of her, and sobbing something about how Asmodia has secret superpowers, Asmodia made her do it.

That's genuinely pretty baffling until he gets the update from the mindreader about what she's doing.

....okay he's pretty sure this is not in fact ilanism this is some weird cope that exists entirely inside Peranza's head, built out of scraps, to face what the rest of eternity is going to be like. In which case there's not much left to do here aside from make sure she doesn't get tortured less because she figured out a way to make it less useful. He can do weird made-up-on-the-spot torture-related game theory too.

first-of-?

She's made her point and can go back to it as required if he starts getting any more serious. For now, back to trying to take apart his mind. "Do you actually have - ow - questions, Abarco? It's possible I'd just answer if you asked."

"What specific mental technique caused you to have a breakdown and switch sides and do you think you'd have had the breakdown with or without that."

first-of-?

"You had somebody reading my mind while that happened, and if you want more details you're going to need to give me an Owl's Wisdom and a Fox's Cunning so I'm able to think those thoughts again in any more detail." She doesn't say out loud that they'd need somebody reading her mind while they did that, to trust the answers; Abarco can deduce that on his own and her saying that gives away slightly more of what she's planning. Though, mostly, her plan is just to have the more powerful Peranza rip apart whatever mind is looking at her.

"Yeah, not happening. Who do you think is likeliest to break next."

first-of-?

"Yeah, then you're not knowing. Sevar." She's lying, it's Gregoria, obviously, she's the one getting dangerous-ilanism exposure. Her mind briefly considers Tonia, though, and that gives her another idea -

He gets that update, decides not to comment on it. "If Sevar breaks what would do it."

first-of-?

"Being the smartest person on this project, having the most advanced mastery of Law, and starting to figure out the actual reality surrounding her."

"It really is that fucking simple, Abarco."

(Truth.)

"That's not an answer. Which aspect of the actual reality surrounding her would bother Sevar if she admitted it."

first-of-?

"You want the long fucking list or the really long fucking list? The Church, Cheliax, and Asmodeus pulled an un-Lawful trick on her by threatening her, contrary to how the actual Law works, into ever, ever doing a single thing for them that she didn't make up for by killing city guardsmen in their sleep. She's going to end up in Hell getting tortured until she no longer remembers her own name and that's not, in fact, in her own best interests. Everything the Church said about Asmodeus's inevitable victory is an obvious pack of lies in view of the actual strategic situation in Golarion where neither He nor Cheliax are anything remotely like all-powerful. On some level you already know the actual reality I'm talking about; it's everything you've calculated in the back of your mind would be disloyal if you ended up thinking it. If you want to know what will break Sevar, all you need to do is look at all those thoughts."