"If we can get him two, I'll consider this to all have been worth it."

And next up: reading the letters Asmodia sent to the Queen and the Most High before she disappeared.

It's a failure analysis of Sevar's whole Project, heavily but unobtrusively censored by the copyist!  It actually goes back to before Keltham-loss and notes that Sevar, the project leader, didn't like thinking about tropes and this was already a crippling vulnerability, possibly one that triggered on them, though this is hard to guess since Asmodia wasn't trying to own responsibility herself for making predictions.  In hindsight it seems incredibly obvious that the statue plan would trigger some kind of challenge, and one that Asmodia made very little effort to prepare for seriously, and wasn't given orders by anybody in her chain of command otherwise including the Queen and Most High, both of whom should've been paying far more regular visits and allocating far more resources to the most important Project in Cheliax.  If they didn't otherwise have any +6 intelligence headbands available for Sevar, they should've statued some sixth or seventh circle wizard who was simply not as important as Sevar.

Everything that happened in the Project after Sevar left seems predictable in hindsight and Sevar should've left more detailed orders about that instead of refusing to think about it.

Everything that happened after Sevar left is pathetic.  Pilar had the power to prevent all of this but doesn't like acting without orders.  Pilar understands tropes, like Asmodia, and is a faithful Asmodean, unlike Asmodia, who could've advised Maillol and Subirachs.  If the Most High and the Queen don't want to put Pilar in charge they need to come run the Project themselves because nobody else with authority understands tropes and idiot Securities are pressuring Yaisa into having sex with them and at some point somebody's going to go too far and Keltham is going to stomp into the fortress with an army just in time to rescue her.  Nobody is keeping track of this because they don't like thinking about tropes.

Systems in Cheliax look nothing like Hell and Cheliax should stop pretending that it has an Asmodeanism in hand that even slightly works.  You know the thing Keltham mentioned in animal breeding about how you need to breed chickens according to the success of the coop, because if you breed chickens by individual size you get chickens that bully others and steal their food and the group's output is actually weakened?  That's it.  That's all Cheliax is, right now.  People can't think clearly about the consequences of current aspects of the system because they'll be labeled traitors if they do.  Asmodia is a traitor, if you can call somebody that who doesn't even pretend to be loyal, and it should not have fallen to her to do the failure analysis on this shitshow.  If Asmodeanism wants to change, it needs an actual loyal Asmodean who can say that everything's terrible.

Asmodia isn't particularly spared from her own analysis; it notes that the apparent leader of the remaining Sevar loyalists had no Splendour that didn't come out of a spell and no idea how to run a political battle and didn't want to be there and wasn't loyal to Cheliax; that’s not a good thing when a research manager’s primary stat is supposed to be fighting Chelish political battles in order to prove her worthiness to be allowed to get any research done for Cheliax.  Asmodia lied to herself about whether better roads would be any use to Cheliax, because she was uncomfortable doing anything that would give Cheliax a real military advantage; and managed to be muddled about that, as was in her own interests the moment that Sevar, the only person with any appreciation for having bad slaves instead of muddled ones, stepped out of the Project, and Asmodia's mind knew she could only obtain her goals by being muddled and not admitting to herself what she was doing.  The Queen and Most High know better than this too, and Asmodia does not understand why they abandoned this project to the likes of Maillol and Subirachs.  Why are they even taking Sevar away to be punished this much?  It's so obviously the wrong time!  At least make it clear that Sevar is going to be okay when she comes back!  So much of this political battle is being produced by uncertainty about whether Sevar is coming back at all, or will be the same Sevar when she does!  Asmodia has a hard time believing that the Queen and Most High are doing this as a mistake and suspects some goal at work that Asmodia doesn't understand, but she's writing it down anyways just in case it actually is that much of a mistake, and to emphasize how much this unknown other goal is costing.

Everyone on this Project in anything like a management position without exception is a traitor to Cheliax.  Asmodia, Avaricia, Elias Abarco, Ferrer Maillol, Jacint Subirachs, none of them are doing what serves Asmodeus's interests.  Muddled people don't have the option of not being traitors.  Even Pilar is just doing what she finds comfortable and letting Asmodeus's interests go hang.  Asmodia knew she was a traitor and still ended up muddled because people can't think with Sevar gone.

