Wrong attitude!  And then he's going to try to crack the putatively fragile eggshell of the world he's inside!  If the world is real, it'll be able to take it!

That which shouldn't be destroyed by the truth, can't be!

PL-timestamp:  Day 89 / Long Night

Avaricia's going to stay out of suspension at least for a month to help with the more sensitive Presidigitable chemical processes. Carissa has some hesitations about this, most of them shaped like 'if you start treating Avaricia as a dath-ilani-rude-person and forget who she actually is, and then she outmaneuvers you and arranges for you to never wake up, you'd deserve it', but it means spellsilver's a lot cheaper and at her Splendour acting normal should be easier. And she's not close enough to Keltham he'll notice subtle personality changes. 

Maillol's also going to stay out of suspension at least for a month, possibly for the duration, to manage the logistics of the expanded spellsilver project. She's not worried about that. She is pretty sure that every time Abrogail or the Most High or Gorthoklek steps into their fortress he is deeply grateful deep in his heart that it's Carissa they're here to see. 

They're about a week out. They can do it sooner, if anything makes them nervous; they can wait a bit longer, if Keltham's teaching something immediately applicable. People keep coming up with reasons to stall; probably they're all as nervous as she is. More nervous, maybe, because more disposable. But she remains pretty sure it's the right call.

PL-timestamp:  Day 90 / Morning

You don't get to be a seventh-circle cleric of Asmodeus without the ability to be professional.  Including being professional when terrified that you're going to be fired, executed, and not have a good time in Hell; this is practically synonymous with being professional at all, in Cheliax.  Project Lawful is probably valuable enough, at this point, to continue anyways, and this, probably isn't Subirachs's fault -

Her report relayed via Security to the Chosen of Asmodeus contains no tone at all, just the facts.

Spell Gauge shows that Keltham received the following spells upon praying today:

1st:  Comprehend Languages, Sanctuary, Protection from Evil, Abadar's Truthtelling x3
2nd:  Owl's Wisdom, Eagle's Splendour, Augury x2
3rd:  Invisibility Purge x2, Summon Monster III

(4th is unknown as always, Subirachs cannot read that high)

An extreme emergency request for 8th-circle support to mindread Keltham has already been sent by Teleport.  Burning their scroll of Heightened Detect Thoughts on Keltham can also be done immediately pending Sevar's orders.

This is a very tropey time for him to get suspicious, is the first thing Carissa's brain produces, for some reason.

"Do it. And try to secure a Dominate Monster so we can control whatever he summons, and put - Rabassa and Tura and Abarco on his personal security, if they aren't already, and have someone review last night's activities. And check all the girls to see if anyone tipped him off and if so what they said. 

- additionally I - want Her Infernal Majestrix on site. She might think of something I won't, and she can definitely authorize things I can't."

Subirachs doesn't remind the Chosen that standing orders from the Most High are that Sevar is supposed to fight this game against Keltham by her own will, because tropes probably do not permit the Queen to win if she's in charge.  If Sevar wants to request Her Infernal Majestrix standing by while restricting herself in whatever way the Most High has demanded of her, it's her call.

The Security sent as messenger to Egorian has Telepathic Bond up; the new request can be added immediately.

Emergency mindread results:

Keltham is thinking about whether to trust Cheliax with weapons information for the war on Nidal, and plans to spend a day properly trying to pierce Conspiracies specifically in the class of 'the Conspiracy isn't so powerful that they couldn't use my knowledge about spellsilver or weapons'.

He's conducted a preliminary review of some of his evidence, but all his surface thoughts referenced was the point that if the Conspiracy existed, it was improvising very hard during its early days.

He hasn't done a full review of evidence, because he's planning to gather more evidence today.

His next destination is asking Ione for books written in non-Taldane languages.  He plans to collect those early, before the hypothetical Conspiracy has a chance to react to his other requests - something about a scry - and his brief surface thoughts about what he was planning to do to the books later didn't make sense to the Security who cast from scroll, something that felt like an inscrutable dath ilani thing you could do to a language - one of his 4th level spells is Tongues -

Well fuck. 

Ask Maillol if we're allowed to petrify him while he's attempting to leave. Get some old books written in non-Taldane languages, fudge the dates. Have Ione still asleep, or if she's never slept in up to this point have her in the toilet. 

Acknowledged.

