"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."
-- P. C. Hodgell, Seeker's Mask.
Two dozen simultaneous Teleports and suddenly they're surrounded by a hundred soldiers in unfamiliar uniform, their skin varying shades of brown. To Detect Magic they are all glaringly coated in spells - Strength, Dexterity, Haste, Stoneskin, Protection from Evil, Protection from Energy, Resist Energy, Bless, Death Ward -
- technically Cheliax is well within its rights to consider this a declaration of war, if Cheliax wants to do that. They are in Chelish territory, here, and that there is an invading army.
"HOOOOLLLD EVERYTHING PLEASE! TRUCE! TRUCE IN THE NAME OF THE GODDESS WHOSE PURPOSE IS SECRET! IF CHELIAX GUARANTEES THE SAFE PASSAGE OF KELTHAM AND EVERYONE WHO JUST SHOWED UP FROM OSIRION, CAN YOU PLEASE HANG AROUND FOR A FEW MINUTES WHILE SOME MORE THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE THAT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT! FOR EVERYBODY!"
Pilar sort of wants to die right now and not just so that Hell can correct all of her remaining errors.
Aspexia makes a lightning decision confirmed after a moment by Abrogail, and de-invisibles herself.
It's not impossible she could take them all. But it's potentially difficult without Miracle. And they are, arguably, Keltham's passage out from Cheliax, and on her own Lord's word also they may not hinder his going to Osirion.
"I am Aspexia Rugatonn, and I speak now for Crown as well as Church. Does this army not attempt to take nor harm any thing or person that is Cheliax's by international law, we guarantee the safe passage of Keltham and all who are just now arrived from Osirion, for up to twenty minutes, in that goddess's name."
"Right. Sure." A lot of Keltham's current probability mass is that this, too, is not real, and if he just breaks this simulation and maybe another three or dozen of those, he gets to wake up in whatever now passes for the basement layer of reality.
Keltham is, nonetheless, continuing to optimize for this world, in case it is reality; dath ilan has trained its people so, to continue the struggle for as long as that is in them.
"Snack Service. That was you talking directly there, wasn't it? You could earn a lot of credibility points with me if you provided a coherent explanation of everything that's going on."
"Super duper not allowed! Plus you're going to figure it out anyways yourself before that long."
"So what happens next is that Abadar's people need to cast some Abadar's Truthtellings, and guarantee using their own magical detection abilities that nobody messed with that! And then everybody who Keltham currently has feelings for, or who have feelings for him, need to get truthspelled and tell Keltham what really happened between them from their own perspective, and what their relationship is currently actually like!"
"Otherwise some people who have important decisions coming up might make those decisions less than totally optimally given their own values! And that would not be in the interests of Asmodeus or Cayden Cailean or Abadar or Keltham."
"I want to be clear that we're holding ourselves very much not dealt fairly with with respect to Cayden Cailean, right now," says the leader of the Osirians. "Every person who made it look to Keltham like Good and Evil had gone in together on Project Lawful, or like Asmodeus had allies in this, or like Cheliax was a safe place for him, did the wrong thing. I don't care if you have some kind of complicated justification; it was awful, you're awful, and we've suspended attempts at trade.
Keltham, do you happen to want some Abadar's Truthtellings up?"
Keltham will figure it out soon enough. She knows everything Keltham does, so she ought to be able to figure it out too.
....she genuinely does not get what long-term geopolitical situation people telling Keltham their feelings is relevant for. Unless it's Abrogail's plan, to lure Keltham back, and - why would Cayden Cailean enable that -
"You're up first, Asmodia!"
"Now please hold while Asmodia asks telepathically what she's supposed to do."
Yeah, she's asking, and notes her Prediction that Keltham asks her afterwards if she's been holding anything back especially on orders, if she does this at all.
