Thaaaaat's totally heresy even by Project Lawful standards and literally the Queen and Aspexia Rugatonn are both listening - oh she just said that for Keltham's benefit, right.

That thing Keltham said about quickly writing twenty pages each apparently from different books?  That's smart.  They should do that right now for Chelish history books and have those ready to go in case Keltham thinks of visiting a library.  Keltham may not bother, if he can't buy or borrow books from that library, especially now that he's described that strategy out loud.  But we should actually do it in case he actually does it.

Carissa's not very worried about heresy right now; if she wins it doesn't matter and if she loses it doesn't matter. If alter Carissa would have no reason to hesitate to thank a Chaotic Good god barely in her boyfriend's earshot, then neither does she. 

But that said - yes. One of the big errors was not really having a defense in depth - it would have been ludicrously expensive but that's precisely what would've made it credible. It wouldn't exist in alter-Cheliax either, not in random bookstores in Absalom, but it'd be a smart place to depart from it. They should have twenty pages of ten different books on every possible topic.

...though Keltham may also, having said that much out loud, carry out the strategy of starting from a random open-page flip like that, and reading forwards from there, or backwards.  Which means we need several pages forwards and backwards in each direction if we don't want to get caught like that immediately...

First priority, single two-page spreads of open books.  Second priority, sections that go two pages back and ten pages forwards - the further forwards they can go, the sloppier they can be, because the faster Keltham will probably be reading.  If they produce those by rewriting another book, then maybe, if Keltham is reading through all of the ten forwards pages, they can manage to rewrite more of that book by working in parallel, fast enough to keep up with him -

Cheliax and its history, books about gods that will mention Asmodeus, books about afterlives that will mention Hell -

Korva Tallandria should be looped in on supervising this.

The scroll shop, it transpires, is an all-purpose magic shop. It has a wizard in his sixties posted intimidatingly at the door. "What're you looking for," he asks Fennelosa, a bit suspiciously. 

"I don't know yet, I have a mysterious patron who will communicate instructions either to me or to you by Message."

Good morning, this is the mysterious patron, shopping by scry today.  My overall plan is that I'll look around your shop, stare at a lot of things, ask a lot of prices if they're not already marked, eventually buy one of the weirdest scrolls you have for sale if sanely priced, and maybe ask you a couple of strange not-personal questions about topics like the Zon-Kuthon godwar.  I'm first-circle wizardry and fourth-circle divine, but am still somewhat interested in scrolls and items that somebody like me couldn't normally use.  Sound good?

He scowls even more suspiciously, but Messages back. I don't want to get involved in the war. I've had enough of that. You can buy things at the listed price if that's all you want.

Then let's see what Golarion has for sale, at what prices.

It's mostly standard fare for adventurers; they're where the reliable money is. Bags of Holding, Muleback Cords, Immovable Rods, Insistent Doorknockers, acid and fire grenades, Wands of Cure Light Wounds, swan boat feather tokens, beads of Fireball and beads of force, +2 headbands, +2 belts of Strength and Dexterity and Constitution, bracers of armor, hats of disguise, gloves of elvenkind, sleeves of many garments, scrolls of Death Ward and Protection from Arrows and Stoneskin and Protection from Energy and Restoration and Breath of Life and Rope Trick and Ant Haul and Align Weapon and Lead Blades and Endure Elements. 

...okay count one point for Golarion just being strange, though the Immovable Rod at 5000gp and the Insistent Doorknocker also at 5000gp, as some of the most fascinating bits of conceptualmagic, are outside his shopping range.  If the Conspiracy was trying to impress him with how generally weird and surprising Golarion was, by way of reminding him how many surprising things happen after all, while keeping the alleged surprises outside his price range... nah, Keltham doesn't actually believe that, there's some strange cheap stuff too.

Lead Blades doesn't actually turn blades into lead, does it?  Lead is poisonous and has neurotoxic effects, as Cheliax recently announced - has he heard anything about that?

"I don't read the news, it just ruins my day for no reason. The spell makes them denser when they hit the target, which is very bad for the target but, you know, I think mostly in the conventional way where it chops right through 'em. It's a temporary transmutation so I wouldn't expect it to have permanent effects even if it is lead."