"We can - it feels like, it's on the edges of our orders - unfortunately - we can't try to keep him for the long term if he's trying to leave, if the time has come for him to leave, if it feels like the time has naturally come when he leaves us.  We could definitely petrify him for a day, a week, if we don't mind him noticing that.  If we think he's otherwise going to leave us for Osirion, it becomes worse to stop him, delay him.  I don't know if that instruction is just about Osirion or if it would apply to other destinations too - we cannot lie to him or tell him partial truths in a way that is intended to make him choose a destination other than Osirion - I will continue trying to understand our Lord's commands -"

Praise Nethys.

Praise Nethys.

Praise Nethys.

Sure, she can be in her library's toilet.  It will be useful to have a chance to regain her composure.  She hopes Keltham dings them a million factors of 2 for it.

Whatever's going on right now, Ione will play this out diligently and in absolute conformance to Security's instructions.  She is very relieved and very confident that whatever they try won't work and is therefore happy to help her hardest.

She thinks they'll lose 3, 4 factors of 2. It's better than losing any once Keltham asks for the books. Old books, that say nothing about infernal Cheliax, the dates changed by a century, and they'll use the trick to make Keltham skip over problematic phrases; that's the best she can think of. It's reasonable for Ione to only know of two or three such books.

She wears the new earrings, just to have a plot point that hasn't happened yet and needs to happen before Keltham leaves.

SHE HAS THIS.  There's over one hundred assorted weird books now in a hidden nook of the Fortress library, from which Ione can also borrow books, there should be five old foreign language-books in there and Security has magical text-altering tools to work on the date, they just need literally three minutes and this will be okay.

((She has... not quite totally forgotten about how she doesn't want Cheliax conquering the world per se, but that's just letting her operate at the height of her job, the peak of her game, without being so afraid of losing.  Cheliax will not dispose of her, she thinks, if she fights her true best and loses fairly; and if they do, there's always the Gardens.))

Ione's not visible in the library.  She has been on every previous occasion, at roughly this time of morning.

Keltham assigned likelihoods in advance, this time.

...he hasn't done a full review of evidence but it's really really not good, and possibly indicates mindreading or its equivalent being used on him, he doesn't doesn't doesn't want to lose Carissa, there's a crack in him that makes his voice break slightly, when he calls out "IONE?" just in case -

"Keltham?  In the toilet!"

...part of him is apparently pretty scared here, if he emotionally-updated that fast.

"Weird time-sensitive task!  Five books in five different non-Taldane languages from the Ostenso library, can you tell me their titles as soon as you know them, without borrowing them yet?"  That gives them less time to run a search while she's in the bathroom.

He didn't consider this exact possibility.  Call it 2 bits for mindreading!Conspiracy... not great, but fine if the rest of his day doesn't go like this.

"Okay this is new!  I have a vague sense of what books like that are in the library and roughly what's in them, and I can pick from five different languages, but I can't actually read the titles!  You want me to pick five and tell you what they're about?"

"Works!"

Keltham is planning to pick three of the five and ask Ione to summon two others instead of whichever other two she named.

She should have thought of that.

Instructions to Security on book-alteration:  We need 7 books, not 5, and produce up to 11 as quickly as you can.

This is literally the most suicidal thing she'll ever do in her life.  But it's the end of her game, and she wants to play it to the fullest.

"If the Queen of Cheliax is available and the Most High's instructions permit it, I request her in this loop cautioning me on which clever things Keltham might think of next.  I'm not thinking of them fast enough."  Asmodia is on Fox's Cunning, besides her +6 Wisdom headband, and Eagle's Splendour without which she would never have dared that request, but that set of stat boosts wasn't enough before and won't be enough now.

Queen's ETA 2 minutes, your request will be relayed.

(...this Security now respects Asmodia a lot more than he did 30 seconds earlier.  She's insane, but the kind of insane you don't mess with until they go down in flames of glory or dishonor.)

Choose your random numbers now, fresh method and means; if you choose them in advance the mindreading!Conspiracy may know them...

Keltham picks 3 of 5, asks Ione to choose 2 others.

"Ione sorry for the weird request, will owe you a favor or just pay you a cheerful price if you want to name one, but I want you to summon those books immediately and get them to me outside the bathroom regardless of personal inconvenience thereof!  Literally as fast as possible!  I'll turn away from the door so you've got some privacy on that!"

It's a spontaneous thought.  There's no warning.

Do it!  Now!  We'll alter the borrowed books, somehow, Keltham wasn't planning to use the books until later - use Major Image if you haven't altered dates on front matter, and he looks at that before we get a chance to alter them later -