Some candidate explanations Carissa has generated at this point, for Snack Service's behavior:
Keltham will declare war on Cheliax, and or on Hell, and lose but in some way that also doesn't serve Asmodeus, such as Cheliax being destroyed otherwise or another Worldwound opening; Cayden doesn't want Keltham to lose, and Asmodeus doesn't want Cheliax destroyed, so Snack Service is acting in their shared interest in the war being averted.
Keltham would never have been allowed to come to Golarion in the first place, if certain specific things were going to happen as a direct result; it serves Asmodeus for Keltham to have come to Golarion, so Snack Service is trying to steer them away from acting in a manner that'd have made it never happen. Or same idea but Asmodeus's rise to power in the first place was predicated on this happening now, etcetera.
Keltham can invent the theory of corrigibility, or something else of similar importance to Asmodeus and his invention of it routes in some way through his sexual interests, so Cayden wants to make sure that Keltham has some piece of information he'll need to solve corrigibility and is obscuring this by asking for lots of other information also. This benefits Cayden because if Asmodeus could make mortals corrigible to him then he'd do less torturing them that doesn't even improve them.
There's some insight Keltham will have if he doesn't give up on Golarion entirely that'll destroy the Abyss, which is a shared interest of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil.
Carissa is in fact as tantalizing close as it sometimes feels to figuring out ilanism, and this will make Hell better from Chaotic Good's perspective, and she needs to learn something here. Or Asmodia is that close and needs to learn something here; Keltham is just the occasion for Cheliax to permit such experiments.
Or, of course, it's something she hasn't thought of.
All of these seem to suggest, though -
...Asmodia is going to note that she doesn't think Sevar is functioning at full capacity and, absent direction from her superiors, make her own guesses.
Her guess is that part of what's going on is that Keltham will otherwise stop by the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye and hear Ione's version of everything, only; and this will not particularly serve Asmodeus's interests.
She notes that Keltham is fully aware of the Law of Filtered Evidence, which means that Asmodia is going to give the unfiltered version, because Keltham may very well directly ask her about filters or what updates he'd make if he knew all info she was leaving out.
If anybody wants that to not happen, she needs to hear otherwise from her superiors.
And she's striding forwards to receive her truthspell.
Tap. And a dozen different people suspiciously Detecting for signs of tampering.
"I don't like doing this on Chelish soil but I see no indications of any of the spells that could be used to deceive a truth spell," the Osirian leader reports to Keltham. "To have deceived us about this they'd have to have magical capabilities no one else knows about, which I'd generally just assure you is close to impossible. However, they've been displaying some of those lately, so -" Shrug.
"It is."
"From my perspective, this all started when I was yanked from Ostenso academy and told that I was now a gift to a visiting outsider -"
"Pause. Is somebody recording all this so I can review the transcripts later," because if this is actual base reality then possibly what Snack Service is trying to do here is give Keltham the full story that he can verify makes sense in retrospect, or somebody is trying to create the appearance of that, and Keltham is not able right now to check consistency as he goes - "Also can I get assurance that I'm not currently under any form of mind control and nobody is currently reading my mind, according to you, or whatever you say is your ability to detect that or counter that."
"You do not appear to be the subject of any ongoing spells except Tongues and Share Language. It's not hard to fake that. I can have everyone Dispel Magic on you, which is harder to fake. I can also just put up an antimagic field around you, if you'd like, which will cancel any mind-affecting enchantments on you and to my knowledge cannot be subverted or falsified. Abadar did also pay Asmodeus to communicate to his followers that you were absolutely not to be mind-controlled, so I don't expect you are.
With your permission I can cast Spell Immunity: Detect Thoughts on you, which will stop them from reading your mind, which they might well be doing. We aren't doing it.
There's also an invisible halfling next to the girl Cayden's been puppeting."
"Can I get Dispel Magics on me, then a new Share Language Taldane and Spell Immunity Detect Thoughts?" Hard to decide between that and antimagic field but Carissa was trying hard to push antimagic if that wasn't a double bluff and Spell Immunity was what Keltham's god tried to grant him. "And, Broom, please stop that. And, transcripts possible?"