"Chelish system is already set up for a lot of things like that, we try to break people early while they're cheap and only invest in the survivors.  It's just, we haven't factored ilanism into the system up until now, and we've got a lot of expensive people we've already invested in who we didn't try to break in that way."

"If you can pick people who are just half as likely to break, without trying anything on them that might break them, you'd be saving Cheliax an awful lot of money and personnel.  Even if we can hand out +4 intelligence headbands like iron daggers a year from now, new wizards take time to raise."

"I predict Abarco won't fall apart on you. Do we have more of him?"

"I'm sure Cheliax does.  Somewhere.  In extremely critical positions where yanking them would cause multiple vital projects to fall apart."

"Abarco is the actually competent Security on this installation.  We were lucky enough to get one of those instead of zero.  I'm not sure I've heard of any project that had two competent security people.  As in, I literally can't remember reading about a case like that in any histories."

"Why are there so few people in this country who can do their jobs. I guess that also means we shouldn't test if I'm right he won't fall apart. Pilar proposed testing the weaker Tier-2s, after which we might have a better sense of what predicts problems."

"If it seemed to you like other people were very competent, you'd be too weak yourself to be the most competent person who gets promoted to being the leader of a project like this one.  Asmodeus probably has the same kinds of complaints about His own archdevils, I figure, and if there were ten Asmodeuses they'd compete until the strongest one ruled over the others, who'd then seem incompetent to Him.  I think that's part of what makes Asmodeanism the only workable way to run societies.  Even Chaotic or Good countries have to appoint captains of soldiers and managers of workers, and give them powers of command and punishment over subordinates they're pretending aren't slaves."

"The suggestion makes sense to me, though I expect Pilar was suggesting it at least in part to prove that she was a good Asmodean and capable of cruelty that served our Lord.  It's a worrying sign that she felt the need to prove it, but that's better than her not being able to prove it."

- it seems obvious, once he says it. "Yes, I expect she was. She's in a very worrying state, generally. If you have advice I think I could use it."

"I worry we've done enough already without completing another observation loop from the Most High on what we've done so far.  We're not actually authorized to correct Pilar on matters of faith.  Though I have a strong intuition that refusing Pilar your counsel just then would not have been the correct move, and I'll be surprised if the Most High doesn't agree.  But still."

"...we're going to be in a genuinely bad position if we need Pilar-level candidates and individualized divine interventions to produce Asmodean ilani, even leaving aside all of our confusion about why Cayden Cailean would do that and whether He actually is helping us at all.  Looking at it from that angle, we've absolutely got to test this out on people who aren't Pilar, and any result that isn't zero survivors will be a good one.  I'm tempted to say we should risk Abarco on having him collate the reports from lesser Security, so he can report to us in safely general terms on what he thinks is proving problematic and his ideas for screening future candidates."

"And who watches him?"

"...Our mathematician-cleric of Asmodeus, maybe?  He's got far enough in wizardry to cast Detect Thoughts, right?  He watches Abarco, Abarco watches him..."

"If you think Abarco's likely to break and betray us, we shouldn't try it.  Our Security structure here is frankly not set up to handle senior Securities turning traitor."

"I don't think it's likely, but he'd know that Security isn't set up to handle it, and know that Osirion will give him anything he could possibly want short of his soul, so it's probably not - less than five percent likely -"

"That's high for an unnecessary risk, but not so bad for a necessary one.  What's our second-best plan, if not that?"

"Pack a room full of second-circle wizards, have Pilar deliver a lecture, add whichever ones don't break - no, that only works if all breaks are immediate - have her make an attempt on the kidnapped Taldane girls, we have less of a problem if this also tends to break non-Asmodeans - do we have any captive Kuthites from the war, I want to try it on them too -"

"I'll cost it out and send you and the Crown a proposed budget.  At least we can pick kids from distant countries with weaker wizard academies, if we're looking for mathematical talents in general and not girls from Taldor."

"It's not as bad as I've been making out to Keltham, but even in realCheliax the Crown treasury will be less sad about this sort of request if the Project can start refining spellsilver soon.  Or at least produce high-purity oil of vitriol."

Maillol doesn't ask the Chosen how they're doing on that; he reads the reports on it every day.   The better half of the researchers are continually improving at Prestidigitating in the weird ways Keltham demands, and Keltham seems to think they're tantalizingly close to completing a full acid production cycle, but they're not actually there yet.

PL-timestamp:  Day 32

There's an atmosphere about Pilar that's different, when Keltham sees her next.  Sharper, more driven, indefinably more dangerous.

"You look like somebody with nontrivial experimental results to report, if I'm reading you right."

"I realized that I'm made almost entirely out of stupid muddled mistakes.  That I'm not remotely as good a slave to Asmodeus as I thought.  That even if I can raise twenty thousand gold my mother and sister will still refuse resurrection and I'll never see them again.  That there was a complicated muddle at the center of my sexuality, being simultaneously in denial and not in denial about what I need, which has now collapsed and taken down my sexuality with it, and I am still trying to figure out what, if anything, I'll be able to enjoy."

"It's also obvious that everything you taught me is necessary basic ilani skills.  They're going to wreck most people from Golarion who try to learn them, and not all of those will recover.  That's going to be an issue, Keltham."

"Yeah, that's about the level of unpleasant news I was predicting I'd hear."

"If it's any consolation, you're also giving off a distinct impression of having tiered-up in a way that makes it feel more like you could hold your own in a contest of wills and powers with, say, Asmodia."

Pilar is more than slightly taken aback by this.

But only momentarily.

"I never even considered for a fraction of a second giving up.  It's very clear that the only way out is through."

"Still on the side of 'That which can be destroyed by the truth should be immediately', huh?"

"That which can be destroyed by the Law.  And while I will entertain proposals to delay its destruction by a period of minutes or hours, weeks or months would be weakness."

"All right then."

"Not particularly sure how you'll take this, but it's possible that one of the next mental skills you may need to acquire is how to chill out and stop adhering so forcefully to your own mental concept of yourself.  If I'm reading correctly and inferring correctly, I mean.  That you have a concept of the New Pilar in your head and are currently very forcefully being her.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you also need to know how to stop, how to reflect on whether you've constructed her well, and to realize that the person who is being New Pilar is a distinct and greater entity from New Pilar."

"Overruled, sticking to theme.  I'm currently holding myself together with spit and string, and I will consider advice like that after I don't feel quite as much like I'm going to fall apart in the next six minutes."