"Okay, this part is classified, because I do not want Cheliax knowing that I know it, that I've guessed, they can - if they know I know - change their strategy in a way that might evade the obvious things I'd try to do about it - although, this is not based purely on story reasoning, there is a chain of real-world observation and causality that mirrors the story logic -"

"I predict that Cheliax will successfully come up with a way to neutralize my nonthreatening motivation to destroy their country if they abuse my teaching - my motive to do that just to clean up after myself - in a bit less than two months."

"After that would be the obvious point for them to attack wherever the Scientific Revolution is locating its center of research, or, depending on how far they can get in two months, try to do a lot of damage to any country that supports the Scientific Revolution, including Osirion."

"My current best idea is to spend one month dumping everything I have into either the Scientific Revolution generally, or restricted sections trying to work within the Black Dome on things Cheliax shouldn't find out about.  And then spend the month after that - trying to beat that deadline, on my own, doing things that I - do not consider it wise to share."

"I see. All right. Is there anything we can do to help you, aside from assembling the Scientific Revolution as quickly as possible?"

"That would be a more reasonable question if we weren't inside a story.  The first arc just concluded with the country I tried to help, betraying me.  I thought at first that the second arc would play that out in a subtler way, but I now think - that the story I'm in - won't repeat itself that way.  More likely is that it will rhyme."

"So my current plan is that I do not charge non-Evil attendees, students, for anything.  Osirion is welcome to rope me off and charge admissions, just like I was a fruit tree somebody else planted, but I'm not accepting any of that money from anybody who isn't Evil and who is not trading with me on the basis of my being an Asmodean trade partner rather than an Abadaran one, because that way, you see, I cannot be forced to betray those trade partners.  You need to - carry out the implied bargain Abadar made originally, where he bought just enough good treatment from Asmodeus that I could come to Osirion and explain things, you need to support my finishing out that bargain but not otherwise try to be friends with me."

There was a version of this, interaction, that Keltham considered, where he screamed at the Osirians about Abadar trading with Asmodeus, and told them that he wasn't trading with anyone who traded with Asmodeus, that Keltham was giving up his own right to be treated as an agent in protest, that Osirion could treat Keltham as a resource and sell his teachings without recompense, the same way that Abadar's trading partner Asmodeus treated the mortal souls being used as paving stones in Hell - but - Keltham cannot bring himself to say that, not now.  Not after Abadar asked him to help explain being human.

Also, that story wouldn't get them to stop trying to be friends with him, now that Keltham thinks about it.  Like, that wouldn't work on him.

" - I have no right to stop you from conducting yourself in that fashion, if you want." He looks baffled. "Is there some sum of money I can offer you to talk to the Pharaoh. While masked, if you like."

"The fact you think that my talking to Abadar's chosen mortal is a key event, that causes me to change my mind in a way that reasonable arguments transmitted through other people would not - if you offer me a million gold pieces to do it, the fact that you expect to get a million gold pieces of value out of that encounter is proportionally worrying!"

"I think that I'm incredibly confused. There's some piece of information or some frame or some context I'm missing that would make me less incredibly confused. Since the stakes very nearly could not be higher, it seems worth trying anything that seems reasonably likely to resolve the confusion, and the pharaoh is specialized in communicating with aliens who see the world more like the way you see it."

"So do it through a text-only channel!  Same thing the - complicated faction I don't want to explain right now - did when they wanted to negotiate with - the dath ilani equivalent of things with 30 Splendour!  It's the obvious precaution for only being persuaded by reasonable arguments instead of somebody's superpowers!"

"I hope that is sufficient to resolve the confusion."

"Anyways.  There's a lot of obvious things we can review to make sure we're on the same page about how obvious they are.  Weapons research restricted so Cheliax stays further behind on that, focusing on large explosives to use in key moments, because if we make a lot of smaller weapons Cheliax can capture those and copy them.  Scry defenses, truthspells.  Medical techniques, which Cheliax may care less about developing for itself, they may not come with immediate military payoffs but they can be sold to countries and individuals to fund the Project."

