"Is anyone else in that state right now?"

"If Pilar's curse was allowed to help you that way, Pilar's curse would have told the traitor that she really could trust Sevar.  Pilar's curse wanted to do that, all this time she was hurting so."

Chaos is so bad at getting its job done that even its curses have wants, apparently. "Why aren't you allowed to do that? It would have served Asmodeus."

"This entire situation is way more complicated than you think it is."

Do Abarco's superiors (it's just Gorthoklek, really, but he has some difficulty in addressing his thoughts directly to Gorthoklek) have any further questions.

He has many additional questions.  One does not however carry a pit fiend's grandeur by speaking an itemized list of your questions to Caydenspawn, not unless you are sure that it will answer you and respectfully.  His pride would demand a rejoinder to any lèse-majesté, and that eventuality might not serve his Lord's interests.

Even if he won.

One exchange, however, is not beneath him.

The words that he speaks then are in Celestial.  "I'll have your oath from you, Caydenspawn, to be recorded in the Library of Oaths in Stygia, that this change you'd make in events is indeed in the interests of my Lord, Asmodeus; on pain of the damnation of whatever it is that you are; and as will besmirch Cayden Cailean's own honor and incur His debt to Asmodeus."

"Pilar's curse has never lied to anyone ever actually!  Including by any clever tricks where it looks like it was Pilar's curse who said something but it wasn't really, except when Chelish people lie about that to Keltham.  Pilar's curse swears that on pain of damnation of whatever it is that it is, sure write that down in the Stygian Library, yes on Cayden Cailean's honor to Asmodeus too."

"Do not expect to hear any news of this traitor in the afterlife," Gorthoklek warns Elias Abarco.  If His Lord does choose to intervene in the matter, what comes of it must not be an information to Golarion, for that is an intervention; thus, Gorthoklek establishes an unconditional blackout now.

Without saying anything more, he snaps Peranza's neck with one fist, and then turns to depart by a route that will not take him past the Caydenspawn.  He has urgent business now upon the Nidal warfront.

"Hey!  Somebody still needs to take this cookie and you don't want Pilar seeing her friend's corpse or anything!"

"Two challenges. One is getting the impersonator past True Seeing and the other is what to tell everyone else. I'm worried at some point we could get a cascade, if enough people have self-deception linked to what other people are doing."

"We've got an impersonator on Keltham flesh-shaped to where he'll pass True Seeing, in case we want to try something on Osirion.  We've got an impersonator like that ready for Ione Sala, who seemed most likely to be a problem.  Peranza, unfortunately no, but I set that in progress when this all broke and was told three days to get it done on an emergency basis."

"We gamble that Keltham doesn't request Glimpse of Truth - no, bring in an eighth-circle to read his mind about whether he does.  'Peranza' leaves the fortress immediately after she quits.  If Keltham asks for her to be brought back on some next day, or for her to not leave until the next day when he can check, we can statue Keltham that night, if the impersonator isn't ready."

One ready to go for me? she doesn't ask. There probably is. "Should be acceptable. Keltham and Peranza weren't close, and she's been unhappy for a while; I expect he won't be very suspicious."

"Did he know she was unhappy?  He's not great at reading Chelish faces."

"Keltham did make some gestures towards Peranza; but I judged that Peranza would have had some trouble enjoying it to his satisfaction, in her state.  Alter-Peranza told Keltham that she was attracted to him, but too stressed by her work difficulties to be a properly enthusiastic bedmate, but that she'd probably have fun if he simply pinned her against a wall and took her at some point, and she might be up for more later.  He was welcome to take her in any way that didn't make her responsible for anything.  That was Peranza's choice of half-truth, not mine, and I was pleased by it at the time."

"I did not understand what was meant by a cascade about self-deceptions, Chosen."

"So, say that I'm the junior Security monitoring Peranza, and she says to me, 'pick my side and escape'. I know that Abarco's watching me and he's not this easy to sway, and I don't know that Gorthoklek's present also but I know that this project is important to Church and Crown, that there might be someone very important onsite. I don't defect. I experience this as not even being tempted to defect, because all those calculations are internal, subconscious. But say that I know the other Security monitoring me, and I know he's having doubts too, and I know that sixty percent of Security have defected so far, and now I'm thinking to myself - how many of the people between me and freedom are loyal Asmodeans, and how many are waiting to see which way the wind blows?

