Awww, too bad, she was hoping he'd ask whether and why Geas is even legal to know about, they spent a while workshopping that earlier this week. 

Obviously the Conspiracy wouldn't bring that up if they didn't have a great excuse prepped for it.  He noticed confusion, but he'll ask later; it may be a mistake to make himself too easy to steer.

Carissa steps back to give her boyfriend some time to think, smiling at him.

- now is a good time to give her any non-urgent updates that haven't previously been passed along, and a good time to make sure of some obvious things: the team editing the books retrieved from a Tien-speaking company should be routed through Korva by default, with anything Korva is unsure of going to Asmodia, with anything Asmodia is unsure of presented to Carissa. Carissa hasn't yet been interrupted with anything which likely suggests people are being too conservative in escalating; they should now try escalating the things they considered escalating and then decided not to.

If anyone at any stage in the process thinks that they are making some kind of serious mistake she wants to hear about it. The primary thing they're editing for is references to Abadar's holy symbol or teachings, Hell or devils and to mindreading (as something that is not secret and tightly controlled); they're secondarily editing for Lawful Evil people behaving like, well, Lawful Evil people, possibly by just changing them all to Neutral Evil and some Lawful Neutral ones to Lawful Evil. Tertiary: Nethysianism inconsistent with Ione's, mentions of the minor god they told Keltham they thought was his, references to suicide being Evil (she hasn't previously issued a directive on that but it's obvious now it's going to leap out at Keltham.) Suicide in alter-Golarion is discouraged by Good churches but is not categorically Evil. 

Keltham's leaving Ione out of his investigation, apparently because he suspects she might be an innocent dragged into all this. That makes her a promising person for the false escape plan, if she's in fact not going to betray them for Nethys. Carissa wants a mindreader on Ione full-time and if she seems reliable they should start making modifications to plan #18 or #33.

Keltham might want to scry Peranza in Hell; someone should tell Hell that if that happens Peranza needs to be peacefully asleep in non-appalling surroundings. Keltham might want to scry Hell, in general - might ask for a list of devils and then ask to scry them, or ask to scry the devil Carissa supposedly sold her soul to. Hell should be asked for a list of devils safe for Keltham to scry. Keltham might want to scry the front lines of the war; Carissa wants a specific location for them to drop in on identified in advance and the surrounding units briefed. Keltham might want to scry the Worldwound, same dea -

- that's an obvious endgame for Good's baffling seizure of a fortress at the Worldwound, actually. A natural direction for Keltham's skepticism to turn, at this point, is whether any of the emergencies that purportedly necessitated his relocation to Cheliax and then to this fortress were real. The Worldwound is real and normally Cheliax would be happy to show it to him. But Good is playing some kind of fucking game there, now, and that means it's dangerous to let Keltham look closely - unless that's just what Good wants them to think. Carissa requires the most up-to-date summary of that situation, immediately. And presumably the other fortresses are now being checked very extensively; if there's one Cheliax is confident in, then the teleporter should, asked to go somewhere, go there. Alternately, Keltham might ask Carissa to name a former colleague to scry, or to name five so he can pick one; she'd like five names, in case he does that, who have been at least minimally briefed. 

A quite good outcome is if Keltham ends up focusing most of his testing today on his theory that the Kuthite war and the godwar and maybe the Worldwound are shams set up to scare him into staying in the fortress. Carissa is hoping he'll think to ask for detailed records of troop deployments, logistics and casualties for the Kuthite war - they have those, and they'll add up in all the right ways, though Keltham might not know enough about war to recognize that. He's not likely to ask for Kuthites to talk to, because the Conspiracy that made up Nidal entirely will presumably horribly scarify some people to show him. 

It seems to Carissa, and she'd like this disseminated to everyone on staff, that this is winnable; not easy to win, not necessarily in their favor, but far from hopeless. There are many possible Conspiracies, Keltham doesn't know where to look, and he gave them a lot of time to prepare. Cheliax is smarter than Keltham imagined, more ruthless, more determined, and Cheliax's obedience to Asmodeus is not something he is even prepared to look for, it is so far outside what he can understand. 

Those project staff with no role in the current activities but whose assistance might be needed later should rest, reread their notes, and try to avoid spending all their adrenaline before they enter the field of battle. Those project staff who are not necessary to today's activities should pray that Asmodeus's will be done here.

"She's not lying enough," Abrogail says out loud to Aspexia.  No Security will hear them, neither of them trusts Security around a weakened Queen.  "She's volunteering too much truth.  She should not have told him that an inch of iron blocks divination.  It would be ruinous if he believed that truth and made a helmet for himself.  Her lies don't need to stand up forever, just for one day."