...the awful thing is, if the Conspiracy is choosing to depict things this way, it's presumably because they think the Ordinary Golarion they've shown him would not have smart wizards in Absalom hearing about Element-82 even after Cheliax announced it very loudly, which, for Conspiracies on the level Keltham is facing - the sort that gave him a century-old history of Absalom to read on his first night in the palace - probably does mean that the rest of Golarion is actually like that.

Scroll of Rope Trick sounds interesting, can the proprietor say more about that?

"The rope rises into the air and creates an extradimensional space at the top you can access by climbing it. Holds you and up to three friends, not detectable from outside except by people seeing the rope and climbing up after you - you can't pull the rope into the Rope Trick. It's popular for camping."

Seems pretty weird and powerful for a second-circle wizard spell, plausibly the weirdest of the options here.

He'll take that one for 150gp.  The store doesn't have anything really odd that Keltham could afford, something most adventurers couldn't use... such that purchasing it would tend to verify that the store was real and they didn't just rush something from... all of Cheliax... and he can't really blame a low-productivity economy for not stocking any but the fastest-selling merchandise... yeah this was actually not such a great test in the first place.

Keltham shall also inquire if the wizard remembers about how long ago it was that the sky started flickering to signal the start of the godwar, and if any news has reached Absalom about how Cheliax is currently doing against Nidal.

"Not quite three months since the godwar," he says, "which I only know because it was pretty bloody obvious; I really don't read the news. I suppose Cheliax isn't losing too badly because we haven't had them showing up here by the thousands."

He'll sell the scroll.

"Rope Trick won't work inside the Forbiddance," Carissa warns him once the proprietor pulls it off the shelf.

"Noted.  I think we're being mostly protected by Broom's god out here, not by the Forbiddance.  I got close to the edge of the Forbiddance so I could watch Fennelosa teleport out, and we didn't get an invading army after me that time.  Not to mention, our primary theory is still that the gods on our side deliberately triggered that attack while I was outside the villa, not that Nidal detected me going outside the Forbiddance."

"Sounds about right."

(The mindreader accompanying Keltham into the Rope Trick is going to need to be gaseous, and also invisible, and they're going to need to wait to go in until after Keltham casts Invisibility Purge, which she predicts he'll do within about a minute of getting in there; that does mean there won't be mindreading coverage for a brief time, but then there'll be far more valuable mindreading coverage of someone who suspects he's not being mindread.)

"Conceivably you want to get two Rope Tricks and stick me and Asmodia and any other suspected Conspirators in the other one for the duration, Telepathic Bond doesn't work across planes."

"Sevar, he has only the Conspiracy's word for that.  That's Keltham's entire problem.  He could solve this in five minutes if he had a reliable outside source of information telling him what all the rules were."

"He can in fact check that his spells don't work across a Rope Trick!"

"This shows neither that more powerful 5th-circle Telepathic Bonds don't work across Rope Tricks, nor that the Conspiracy is not just blocking his magic each time to make him think it doesn't work!"

Keltham is in fact currently thinking about whether he can find a one-inch iron helmet and, if so, if there's any reasonable way he can test whether it blocks emanation divinations.  But Keltham is really not seeing a method to test that, by which he can know that the Conspiracy isn't selectively blocking divinations from the helmet only when they please.  If the Conspiracy can fake his own spell signature on the truthspell, they can do an awful lot - and if they can't do that, truthspells are unbeatable that way, which doesn't sound like it allows Golarion to be such an untrusting wreck.

This also reminds Keltham to perform a Detect Magic, as he's been doing occasionally, and look around the shop that way.  Though he's pretty sure what he'll find.

Lots of noisy overlapping magic signatures from all the magic items! 

Notably none of them except those on the Hats of Disguise are Illusion auras, though probably if the Conspiracy is deploying a lot of illusions it can also hide the auras of doing that.

Yes, obviously they can, otherwise Keltham would have Detected the illusion of his god's symbol when they were faking his truthspell.

...okay, if the Conspiracy can fake this, they can probably fake the next thing in the sequence, but Keltham's going to try anyways, because it seems like he should, just in case.

Message:  Next, please head on over to Absalom's Ascendant Court.

Keltham doesn't block very hard that he's planning to briefly visit a lot of temples; it's an obvious step.