- I assumed this was why I wasn't allowed to escape during the exercises, even though they were just exercises. Because something in the back of a mortal mind calculates if they're free or not, and it's not good for their Asmodeanism, being uncertain."

"Indeed.  I think I see now."

"It's not much of a permanent solution, only a patch for this one case, but we can tell lies, Chosen.  No Security has broken as yet, that much is true, even when placed into Peranza's direct influence, this they now know.  As for the others, tell them all that Peranza had a major break in her personality under secret 'infohazardous' circumstances tied to Keltham's special teachings, and is now a statue pending her being less of an unknown hazard to more mature ilani later.  They have no need to know Peranza tried to rebel, let alone succeeded some tiny bit."

"If I'd done that in truth I'd have the statue somewhere they could see it so they'd know I wasn't lying."

"Had Gentle Repose cast on the corpse, in case we ended up wanting to do anything clever with it.  You can heal a corpse, if you request the right spells for it.  We'll get those spells in the morning, statue her uninjured corpse, done."

(Maillol is trying very very hard to be competent today.  It was originally his suggestion to Sevar to get more disposable Securities.)

" - good. Then let's do that. Tell everyone that Peranza hit on something infohazardous, and has been statued for now, pending a mature dath ilani who isn't Keltham and who she can therefore talk to openly about it. Have fake-Peranza tell Keltham....

....probably just that she thought about it and doesn't like being alive and doesn't want to keep doing it, honestly. Dath ilani seem to - decide that a lot, that they'd rather be frozen. And with how we've set up Hell, it will analogize to being frozen, for him, and he won't be inclined to insist she stick around a day for True Seeing."

It fits perfectly but she doesn't actually like it at all. - that's a problem for later, once the immediate emergency has passed.

"And the fate of the Security who failed you so?  I am told that you were wroth with him, and that is at least a little progress.  Is it by any chance a lot of progress?"

Was she angry at him, or was she mostly angry at herself - actually, that seems like the kind of question one seeks theological counsel on. "I notice that - the main impulse towards anger, in me, comes from the sense I would have done better because I'm not incompetent, and the main impulse towards temperance comes from - the error really being my own, deep down. I assigned disposable Security; they behaved like every soldier whose superiors don't care if they live or die. 

I know I need to work on the wrath. He is an idiot, and I can probably see my way to punishing him for it, instead of assigning it off on someone else, and it'll probably be good for me.

But -- where I'm actively trying, these days, to uproot squeamishness, I don't want to uproot my sense that the incompetence of all my subordinates is actually my own fault. I'm using that to make less stupid decisions next time. I wonder if there's a - more Asmodean style, for that instinct to take, because I think as I just stated it it's probably heretical but it doesn't have to be, obviously you have a more functional hierarchy if everyone in it isn't dodging blame all the time -"

"The incompetence of all your subordinates is actually not your own fault, Chosen!  You have no doubt made mistakes in handling him, and your own superiors may hold you accountable for those, Hell will certainly judge you for it in time.  But if you've done reasonably well for a mortal, what remains is his fault.  Or should I be judged for all your mistakes, now, and you yourself held blameless and unpunished for them?"

"I'll second that I don't think the way tyranny works is that all my mistakes are your fault, all your mistakes are Subirachs's fault, all Subirachs's mistakes are Rugatonn's fault, and so on until everything is Asmodeus's fault and He gets punished by Himself for that while the rest of us go to Hell to drink tea."

- it's sort of appealing, ideologically. She sets that thought aside. What theory does that instinct identify with, which doesn't imply Asmodeus is at fault for their mistakes. "Ideally everyone on my Project would be extensions of my own will and intelligence, and then anything I failed to achieve through you would be entirely a failure of my own will and intelligence, and ideally we would all be extensions of Asmodeus's will and then there wouldn't be mistakes, because of how He's Asmodeus."

"That sounds to me an awful lot like ceasing to exist, personally.  Devils are still individuals, they don't have free will but they have their own will.  I think I'd say of that god that It wouldn't be Asmodeus and I couldn't be Its priest, because what It wanted of me was not my service, not my obedience, but my puppetry.  I'll give my soul to be the slave who commands other slaves, but not to be the golem operating golems."