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.

This Security has not gotten laid in the last two months, ever since he was pulled onto the Project as a very reliable-seeming Asmodean to monitor girls at risk of defection.  Maillol thought his sex partner was too much of a liability with Keltham around.

So he asked the moment Keltham was gone!  Is it now acceptable for him to have Raise Dead cast on that very special person, where he spends most of his salary on Malediction and Raise Dead to keep them in Hell whenever they're not being used by him?  He's currently paying to have Gentle Repose cast on their corpse once per week, so he doesn't have to pay even more for Resurrection.

Maillol acknowledges this Security has been doing a competent job, unlike many of his fellows.  Maillol would usually accept a request like that from a subordinate like this one.  But things like that are not deserved, in a tyranny; and the unfortunate fact is that Sevar still has some lingering issues about men and women that might be triggered by being around a situation like this.

This Security has thought of that!  Once he understood the situation on Project Lawful, he had his last partner's corpse disposed of, they can stay in Hell forever now, and he got a new male partner Maledicted so he could have a non-Sevar-triggering male plaything whenever Keltham finally left!

(This Security most enjoys sex with very broken people who can't talk, who can barely manage to do anything, but are absolutely desperate to please him in any way they can still manage, so they won't get sent back to Hell again for longer.  Sue him, okay?  Everybody's got their special thing.)

Okay, fine then.  Make sure you keep it where it won't make a mess or disturb the girls.  If one day you find it gone with only a cookie left behind, don't say Maillol didn't warn you.

Yay!

Yes, even Maillol is slightly skeezed out by this.  He doesn't have moral objections, obviously, it's just, this kink is not his kink.

But if you ask Egorian to send you extremely reliably loyal Asmodeans, you're going to get some people like that.

Yep!  Project Lawful definitely now has some people like that.

"Rise, and be seated. 

What did you think of him?"

"We have a problem, your majesty. I don't know what problem, exactly, and it'd be much less of a problem if I did. If he were one of the girls I'd reassign him to the winter palace and get him something - small and concrete, to take care of, maybe a songbird - a familiar, if he had the knack for reading a scroll....."

"He said he thinks he'll be recovered by tomorrow."