You might, possibly, get an overly rosy picture of how happy and functional a place Cheliax was, on average, if (a) you were inside a fortress being run by Carissa Sevar and (b) you were all carefully presenting a happy functional face to a dath ilani who might notice any subtle departures from that picture.

It is now full two days since both of these conditions abruptly ceased to obtain inside the Fortress of Law.

People are being idiots.  Would it kill them, would it damn them to Abaddon, to wait a few weeks until Sevar gets back from her punishment, to make any changes to this perfectly good status quo?

Unfortunately, as Maillol knows all too well, if you are not literally at the Worldwound then there are limits to how useful it can be to try to clamp down on friction between your subordinates.  If you let dominance challenges resolve themselves, your subordinates resolve themselves into a stable low-tension arrangement where everyone knows who's stronger and the stronger ones are in charge.  Anything you do to influence affairs away from that creates a higher-tension arrangement which you, as superior, will have to do ongoing work to maintain.

Maillol can foresee Sevar not being incredibly happy with this unfortunate bit of project manager wisdom, nor feeling fully answered by the observation that they are supposed to be less heretical Asmodeans henceforth.  But if Sevar didn't want this to happen the moment she stepped out, she should have spent three rounds casting to prepare for it, frankly.

The slave population in the Fortress of Law has been forced into unnatural arrangements for quite some time now.  Some minor strife now will provide both a natural release of those tensions, and an excuse to correct any unfortunate qualities of the resulting arrangement when Sevar returns from her recovery vacation with the Queen.

Besides, it will probably be good for Sevar, a start on her new Asmodeanism, if she returns to a situation that requires her to correct her slaves with fire and lash.

Maillol and Subirachs seem to be inclined in different directions about this?  Fascinating.

A story you could tell about Project Lawful - not the only story you could tell about Project Lawful, certainly, but a story you could tell about Project Lawful, goes like this:

A man arrived from another world, that had a bizarre math-inspired form of social organization and also a really extensive knowledge of chemical processes and how to improve them. He believed, apparently with complete sincerity, that the two went hand in hand, that the chemistry was a byproduct of the math-inspired form of social organization, though it was invented back in his society's screened-off history. As a result, Cheliax set its people not just to learning chemistry but also to trying to master his world's math-inspired form of social organization.

This was a mistake.

It's not that being interested in the math-inspired form of social organization was a mistake. Hell seems interested; they all serve Hell; that is enough reason to try to grasp it. 

But you can also just take the parts that are about how to iterate on chemical processes, and then get really rich and conquer the world. And in terms of order of operations, that one is really the important one. Especially since no one has figured out how the math-inspired form of social organization is compatible with Asmodeanism, while getting really rich and conquering the world is entirely compatible with Asmodeanism.

Asmodia, not that the Lady Avaricia would contemplate criticizing her in the slightest, is obviously one of the major drivers of this mistake. She was the subject of some kind of divine intervention, cementing everyone's sense that she's Very Important. She's not particularly talented at improving industrial processes. She was utterly necessary, while they had Keltham around, because the math-inspired form of social organization was important for lying to people who rely on it. But she's from the beginning conceived of the whole project as being about ilanism, instead of as being about getting rich and conquering the world.

(Much the same could be said of Sevar, but Avaricia does not say it, for it is said, don't criticize your superiors without a plan to take their job, and she has noticed that Sevar's job involves a lot of being personally tortured by the Queen of Cheliax.)

Did Avaricia say that she was organizing a new faction inside Project Lawful, comprised of the real Asmodeans who clearly deserve to be running things while those open heretics burn in Hell or at least suffer a little under their natural superiors?

That's a touch unsubtle, really.

(Yes, yes, commoners have to be idiots, but do they have to be as idiotic as they always are?)

She might say, though, that Sevar did suggest that open heresy was going to be less tolerated, going forward, and Asmodia does not seem to have fully comprehended that reprimand, which suggests the Project might be wanting for competent, loyal, non-heretical leadership.

Who correctly understand the primary objective of the Project as conquering the world for Asmodeus, and who have justifiably been chafing under Asmodia's heretical and also incompetent direction.

Okay!  You're now the 'Church' faction!  Which would make Asmodia's faction the 'Crown' faction!

SHIT.

They prefer the term 'Sevar loyalists', actually.

Asmodia is not in charge of the Sevar loyalists.  They are sufficiently intelligent to compute their own best interests in unison and move in coordination.

They may not be ilani, as yet, but there is no point in letting themselves fall that far short of ilani.

That's an interesting, not Asmodean, not-at-all-functional way to run a project.

She wishes them good luck at it.

Asmodeus's loyalists will be following orders. They'll punish heresy, because actually, heresy is bad, and heresy on this project has distracted it from what should be its singleminded aim on improving chemical processes. Those of them who are officially Asmodia's subordinates will obey her, because that's what Asmodeans do, until such a time as they can arrange a transfer to work under a real Asmodean and not a heretic.

It's an excellent bet that when Sevar returns to define what new behavior patterns on Project Lawful will be considered heretical, she will not walk back what she previously said about needing an Asmodeanism based on truth in order for Cheliax to successfully compete against the non-Asmodean rest of Golarion.  Sevar may impose new tyranny, possibly walk back her old edict about torture, but she's pretty unlikely to withdraw the project of an Asmodeanism based on truth.

