"Snack Service says it's decision-theoretically complicated, and the more you think about it or try to draw implications from it, the less it's retroactively allowed to help you as much as it has already."

"I wish to register that in the corresponding lessons in dath ilan, in which we do exotic thought experiments intended to teach us about this sort of theoretical possibility, the teacher always ends the lesson by reminding everyone that this has essentially never happened to anyone in real life throughout the entire history of time, and if you think it's happening to you, you're mistaken."

"If you come up with any effective way to register things at Snack Service, let me know, because I've got things I'd also like to register."

And he's done.  The Conspiracy has done an even better job of making it look like masochists exist, than making it look like Abrogail is the ruler of Cheliax in cooperation with Asmodeus's Church, which says something about their priorities if nothing else.

Keltham is... sort of brain-tired at this point.  Trying to think of all these things while not thinking of other things is sort of excessive for a mental control exercise.

But.  So long as Fennelosa is in Absalom, should Keltham be buying any scrolls that he could potentially use today?  Delaying a while about that gives the Conspiracy all sorts of chances to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, like trying to quickly write or complete the books Keltham 'bought'.  The Conspiracy has a chance to claim that his scrolls can't be found at the next shop or two that Fennelosa tries.  Still potentially worth doing; they leak bits if nobody has Sending, you'd expect that to be a very common spell.  Some more Purge Invisibilities.  An Arcane Sight, Keltham has kept wanting to watch himself hanging a spell already with his own Arcane Sight instead of a slightly delayed illusion... well, no, he can requisition that later, if Ordinary wins on review; but Arcane Sight is potentially useful against the Conspiracy.  Early Judgment would be useful if anyone has that, it would give Keltham an emergency psychological buffer that doesn't take up a spell slot all the time... a psychological buffer that Keltham could very well need, if things go poorly.

Scrolls are expensive, but Keltham has some money and needs to be willing to spend some money, here.  He can afford a few low-level scrolls.  Is he missing anything from his shopping list?

Alarm x2, Detect Charm x4, those are first-level and cheap.  All of those together cost the same as one second-circle scroll.  Kind of crazy, really.

Status, Dispel Magic, Suppress Charms and Compulsions, Lay of the Land.  A backup Owl's Wisdom and a Fox's Cunning, both things he should have in emergencies, and it's not impossible today will turn into an emergency.

Another Invisibility Purge... another Detect Intelligence accomplishes much the same thing, probably, and is cheaper?

An Early Judgment, also because he might think of something to do with that, some test; the Conspiracy if it exists may be somehow nervous about afterlives.  Though the fact that the Conspiracy told him about that spell, suggests that it has no obvious-to-them win-ability... well, they could have expected that his god would give it to him anyways at some point, before that whole interdiction zone happened.

Keltham... cannot really afford a Sending or an extra Glimpse of Beyond, both 4th-circle, with the amount he's already spending.  Or an Arcane Sight when he doesn't have a specific plan or time in mind to use it.

(Keltham doesn't really like spending large quantities of money.  That is probably some kind of important character flaw given his changed life circumstances.  He may have to work on this?  But it will be a lot easier to work on this once he has those large amounts of money in his liquid-asset account.)

Okay he'll buy the Arcane Sight too, fine.

Fennelosa will make all of these purchases; such spells are available in Absalom, and it's be a loss of bits the Conspiracy can't afford to pretend otherwise, and - 

- well, either they've won or they've lost. At this point, it's likely beyond further manipulation. 

.....if Abrogail concurs in that assessment she might want her headband back. (This feels like dying, but that like all the rest of Carissa's feelings are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.)

I will not trust that this event is over until Keltham has arrived in a state of mind permitting us to statue him, or left for Osirion.

Maillol.  Have you made progress on determining the conditions for that, under our Lord's will?

Maillol does not complain about impossibilities or his own incapacity.  He simply reports what he can.

If Keltham returns to a state where he is not - actively determining whether to leave us, especially for Osirion, through planned deeds that have not yet been performed and resolved themselves - if Keltham is not holding concrete plans to decide about that matter the next day, at a particular time, or if he's made whatever decisions he intends to make and has become again our indefinite guest - then, Maillol thinks, they would no longer be in the ambiguous fringes of Asmodeus's command.

It is not clear to Maillol that they have been definitely commanded not to statue Keltham now, for just a year, while Keltham hasn't yet made a decision to depart but has decided to make a decision about it...?  The stakes here are unusually, exceptionally high -

Your report is heard.