"Correct me if I err in my understanding of tropes, but if you tell Sevar that - even by proxy, such that it doesn't seem like her Queen's command - then the next lie she tells will be the one that Keltham catches."

"Yes.  I know."

Keltham is not able to truly rest.  He has too much to not think about, if the Conspiracy is reading his mind, including ideas by which right Broom should kill him immediately followed by everybody else in this installation who might've been in the telepathic loop.  He needs to run through all this faster than he'd planned, he will exhaust himself too quickly at this rate.  He really wishes he hadn't gotten those early indicators of mindreading!Conspiracy.

Keltham remembers to himself some videos he's seen over and over.  It's the closest he can come to clearing his mind, and it isn't all that restful.

"If it's all right with you, I'm going to write down some ideas I came up with, then rejected, which it'd be better for you to think of yourself -"

"Go ahead -"

Great, now he's thought it, the mindreading!Conspiracy knows it, and he might as well say it out loud to her.

"- but, sorry, I'm mostly tuning out things about the laws of magic, today.  If I pierce a Conspiracy, it won't be be because I got into the technical weeds of Spellcraft and outthought them there, it'll be because I managed to move the fight to my own home ground, which I am presently trying not to think any details about so don't ask how."

"Makes sense. They weren't spellcraft ideas, I do realize you'd be an idiot to trust me about that."

And she takes out a piece of paper and begins scribbling furiously. 

One place Keltham might be safe outside the interdiction is the Worldwound, if he'd taken the oath, and he could talk to all of the allied churches there. Rejected b/c if anyone did want Keltham badly enough to break the Worldwound oath about it they might do it and it's not worth the risk (is this bad decision theory? she's not sure)

Keltham could ask someone to bring him all of the deployment, logistics, casualties, honors awarded, disciplinary actions, etc., records for the Worldwound and for the Kuthite war. Maillol will hate this plan because they're classified, but it seems pretty impossible for a Conspiracy to manufacture on short notice. Rejected because: only works if Keltham thinks of it. 

Keltham could HANG OUT IN AN ANTIMAGIC FIELD so he stopped having to worry about mindreading. Rejected because: she has already pushed pretty hard for antimagic fields and he's ignoring her and if she suggests it again he will probably conclude that the Conspiracy has a way around antimagic fields. 

Keltham could ask for the Grand High Priestess to raise a gate to let him directly visit Hell, where Asmodeus can probably protect him from the interference of other gods. Rejected because: the Conspiracy could take him to some other place under their control instead; she can't think how he'd verify he was really in Hell. 

And three uniformed people visibly straight off the front lines in Nidal (you'd get in a lot of trouble for wearing a uniform that crumpled if you hadn't been summoned straight out of a war zone) walk in, holding an enormous top-tier scrying mirror and a very magic silk bag. 

This subtlety, like so many other subtleties, will be wholly lost on the young man out of dath ilan, who considers a bathrobe to be appropriate attire for the Chief Executive of Civilization.

"Hi.  Thanks for coming.  I probably shouldn't explain anything that hasn't been explained already."

"There should be a person who can do a lesser Teleport out to a destination I'll specify and Teleport back, a Greater Scry scroll and someone who can cast from it, and a Comprehend Languages scroll hopefully the divine version."

"This is Lord Marshal Fennelosa, wizard of the seventh rank, military emergencies unit, Her Majesty's Third; he'll be teleporting for you today. You're actually going to need a Greater Teleport if you want the teleporter to be able to go to a destination they have not previously seen, and they'll still need a pretty detailed description in that case. I am Paracount Fertinan Arayo, wizard of the seventh rank, from Her Majesty's personal security, and I'll cast the scry for you. In addition to a Greater Scry and a scroll of Comprehend Languages I also have a scroll of Detect Intelligence, per the request conveyed to us."

"Yes, thanks, that gets used in a separate experiment."

"Talk me through how Greater Scry works.  Assume high Intelligence in me and first-circle wizardy, but that I otherwise have approximately the knowledge of a small village cobbler about that."

(Carissa has authorized some lies, here: in particular, she's decided that you can't scry the dead. Keltham knows you can communicate with them -- with a Sending or similar - but hasn't been told you can observe them, and it's not the kind of thing one would naively expect to be true.)

