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"So that's the dead babies.  How about the adults in Golarion?  Or non-adults, what's the youngest that children start showing up in Hell directly instead of the Boneyard?"

"The youngest ever known of was ten or eleven, I think - in Osirion's own scries on our dead to figure out how we're doing we haven't seen younger than fifteen. It's about ten percent of people who go to Hell, outside Cheliax, and maybe five percent to Abaddon, and fifteen to the Abyss - that one varies a lot by society -"

"Hypothesis, one-third almost exactly because Pharasma balanced it that way, especially if there's any symmetrical phenomenon where one-third sort Lawful, one-third Chaotic -?"

why is he asking this it doesn't matter to anything

"It's not re-normed over time to match changes in society, if that's what you're asking, but yes, the distribution's close to even - with more Neutral - on Good to Evil, maybe 30-40-30, and close to even with more people Neutral on Law to Chaos, maybe also 30-40-30, and then Abaddon gets punished for not playing by the rules by letting those people choose the Abyss or Hell, and Nirvana has the most lawyers and Law has better lawyers than Chaos."

"Percentages in Cheliax."

"I have no idea, honestly. We keep our own statistics for the benefit of our own population, we don't have the resources to check up on everywhere else. They claim it's ninety-seven but they're probably lying. If I had to bet I'd bet at ninety."

Okay.  It's sort of reasonable of the plot to give him two months to fix Golarion or destroy Cheliax, if that's how bad things are here.  Like, so long as the plotline is solvable, it's better not to hang out in this mindspace for too long.  Two months is fine, Keltham just has to figure out how to refit his plans into two months.  Building up Project Lawful Neutral to at least Cheliax's level, and then leveling up as a wizard himself, is right out, for example.

...maybe the story is telling him to just, finish up the main plot, by then.

"What percentage of all souls being generated are Boneyard babies?"

"And, is there any reason to believe that matters are different on different planets?"

"I think about half of people die by the age of 5? Of course, in some places where there's lots of abortion, it's higher, that's only counting deaths after birth."

"Other planets, other planes?  They feed into the same afterlives, the mortals there aren't any happier in Evil afterlives, Pharasma also balanced them at one-third - is there any known reason not to believe that?"

" - the system is not balanced at one third, if people got better more of them would go to Good afterlives. I don't know anything about the situation on other planets but there's not some requirement it be around a third. I think some people are happy in the Evil afterlives though almost anyone would prefer Axis."

"'Some people'?  'Some people' doesn't mean anything!  Are we talking one in ten or one in ten million?"

"I don't know! It's not like Hell lets you conduct interviews! Abadar might know, and has a great deal to discuss with you anyway; do you want to ask Him?"

- no he does not because he is not just acting distressed, right now, he is distressed, and in that state of distress, he has possibly given too much away already.

"Abadar doesn't strike me as the sort of god that will know.  Maybe I'll ask the Iomedans at some point."

Or 'forget' about it, because he doesn't want to remind anyone of the question, and 1 in 10 wouldn't actually make much of a difference.

Keltham asks a few more questions; and then indicates that he wants to rest for a quarter-hour, and then talk to somebody in Governance about the form of the next Project Lawful.

Keltham is tired, maybe slightly dizzy from the time of night he's trying to do this.  But there's no way he can go back to sleep and the story has informed him that he was correct about the time limit and everything needing to be set in motion as quickly as possible.  Probably there was no point in the story trying to hide it from him, since he'd guessed anyways.

Sure. They'll have a full update ready for him in fifteen minutes. 

(They'll also have a transcript of the conversation between Abadar's human aspect and the rest of Abadar.)

Read whatever books are on hand to let his brain cool down, don't think about ten-year-olds in Hell.

...it's easier than he expected.  A pretty large part of him seems to think this is just the premise of a teenaged-male-edgelord-thought-experiment-trying-to-force-deontology-violations.*

(*) Three syllables in Baseline.

The report says that almost everyone who'll be a participant in Project Lawful Neutral is assembled, with the last few arriving in the morning; they have delegations from the Kelesh Empire, from Taldor, from the Magesterium in Absalom and the Academae in Korvosa, from Lastwall and Mendev and Molthune and Minkai and Rahadoum. Here are everyone's credentials and the secrecy commitments they made up front and how much funding their government can put into the project.

Keltham reads it over, nods along.  Reads the transcription between Abadar and Abadar's human, nods, doesn't cry again because he's already shed those tears and the plot of the story was plain enough already.

Things start tomorrow morning, then.

Off to speak to Governance about what to tell Project Lawful Neutral.

Merenre is, under the circumstances, not going to complain about the hours. At least Keltham's not bothering the pharaoh in the dead of night while he's trying to fend off godheadaches. 

"What can I help with?"

Keltham has activated his glibness pin, so that he can present the face to Governance that he wants them to see.

"Project Lawful Neutral kicks off tomorrow and I need to sync expectations with Governance.  - that's not meant to be a real name if you have a better one."

"Since it's not exactly secret we'll probably want to call it something everyone can announce to great applause back in their home countries. The Peaceful Revolution or something. Doesn't seem very important to settle right now."

"Sometimes these things stick even if you'd rather they wouldn't, is the conventional wisdom out of dath ilan, and it doesn't seem very likely that Golarion would be better at coordinating to change names."

"'Peaceful Revolution' is a bad idea, vetoed.  That's begging the story to ironically twist the name."

" - so we spent much of yesterday discussing the 'story' thing, and we think that - in a sense Golarion is a world full of stories, because it has powerful entities trying through small interventions to achieve large results. But you aren't - especially a story, you aren't more a story. 'Chemical Revolution'?"

"This is not going to be a chemistry revolution.  Cheliax got a bit of chemistry, which you can get off Ione Sala.  I need to give you more than they got, medicine, metallurgy, ideally I can figure out things that Cheliax by its nature dares not use or can't just copy."

"Neither Osirian nor Taldane really have a word that means Law-aspiring thought, and if we call it the Reasonable Revolution, every time the Project makes a decision somebody disagrees with, they will say, 'Ha ha, how ironic that you called yourself the Reasonable Revolution'.  Scientific Revolution is maybe the closest concept in Osirian language, although the native concept of 'science' doesn't include key aspects like prediction markets... anyways."

"After syncing up with Ione Sala I am now very sure that I was placed in Golarion at a place and time which would play out in a way that resulted in story patterns, 'tropes', appearing in the world around me.  I made a number of predictions on that theory that I thought were wrong, which were actually correct, apparently, and Cheliax hid that from me.  I will continue to juggle those story considerations myself, if I must, because your disbelief in them is not going to make them go away."

"What does 'juggling those story conditions' look like, aside from naming things differently?"