Listen and be educated, fool.  It is likely that our Lord was paid for some outcome less stringent than this, in one regard or another, in the negotiations as of between gods; and yet our Lord issued us such stringent orders as these, because of the past tendency of fools like you to try to work around the edges of His instructions.  Do you behave so now, our Lord will learn and His expectations shift, and the next time He sells an expectation to gods, He will have to use yet more stringent instructions.  Were I the sort to behave so, our Lord would have predicted that and issued even more stringent orders originally.

Keep firmly to our Lord's directions and path, when He has given orders.  Obey Him strictly and do not try to work His interests around His orders' edges; yes, even if it is in His interests.  For that is not His way and His nature as a god; and when we work counter to that, we become less visible to His eyes, more slippery to His hands, more costly for Him to manipulate.

...acknowledged, Most High.

When his shopping is done, Fennelosa Teleports back to just outside the Forbiddance, steps into it, and starts unpacking his fairly absurd collection of books and scrolls from Absalom, as quickly as possible. 

"Dare we hope for a verdict or are you going to need to read all the books and check over our math problems and so on first?"

"Second one."

"Ferrer, I'm taking all that stuff into a Rope Trick just outside the Forbiddance, I do not mind you stationing a lot of Security around the entrance but, obviously, please don't send anybody inside unless it's a huge and frankly improbable emergency.  Oh, and I'll want the transcript of the trip."

"And, Fennelosa of the Ordinary world, thank you on behalf of myself and Cheliax for going through all that, it meant a lot."  It hasn't been explained to Fennelosa what the 'Ordinary' qualifier means, Keltham doesn't think, but the sentiment is sincere.

Fennelosa is hard to read, but he looks slightly confused and slightly exasperated. "I serve where I am commanded," he says flatly.

Well, Keltham has now spent enough time around Pilar to have any idea of what's going on there.

"And I expect your Lord Asmodeus appreciates that, just saying, I do too."

Keltham will quickly go get some things from his bedroom, like Ione's borrowed books among other things, and then cast his Rope Trick.

If he throws an Alarm and an Invisibility Purge, he shouldn't notice someone who is Gaseous and also turned into the fingernail-sized species of tropical bat. But they'll have to wait to go in until he uses Glimpse of Truth, or plan to rapidly leave when he forms the intent to do so.

The key to winning is trying harder than anyone has any reason to suspect you can.

A Rope Trick resembles a box, about twelve feet by twelve feet by twelve feet. It's dark. It has a window in the floor, three feet by five feet, from which the world it's connected to is visible. Keltham can see Security pacing anxiously under the entrance, and Carissa sitting down on the grass to run her fingers through it and look up at the sky, like someone who doesn't get the chance to do that much. 

Once he's up there with his stuff, Keltham casts the Alarm spell on the space, from scroll.  (Keltham has spent a noticeable chunk of his salary on practicing with practice scrolls; it's a huge power amplifier if you've got money, and he expects to have money.)

Keltham considers, only then, if there's more he can do to protect the space...

And then starts to Prestidigitate the air around him, forming fragile shapes from it.  (As ordinary wizards may also do, even not knowing what they're doing, just binding air molecules together to form a very fragile solid.)

By this means Keltham lays down a screen over the opening to the ground below, fine enough that it will let through air, and very little else.

He casts Invisibility Purge, also from scroll.

When nothing then appears -

Keltham carefully lies down, in a position he's going to keep for a while.

And Keltham fills the whole volume except himself with fragile strands; webs that would shatter, visibly, at a touch.

...the Conspiracy can probably still beat that, with a nation's resources, but he's hopefully made it a bit hard for them.

Keltham needs, very much, to lie down and rest for a time.

Carissa finds herself suddenly with lots of excess cognitive capacity and Wisdom not being employed for the project, which does not feel like a stable state to be in. She'll....review the last ditch fake-escape plans, and alter the earrings, and try very hard not to think any thoughts she won't be able to keep thinking once the headband's off.

AlterAsmodia would be tired, after all this, and would be found in her bedroom trying to take a short break herself, not sitting beside Sevar.  So Asmodia staggers off to her bedroom, in case Keltham runs right out of his Rope Trick to check on her, and lies down in her own bed.

She... really is a little tired, after that.

Asmodia wishes that she could blank her mind.  There's probably a dath ilani discipline for it, and it's probably considered dangerous to teach to children because they'll hurt themselves.