"'Sure," says Arayo. "Scry' is a fourth circle spell with a one-hour casting time that creates - in a scrying mirror or a still pool of water -- an image of a single target and their immediate surroundings, as viewed from a vantage point above their head. The target can with an act of Will resist being scried, in which case the scry can fail. They could also put up powerful magic on their surroundings which prevent a scrying sensor from forming in their vicinity, in which case the scry would fail. If the target is dead, the scry will also fail. The spell can be made more specific, more precise, and harder for the target to throw off if the caster has a better concept of the target or has some possession or body part of the target's in hand when they attempt the scry. Cantrips such as Detect Magic sometimes work through a scry, but they require extra finesse to manage and will fail if the scry is of low magical quality. It lasts about two minutes per caster circle.

Greater Scry is a seventh-circle spell with a one-round casting time that does the same thing, except the scry is of higher magical quality and it's easier to get cantrips to function through it and it lasts about two hours per caster circle."

"Is there a standard way of allowing the scryer to get a wider view, with a cooperative target?"

Oh shoot, Keltham was unable to stop himself from thinking of the obvious solution about carrying around a mirror that would reflect the surroundings.  Plausibly be slightly harder to fake in an illusion, too, though really a curved mirror would be best for that, he could look in closely to see if the curved mirror had the right kind of distortions, as might be hard for an illusion spell to fake if they weren't just casting a veridical curved mirror.

Keltham had wanted to avoid thinking of that, if possible, to see if the Conspiracy would tell him about it or not.

"Scrying with a cooperative target is usually used for military communications, rather than for, uh, getting a look at the surroundings, I'd need to think about it. ....the scrying sensor is reliably some distance about the person's head, so you could use Enlarge Person to make them taller? And of course they could fly around, give you a view of the area from the air."

"Possibly I misunderstood something, when you said the spell only viewed immediate surroundings, if the view-from-the-air trick works.  If somebody was standing on a hill somewhere, could you look through the scry out to the horizon?  And if not, the obvious solution that comes to mind is for a cooperative target to carry a mirror, that can reflect the more distant surroundings."

"The resolution isn't great but yes, you can see the horizon, and I'd expect a mirror to work fine. We can certainly try it."

"Ready to go literally as soon as I give the destination?  And somebody please quickly go grab a mirror, the Project should have several on hand - have Ione deliver it, please."

Keltham thinks about how he's planning to send Ione Sala with them, carrying a bag of money, to follow her while she hires some mercenaries to protect her for a day, with a Telepathic Bond to himself -

he's actually planning Ostenso

he's actually planning Absalom

he's actually sending Asmodia

"If it's somewhere Fennelosa has been to or gotten a good description of, he can depart - from outside the Forbiddance - as soon as you give a destination."

"Ah yes, right, the Forbiddance.  Let's start making our way outside, then."

he's actually sending them to the Worldwound

his real plan involves books

his real plan involves Prestidigitation

his real plan involves using a timed chemical reaction whose Lawfully expected duration he'll compute only after the fact, to detect illusions

They start walking out. 

"Do you happen to know if the Eleventh's been redeployed," Carissa asks Fennelosa as they walk. "- I'm cleared up to Sensitive, I was deployed with the Tenth and then with the Eleventh before this -"

       "They're still up north. - I think covering out to Terthule, because we haven't been replacing losses -"

"Mmm. Thank you."

       "Any time. My cousin's in the Eleventh." 

She told them not to lie about anything unauthorized, so it's not a lie. With the headband she can calculate in the back of her mind anyway that it'll be suspicious to Keltham, that it'd be better if this man hadn't happened to have a cousin in her regiment. 

Alter-Carissa is of course delighted. "- really? Who?"

         "Guillem Moya, he's third circle, evocation -"

It's not even a surprising coincidence, but that won't stop Keltham from finding it a suspicious one. "Oh! We've met. ...he was insufferable."

         "If all this is ever declassified I'll tell him you said so."

He notices, but there's no obvious reason for the Conspiracy to be any more likely to say that, as a lie.  He doesn't know family densities in Cheliax, whether there's correlations in which people get assigned where; it'd be a silly thing to jump on as 'too much coincidence'.  If he considered it a likely Conspiracy tactic at all, it would be as a denial-of-service event where Keltham has to think about that stuff.  As it stands, it's actually useful to him; it gives him something else to think about while he's learning not to think about things.

Is Ione there yet with the mirror, Conspiracy?  Longer delays make it more likely that somebody's trying to emergency-instruct her about what to do if Keltham sends her with on the Teleport - not that this is Keltham's real plan - that thought was itself an attempted distraction, of course -