The Sevar-loyalist ilani, then, will come right out and say the truth here, as Avaricia no doubt considers terribly boorish.

Actual truth:  Avaricia is making a play to steal Project resources from Sevar.

Actual truth:  Sevar is the Chosen of Asmodeus and the favored of Abrogail Thrune, and anybody loyal to the Church or Crown would be loyal to Sevar.  Asmodia is in fact loyal to neither, but she does feel that she owes Sevar a lot of loyalty, for now and unless Sevar changes.

Actual truth:  This sort of internal backbiting - erupting the instant there is, not a power vacuum, but a power slight depression - will, if the chel ilani can't get it under control, cause Cheliax to lose.  Or are they under the impression that dath ilani projects behave like this?

Asmodia would be pretty willing to sit back and eat cookies about this, so long as Avaricia and her faction of power-hungry lunatics didn't do anything to interfere with the real work being carried on by Sevar loyalists.

However, Avaricia having now wantonly divided the project's loyalties and created internal conflict to serve her own purposes of gaining power, Asmodia rather suspects that some time-wasting conflicts will be inevitable.  She will document every instance of those to be charged against the account of Lady Eulàlia Avaricia de Seguer upon Carissa Sevar's return.

They could have done Something Else Which Was Not That, but alas, it takes two to Cooperate in a cooperation-defection dilemma.  And if Cheliax cannot manage to cooperate with itself internally, well, it is a moot point whether Cheliax could have won; because what Cheliax will do, then, could not really be called trying.

Also Avaricia isn't one of Keltham's fated love interests and favored of the tropes, so, kind of a foregone conclusion here anyways.

Asmodia will close by noting that if Avaricia was actually doing a better job of serving Asmodeus she'd have Pilar Pineda on her side, so, nobody go pretending that what they're doing over there is really serving Asmodeus in any way.

Leave Pilar fucking out of this.  She can't do anything unusual unless it serves Cayden Cailean's and Asmodeus's interests simultaneously, and somehow Pilar doubts that will be the case here.

Not actually true!  Pilar doesn't need Snack Service's agreement to use the powers of her oracular curse!  It's Pilar's curse, after all.

Since fucking when?

Since fucking always!  That one time with Sevar you did try to plan your own parties, you could tell whether they'd go through or not, remember?  Pilar just got too angry at her curse to try using her own powers for herself.

Does that mean Pilar can now sweep up paladins without having to throw them a going-away party -

No, that requirement is part of her curse!  It wouldn't be much of a curse otherwise!  But the part where Snack Service only invokes the curse's powers when that simultaneously serves the interests of Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus - that part is all Snack Service.  Pilar can act on her own, if she chooses.

...great.  Well, Pilar is going to report all this and then do whatever her superiors tell her about that.

Maillol or Subirachs?  Which orders Pilar gets will totally depend on who she asks for orders!  Just saying!

Lady Avaricia is very busy with training her chemists and doesn't really have time to be ranted at by an idiot child, but if Asmodia thinks that something to do with how the chemistry project is running is undermining Asmodia's authority, that seems like a very serious problem, and Lady Avaricia will of course obey any instructions from her superiors to cease doing whatever it is they assess as undermining Asmodia's authority. The way in which Asmodeans - which is what they are, of course - do Something Else Which Is Not That is that they obey their superiors. 

If Asmodia is having trouble persuading her superiors that Lady Avaricia is doing something wrong, she should consider the possibility that her superiors don't think Lady Avaricia is doing something wrong, and even the possibility that her superiors think that Asmodia is doing something wrong and this will be a useful corrective.

She can't really think what Asmodia's superiors might think Asmodia is doing wrong, though there was that time, two days ago, when Asmodia told an audience of dozens of foreigners she was not an Asmodean and was a potential defector. 

It seems like maybe, to whatever extent Asmodia's authority has been undermined here, it's by the rumors about that. Maybe Asmodia could lay the rumors to rest by pledging herself to the service of Asmodeus and repenting of her past idiocies.

And then, of course, they could do Something Else Which Is Not This.

Avaricia is obviously being given enough rope to hang herself, probably on Sevar's previous orders to Maillol since neither of those two are stupid.

Asmodia is happy to go back to work.  She is just making it very clear that the inevitable explosion which follows this, did not need to happen, and is Avaricia's fault.  It won't be Avaricia who does it with her own hands, they will obviously try to engineer matters to make it appear to be the fault of Sevar loyalists, but it'll be Avaricia's fault because that part was utterly predictable.  Witness Asmodia predicting it right now.

Everyone knows in the reality-handling section of their brain that this is actually true, and the Queen and Most High will know it, right?  Great.  Now let's go continue with what we were previously doing, until the conflict Avaricia created starts causing delays and wasted time, beyond what Asmodia and Avaricia have spent already.

There is, actually, something dath ilani about assuming that All People Capable of Reason will agree with you and your assessment of a situation and therefore you don't need to be loyal or remember your place or even deliver an actual victory on the one task you've been assigned.

She doesn't mean that in a complimentary way.

Go back to hanging yourself, tropeless side character.