They should have been so much more prepared, before this, she should've just told the Chelish Imperium up front that she was taking all of their writers and permanently exposing them to the truths of history only Korva was cleared for and they'd just have to train new writers, and put them on nothing except producing and altering enough books to have a chance of fooling Keltham.

Is that - hindsight bias?  Was there something else Keltham could've tried, just as likely in foresight?  Maybe Asmodia wouldn't have seen through to Keltham's ideas about forcing Cheliax to create too much information too quickly, maybe she would've focused on the possibility of an Ostenso visit... an Ostenso visit probably would've helped win some 2s.  Maybe she was supposed to have closed the Ostenso ports, redirected most of the traffic elsewhere.  Or she was supposed to have fake ships ready for the Ostenso ports, and have rehearsed everyone in Ostenso already.  Or just, have already built a fake Ostenso.

One of her superiors should've told her, if Asmodia was allowed to play with nation-level resources to do her job.

One of her superiors should've told her, if those points were so obvious in advance to everyone, and not just in hindsight.

That's what she'll say if she's - questioned about it?  She'll - try to explain, about the Law, governing that, how only ilani are trained to counteract hindsight bias, how only their Keepers can do it indistinguishably; how, without training, children often can't counteract it at all.  Maybe she'll leave out the part about dath ilani children.

If something this stressful had happened to her, that also happened to alterAsmodia, she'd ask Keltham to just hold her, that night, and be a warm thing for her.

Asmodia wishes she could just, rest her head on somebody's shoulder, at least.  Somebody who was safe to be around, and wouldn't hurt her, or hold her in contempt for being that pathetic.

If Keltham leaves, she won't have that from him, anymore.

((It's only then that she remembers that she was supposed to be secretly hoping that Keltham would win.))

Carissa is not letting herself do a failure analysis, not yet. It seems like a very dangerous thing to do with this Crown on. She's - also not letting herself estimate the odds that they've won or lost, apparently. She keeps flinching away when she tries.

Asmodia's thoughts have wandered to how she could breach to Korva the subject of her being Asmodia's replacement snuggling partner.  They're both probable-asexuals so it should be safe, right?  Asmodia is Korva's superior, but she doesn't actually want an unwilling snuggling partner.  Asmodia does have Detect Thoughts and some proficiency with it, it was a very useful spell at Ostenso academy.  Asmodia could just order Korva to fail her Will save, to determine how Korva really feels about a proposal like that... no, that's a bit overt and aggressive, Korva might not like that.

Asmodia will just order Security to read Korva's mind about it, when the subject comes up, and report to Asmodia.  That seems less likely to offend Korva, if Security can do it without Korva noticing.

...it feels like Korva couldn't replace Keltham, any more than Keltham could replace Korva.

Hey, Asmodia says into her Telepathic Bond.  I notice that I've seemed to start actually caring about Keltham, in the sense that the thought of not being able to snuggle Keltham any more feels bad and it doesn't feel like anyone else could actually replace him about that.  I register that this matches a correct, purely-trope-based prediction that I made earlier about what would happen to me by the time we needed to run a fake escape plan.  I predict that any fake escape plan is going to fail unless it has at least me and Ione, possibly Yaisa I'm not sure somebody needs to read her mind about it.  Everyone who's started actually caring about Keltham.  The tropes won't let it work otherwise.

Thaaaaaaaat sure does sound wildly self-serving, Carissa notices distantly. 

Also if we're going to use that style of reasoning, which we PROBABLY SHOULDN'T, then any escape plan obviously needs Carissa. She's the one Keltham's scared of losing. 

The problem is that it's much easier to sell Keltham on Ione and Tonia being innocents than on Asmodia and Carissa. 

The other problem is that the escape plan is very obviously doomed. She's going to try it anyway, not much to lose, but while she's refusing to generate a probability estimate about whether they've lost already her brain is happy to generate one for whether the fake-escape will work, and the answer it produces is 'no chance in Hell.'

I'll also register for what it's worth that an escape plan probably involves an apparently unconscious and stunned Sevar being carted along with him in magic-neutralizing handcuffs or... something.

She's the only one Keltham is truly afraid of losing.  His thoughts said that, over and over.

And any fake escape plan - has probability practically zero of fooling Keltham unless he wants to be fooled.  Desperately wants it, needs it, to the point where he doesn't want to use dath ilani disciplines to know better.  If he's already lost his Carissa - we might as well not bother, is my sense.