Asmodia is now, at the last, acting entirely as she believes will benefit Cheliax, stupid as she is, bad as she is at predictions.  She does not know how to say these things carefully, politically, without insolence, without acting far far above her place.  But this is what serves Asmodeus, she knows so now that she has realized her own muddledness, and she intends to preserve her own ability to pass truthspells about that.  If the Most High and Queen crush her for that crime, then that's as much Law as Cheliax has in it, and it'll be weaker for not being able to hire and keep Asmodias.  Though, that's if Keltham doesn't storm in with an army to rescue Asmodia right as the torture is about to begin.  Asmodia isn't relying on that, or trying to use it as negotiating leverage, she's saying it because PEOPLE NEED TO ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT TROPES.

If Sevar returns from torture broken, every dream of Cheliax's is dead.  Asmodia has no idea what strategic goal is worth even removing Sevar for so long, but somebody needs to pull Sevar back to the Project right now.

If anything tropey happens to Asmodia as a result of setting herself up for this much character jeopardy, Asmodia is willing all her possessions including her legal share of the Project to Pilar Pineda, and her last wish to Pilar is that Pilar grows the fuck up.

Carissa had been assuming that Asmodia ran off to join Keltham, but she's slightly less sure of that after finishing the letter.

....and then consciously corrects back, because the Asmodia who was going to run away with Keltham could presumably produce compelling misdirection. Still most likely that's what happened.

Carissa does not see how she could have thought to order Maillol "also, don't let the project immediately descend into stupid factionalism based on imaginary versions of the politics between the Queen and Most High and if it does, don't let random bullies who you've put in Security uniforms impair the top researchers" without the hypothesis in mind he might be that much of an idiot, though it's fair to say there must have been some previous correlate of that level of idiocy that she failed to notice.

She misses Asmodia, she realizes, reading it. Without Asmodia, without Keltham, it's like there's a whole kind of Detect spell and only she has any idea what it sees.

Hopefully Asmodia is in Hell and learning the costs of defying Asmodeus, and that's all there is to say about that.

And with all that squared away, Carissa begins her review of what everyone in the project is working on. You have to hit the ground running, especially if you have incapacitated most of your subordinates.

Somewhere Else

"Okay, I had the thought, I hoped, but I didn't actually think I'd meet you here."

"You came here the first time you were in Hell, too, didn't you?  It's not just me, it's going to be all of us?"

"Sure looks even more probable now."

"Keltham's out.  He told Cheliax under truthspell, before he left, that if Cheliax misbehaved he'd tell Osirion to draw a circle on a map and then he'd destroy everything inside the circle.  Sevar went off to be tortured for it, and the Project went to shit almost instantly.  I think Cheliax is fucked, if we're far enough outside the story's scry radius that it's not tempting the tropes to say so."

"Now, what actually happened with the enormous Peranza mystery?  I'd say I'm dying to know, if not for, you know."

"I saw through all the lies during an Owl's Wisdom, and, in the few rounds I had before Security acted, prayed to Iomedae to try to tell Her everything I could about the Project."

"Unholy shit, Peranza!"

"Did you - figure out, that you'd -"

"Nope.  More of an impulse action, really."

"I'm told I detect Lawful Good now, to beings that can see the alignments of petitioners' souls."

"I'm not realistically going to top that."

"What are you in for?"

"Left the story of my own decision, by staging an elaborate murder-suicide-escape-or-kidnapping mystery which hopefully brings a storm of higher authority down on Project Lawful and gets Security to stop acting like dicks towards Project members."

"I hope whatever you did, did not actually benefit Cheliax, what with them being Evil and the hurting people and the maybe war with Osirion and the people going to actual Hell not here."

"Thanks, Iomedae."

"You're very welcome, Otolmens."

"Say what?"

Even Somewherer Else

I'm not actually feeling good about this decision.