" - I'm going to spend today checking in on all the project groups and figuring out concretely where we're at on everything, but first thing tomorrow I'm going to give myself some Wisdom and try to crack Cayden's plan. Though, of course, if He thought I could've succeeded He probably wouldn't have told you that...

Anyway. I approve of you acting proactively in Asmodeus's interests. You are ordered to keep doing that. I know it makes you miserable and I don't care."

"Acknowledged, sir.  It's very good to have you back."

"I am looking forward to meeting your prospective ilani."

"Permission to complain about Cayden Cailean, sir?"

"Go right ahead."

"I was trying to exchange one soul to Elysium for each one I took for Hell, so it would simultaneously serve Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus - like a boy in wizard school, hating himself and wishing somebody would beat him into doing his homework properly - and whose father was stealing from his master's shop to put him through that school - and my curse let me run out all of those I could find, before telling me that it wasn't necessary but Cayden Cailean appreciated the bonuses."

"I've never been so motivated to gain power in my life as by the thought that every circle is being ripped away from Him."

Do you, Carissa wants to ask, ever feel like we're profoundly outclassed and being toyed with?

But even gods aren't infallible. "Well, if you want to level faster we can try what Her Majesty did with me, though it'd require some modification and also we really can't spare you right now."

"Honestly, I am incredibly curious about what your punishment was, if it's permitted to ask."

(There was a Pilar once who would have never spoken that question out loud, if not told.)

"Her Majesty summoned a devil from Hell to bind itself to me, and sit with me, and observe me in my crafting, and punish me every half-hour that I did not exceed my previous best performance, and put me to sleep when my grasp of the magic failed.

I hear Asmodia told Elias Abarco that he'd break in half an hour of whatever was being done to me, and I was really tempted to test that prediction for her, but I can't have him and Maillol out at the same time."

"That's the hottest thing I've ever heard in my life.  If Abrogail Thrune ever wants me in love with her, she has my hairs.*"**

(*) As are often used to target magics.

(**) The old Pilar would never have dared even think this.

Pilar is a very strange person and Carissa's going to count herself lucky there are twenty of them available on the planet. 

"Maybe get me a list of which of your would-be ilani are underlevelled, in your judgement, relative to their comprehension of magic."

"There's only four who aren't.  Places that aren't Cheliax don't want to stress their little dears too hard, even the ones that are literally fucking begging their masters in words for harsher training."

"Well. I think I can work with that. Good work, Pilar."

Pilar smiles, slightly, for if Sevar says it then it's so.

Then she looks closely at Sevar's headband.  Wait, she was crafting that whole time -

Pilar casts Detect Magic, looks at Sevar's headband again.

Takes out her own Sevar-crafted glibness pin and looks at it.

Takes off her new +6 Splendour headband and looks at it.

"If we're both seen wearing these, people on the Project are going to know Cheliax has access to a time-dilated demiplane, sir," Pilar states.  "- People might guess that just from seeing one of them."

" - if Cheliax has access to a time-dilated demiplane that's news to me."

"Chaotic plane?  You were gone for barely over a month.  I've never heard of a crafter producing twelve +6 headbands in a year, there's - what, surely less than a hundred +6 headbands of intelligence in all of Cheliax, fewer of Wisdom, maybe slightly more of Splendour -"  Pilar's inner Asmodia is wailing about how they can't tell this fact to Keltham, the numbers won't add up.

"I mean, it was somewhat unpleasant. Most people probably would rather work at a slow pace than craft until they hallucinate the Queen of Cheliax mocking them for their failures, and, really, unless you're trying to conquer the world what would you make twelve of them for anyway."

"Kingdoms get founded around that kind of crafting capability.  Literally, you could work for two years and produce forty-eight +6 items, and pay them over to forty-eight recent sixth-circles and equivalent fighters to stomp a minor country for you.  If your wits ever stop being valuable to Cheliax, if they ever stop being this valuable to Cheliax, you're getting locked in a crafting workshop and never coming out, you know that, right."

"I don't do anything other people shouldn't be able to do, they just don't bother for some reason!"

She is aware, as she says it, that it's neither an ilani nor an Asmodean way to think. 

"I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I say, let them wonder what Cheliax has in its back pocket. It'll make them less likely to start a war."

"None of my candidates are advanced enough to start on crafting magic items according to conventional schedules.  There's one who I think would do very well with that devil system, maybe on something like twelve days on two days off, but he'd have to actually know how to craft first -"

"- wrongthought, I'm not thinking about this right.  My candidates are potential ilani candidates, or I tried to look for those, and those are far more valuable than crafters.  If you just want a crafter to retrain, I can go out one night looking for a crafter who'll do well with harsher training and more pressure -"

"- still wrongthought, I'm trying to please you, and that's not Cheliax's priority or Asmodeus's interest.  My own estimate is that Asmodeus needs ilani and Keepers from you, not crafters, not even completely fucking absurd crafters.  Confirm?"

"Confirm. The reason I want to do that to them, or something like it, is that I think they need to understand what pain can achieve that nothing else can. But maybe they're all like you and understand that intuitively."

"Important note.  The first candidates I looked for were ones a lot like me, including being able to take as much pain as I can, ideally with less Goodness as a flaw.  Then my curse started to feel like it was straining.  I thought about it for a while and for the next candidates I went seeking those who can take - unfairness, strict training, who won't try to run away from a game where they're always losing.  But they can't take the same intensity of pain as me, or at least not yet.  You could hold them to a task with a whip without breaking them, even for a month at a time, but not use a devil.  My tentative guess is that what's needed is - accepting frequent punishment, unfair punishment, wanting and needing to being held to a harsh standard by your trainers - and not that there's some step of the training that requires very intense pain."

"If I was wrong about that, we've still got nine who can take anything I can."

"I suspect you're right, and I'd be more sure you were except that Hell uses harsh pain, and so maybe there's some step that actually requires that. If so, I suppose we'll encounter it somewhere along the way."

"Should've thought of that myself.  Well, if we're lucky, it's not necessarily an early step and we can train better endurance before we get to it.  Otherwise, Asmodeus is going to have very few Keepers out of Golarion - at least of pure human blood."