Shit.  She had rapidly updateable approved Chelish newspapers from the "previous week" ready to go, dates and weather reports quickly modifiable -

Somehow it didn't occur to Asmodia that Keltham could just go demand newspapers in a different language from a different country.

Asmodia hopes Keltham picked a language that Cheliax can actually get to, in some country with newspapers; Keltham's not going to be certain that's possible, but he's going to update against them, fairly or not, otherwise.

The sheet of paper is in Tien. 

That's actually good; Tian Xia is far enough away that their newspapers, if they've even invented newspapers, won't say anything about Cheliax, and the Church of Asmodeus doesn't to Carissa's knowledge even have a presence there. It'd be worse if it were Kelish or Varisian or something. 

Maillol should do as he'd do in alter!Cheliax, here.

"I think that's a language from the continent of Tian Xia, I've got no idea which language from Tian Xia.  That's two Greater Teleports if true, assuming we can find somebody who knows where that is, and a major city in it.  Doesn't take much detail for a Greater Teleport, but you need some.  I don't know if I can promise that whichever country that is will have newspapers, even if they've got printing.  They're definitely not going to pay attention to all the same gods, Norgorber for example is a god who ascended on this continent and He's going to be of much less interest in Tian Xia."

"Then let's run the trial and I'll take the results whatever they are.  That's the way of finding reality whatever reality is."

"Cheliax can afford a couple of Greater Teleports even with a war on, but Keltham, it's not trivial.  That's probably a resupply delay to a Worldwound station, and yes they're going to have one day's safety margin on that, but still.  Not saying not to do this, but I'd be worried if you had - more than one further request like this, with zero notice, for today?  I mean it can be done, I'm not saying it's impossible to the nation of Cheliax, but you'd be burning pretty noticeable amounts of political capital.  That's also a regular Teleport to Egorian, to transmit the request there, and if we don't burn Teleport scrolls, as really are expensive and for emergencies, we've only got so many Teleports ourselves - I guess everything can be done but it starts to really cost at some point."

"Yeah, I get that, but I do need to run this check before I start doing more stuff like spellsilver, into which your nation is investing a noticeable fraction of domestic product, and anybody who gets in the way needs to be told that.  I think I'd expect the Queen or Lrilatha to have common sense on the matter if somebody's being an obstacle about it."

...there's a tinge of power, of pride, about doing this, ordering a country to obey him and crushing all objection to it, and Keltham's dath ilan sensibilities try to shut that down before he even has a chance to think about why he should.  Keltham tells the shutdown to please go on hold, along with those emotions, he'll think about all that part later.

"Acknowledged," Ferrer Maillol says respectfully, obediently; for he too heard that note, and it may not be too late to corrupt Keltham even now.

"Let me get a sheet of paper, I'll need to write down the details, which you might need to repeat.  If possible please give me a priority on which items are most important, whether it's better to get more of something in 2 hours than to get everything back in 1 hour."

Fair enough.  He can do that.

Right, then, it's a good thing the war is going well because she actually wants to send out several different teams to the Tien-speaking parts of Tian Xia to find different written materials to present Keltham with so they have a variety to choose from and can quickly scan them and eliminate the problematic ones. And she wants a guess from someone in Egorian what would've happened if Keltham had made this request in alter!Cheliax where he's still very important but there's no conspiracy, whether there'd be pushback, what it'd look like, who'd get sent. 

And as soon he's done he's going to say bye and then suddenly turn and run for the breakfast hall at top speed, because if there's a Conspiracy, it was learning as it went during the early days.  In which case, if the Conspiracy is still keeping up, they've perhaps now appointed more Law-competent executives as Keltham trained those for them.  Carissa and Asmodia may be coincidentally absent from the breakfast hall due to having been emergency-summoned to a command center somewhere.

"Incoming, sir," Abarco says. 

Carissa Sevar wouldn't miss breakfast this morning for the world, no sir! 

- actually, with higher Wisdom, she notices that Keltham hasn't seen her genuine and delighted smile in weeks, as she's struggled with the enormity of what they're taking on (and also been dreading the petrification.) (and also been bothered about Peranza.) An error, but not one she can correct now by smiling extra.

Carissa Sevar is eating breakfast, lost in thought. 

Okay good.  0.8:0.6 for Ordinary.

"Surprise change of schedule while I run a serious test of Conspiracy versus Ordinary."

"Carissa, Asmodia, unless you have a really really drastic reason not to, I'd like you to finish eating quickly and then accompany me for the rest of the trial, which is probably a lot of the day."

"I want you to accompany me while I'm doing this and try to make the hypothetical Conspiracy's life as difficult as possible."

That'll make it more difficult for them to operate as commanders, hopefully.  Or rather, if they try to run the Conspiracy on the side, it'll show up in their Ordinary personas being less clever and creative than they should be.

"Oh, now this sounds like a fun day," alterAsmodia says immediately, aided by glibness pin.

Good move, Keltham, as measured by the volume of her own internal screaming.

"This hypothetical Conspiracy that presumably we're in? I'd stick us gagged in an antimagic field, honestly," says Carissa without missing a beat. "Security can cast it."

"That only works if Keltham could cast antimagic field himself, or tell the difference between a real and a fake one somehow, or be sure that we weren't modifying the spell description he saw to leave out an at-will target exclusion... I guess it'd be worth some fraction of a 'bit' but also he has to watch us the rest of the day and we can't just accompany him while he does whatever?"

Carissa loves her glibness swords so. "Antimagic moves with the caster! And you can't do an at-will target exclusion on an emanation, even with Selective Spell, but I admit that if Keltham doesn't happen to recall having read that already he sure shouldn't take my word for it now."

"Knocks out my headband.  Which Keltham should immediately test again in case it was only +6 Wisdom the first time."

"Would've if you hadn't suggested it."  Now he doesn't have to burn an Augury on that, which is helpful.

And Conspiracy!Asmodia may be that much more tempted to suggest tests she in fact wants him to avoid, if she hasn't read through that gambit.  (Though the conditional policy was real; Keltham does not lie.)

While this exchange was occurring, Ione has noted that alterIone wants to know why she's not in this group, and has requested orders.

(She's just filling her own plate; alterIone clearly saw something interesting was going on with Keltham's request, and made haste to breakfast to see if any socially known interesting things had happened.)

She may ask.

"Why am I not in this group?"