"Things that aren't obvious... I require you to not restrict access to me by, say, an emissary of Razmiran, you can truthspell them to check malicious intent to harm your valuable knowledge-source, but I need to be able to talk to them and establish Asmodean trading relationships with them.  If no Lawful Evil countries offer to work with me, then I may need to step outside the Dome long enough to use a Sending, and you can guard me while I do that if you think that's in your own interests.  I'm going to need some resources for doing my own thing, and you cannot be my trading partner on those or be helpful about it, just, not hinder me."

"I did not write Project Lawful's contract with Cheliax with this exact outcome in mind, but I did write it with the thought that I might have to leave and set up in another country, and while I tried to be fair to them under those circumstances I did not want to let an adversary be unfair to me.  Cheliax needs, for example, to set a consistent value on the spellsilver produced using Project-derived technology, to be credited to Project earnings, some of which I control; and if they set that price too low to reduce my apparent earnings, I can buy spellsilver from them at a fixed premium to that price, up to a fraction of the total amount produced.  Same with headbands produced on Carissa's assembly line.  We need to check if that aspect of the contract actually goes through, and get started on holding them to it; if they argue, we are supposed to agree on a priest of Irori to judge the dispute, or if we can't agree on a priest, the highest priest of Irori in Golarion, whoever that is, is supposed to send us a judge.  They will try for all contractually allowed delay, which makes this a potentially critical subpath, I should not have delayed two days on setting this in motion."

"We've already checked all your contracts; I'll have the lawyers who looked at them write up a demand letter to be submitted to Cheliax."

"There were things I wanted to do for the women of Osirion, but - I'm not sure there's time, now.  If it doesn't slow down the Project, it would be nice to have some new industrial or manufacturing centers be made out of Osirian women who want to own their own property and not be part of the current gender system.  If it would slow things down, it might have to wait."

"My sense is that the policy prediction market for ideas like these is, in fact, 'Merenre', which I'm not sure actually invalidates the basic civilizational guidelines about steering using policy prediction markets.  But if the policy prediction market thinks it helps Osirion's women, and doesn't end with more of them in Hell or the Maelstrom - then, I might ask for things like that, not that help myself, but that help others.  If they can't have a refuge where they can go to own their own incomes - then, something about Intelligence scans and literacy or, some other promise like that, when and if Osirion has money."

"We'll send everyone to school, once we're rich enough. I think once women can earn their own income sufficient to support themselves a lot of things will change that would be very hard to change before that."

"I - it's not really urgent, but I'm going to say it, now, because now is when I'm thinking it -"

"You cannot become a Civilization like this, Merenre.  I'm not even sure you can stay aligned to Abadar like this, once you realize what you're doing that's not Abadaran, though since I'm still a cleric of Abadar myself the rules are apparently laxer than I would have believed."

"But - even if you fixed that, made Osirion the way Abadar would have you make it, if He understood you, if He could tell you how to do it according to His math -"

"I've come to suspect, that maybe there isn't such a thing as a Lawful Neutral dath ilan that still holds itself together.  Not only because of what I learned of Cheliax, but also because of what I saw of Osirion.  Maybe in Axis, with Abadar holding it all together more tightly, and people transforming themselves to not be quite so human, a Lawful Neutral civilization could work.  But in mortal dath ilan, in someplace like Golarion -"

"The part where people care about each other, is actually important."

"There are - goblins, and ghouls, and drow, and stranger things still, and I don't - think we can build a Civilization based on caring about each other, when we don't, in fact, all care about each other. If there were only humans it'd be different. 

But - I'll keep that in mind."

"...as will I."

"I should not be presented to other countries as being reliable on account of being a cleric of Abadar.  I think I've already warned several people about this, but consider the warning repeated:  I am not sure how long my cleric bond with Abadar is going to hold up.  I do not, necessarily, object to having cleric powers while I am a guest in Osirion carrying out my part of a deal with Abadar, it keeps me safer while I'm here and I can just - not use those powers for anything except Project matters - but I'm surprised that I am still a cleric of Abadar, and I'm not sure I'm going to be one at the end of the week or even when the Project kicks off tomorrow.  If I am, fine, but don't represent me to those countries that way."

" - if they ask me a direct question I will not lie to them but I can explain that you do not want to be regarded in that fashion. 

I think Abadar expects mortals to - have a lot that's not-Abadaran in them. What matters is how you choose to conduct yourself, not what you - realize, or think of, or wonder."

"Then it may have lasted this long only because I am still unsure of some matters and have not, really, chosen them yet."

"I, uh, hope you give yourself some time to recover and rest and make sure you're not acting out of - pain and rage at what was done to you by Cheliax, righteous as that pain and rage is."

Keltham will continue to iron out details for a while, though not so long that his glibness runs out.

He will then stagger off to his bedroom, looking like he is trying to rush everything under time pressure while not even remotely recovered from his Cheliax Adventure.

It's even true.  He's not recovered, he is trying to rush.  Keltham is very much drawing on real emotions, real horror, real distress, to give the impression he gives; when he excuses himself, he goes to cry real tears.  When he wants to find something angry-sounding to say, within himself, he does not need to look hard.

The part where stress-induced entropy is invoked to make sense of his seemingly suboptimal decisions, as if they were random noise requiring no further explanation except his upset-ness and a handful of apparent verbal explanations stitching them into a purported reasoning pattern?

The part where he's apparently just rushing to conclusions out of pain and rage, and ignoring all the obvious thoughts about better meta-level process that a reader would be rolling their eyes and thinking about, if they read a book character like that?

Nobody out of dath ilan would buy it for a minute.  They can't train perfect reasoning but they can at least train not that.

Golarion, hopefully, doesn't know any better.

Keltham, when he wanted to stop and really think about things, had the luxury of writing notes to himself in code.

Asmodia does not dare do that.  She has some shielding from Detect Thoughts; it doesn't mean she can evade truthspells if somebody gets concerned enough, if Security pokes in and wants to know what she's already written.  All she can do is close her eyes, and try to think in an organized way.

With Project Lawful taking on so many new attempted recruits (mostly by Avaricia), cognitive enhancement spells are at even more of a premium than before.  That's good, in a way, because it means that Asmodia has at least one Cunning and Splendour hung of her own.  She doesn't need to make a possibly revealing request of Security, or wait to call over one of the resident third-circle Enhancer Monkeys (as they are not-so-affectionately called by their users).

Asmodia can cast Cunning and Splendour on herself, and for a few minutes she will be almost what she was before, wearing the Crown of the Most High.  More so, if she really thinks and tries to use such ilani technique as she possesses, instead of using that time to work only on problems outside herself.

It is clear, looking back at her own actions, that she has been behaving in a way that Sevar would call 'muddled'.  And there's a very obvious explanation for it, which is that she does hate Cheliax, didn't want Cheliax to win, that everyone in the self-proclaimed 'Church faction' distrusting her on that account was in fact being pretty reasonable about that; and Asmodia herself did not face up to that, did not know her own reason for staying and could not clearly optimize around that reason.

She wishes, in retrospect, that Pilar had demanded from her earlier, to know Asmodia's reason why she'd do good work for a country she hates, and pierced past her first answer.  Asmodia might have respected the question, the demand, if it came from Pilar.

Cheliax does not, in fact, need roads right now, according to the Queen and Most High's actual probable priorities.  There's a version of the story Asmodia could tell, did tell, about how she's trying to figure out something genuinely new that Keltham didn't know at all, to challenge her own ilanism.  But the real reason was that her mind considered medicine and electrical motors and explosives, and flinched away from everything that could help Cheliax win a near-term war.

...it's not, in a way, the wrong meta-level decision, to think in such a confused way, if you're still afraid of truthspells and letting something slip outside your mind's shield.  It gets the job done of not helping Cheliax too much, while still lying to yourself enough to survive another day in Cheliax.

But the time for that is past.

Even the part of the story she told herself at first, that she was staying in Golarion to be with Korva, to protect Korva -

(for Asmodia does not know anything of plans by Abrogail Thrune, Korva has not dared speak of any of those to anyone, has never dared say aloud to Asmodia that the Queen claimed to have given her protection)

- is simplistic and facile; it is impossible, in retrospect, that Asmodia's goals would make sense even given that.  She never once asked herself if there was some other way to be with Korva, or protect Korva.

It is not that past-Asmodia was chasing a different goal, coherently, without knowing that goal to herself.

She was just muddled.