....well that does seem kind of urgent. Go ahead, Pilar.

She knows what this is about.  On her way, very quickly, before the Gate closes.

"Tell Mister Dispater it was a pleasure doing business with him!"

The mighty devil speaks not one word of acknowledgement to this before the Gate closes about it; from the beginning it never stepped foot in Golarion.

And Pilar returns, and pulls away her commander to report.  "Lady Sevar.  I have good news.  Possibly.  Sort of."

"Well, go ahead."

"Snack Service permits me to tell you that it received of Dispater a +6/+6/+4 headband and a +4/+6/+6 headband.  It says that these are the property of Snack Service, and it is very important that they stay the property of Snack Service, because if Hell sells or gives them to Cheliax including by proxy or what looks to the treaty definitions like a Hellish plot, it comes out of Hell's intervention budget and will get charged to Cheliax.  Whereas so long as these headbands stay the effective property of Snack Service, their uses come out of Cayden Cailean's intervention budget.  Supposedly.  Also they're going to be used in a very important way to benefit Asmodeus.  Supposedly."

"I asked if Project Lawful could borrow the headbands in a friendly way without paying, if Snack Service wasn't using them right away.  Snack Service says sure and we can have them for at least the next 24 hours, it doesn't make any guarantees past that point."

"If you don't have a better idea of what to do with them, sir, I suggest that we pass them around our potential ilani and try to teach them very intensively for a couple of hours each to see if they can get Probability-Sight via artifact headband the way Asmodia did.  Only without the heresy and treason, hopefully."

What are you playing at, Cayden Cailean -

"Sure! Sounds like fun.

- don't worry too much about the heresy and treason. Heresy and treason are incorrect; proper ilanism won't take you there. We'll correct you promptly. But if there are thoughts you're trying not to think in the first place - rather than thinking them knowing they'll be corrected if they're wrong - it can be harder to master ilanism."

"I'll tell them so, sir, but I register that they're not Asmodia.  If my curse obeyed me and my curse worked, they'll think those thoughts without hesitating, and speak those thoughts, because they want to be corrected, and want to stop being muddled inside, and will understand if that means they need to be punished."

"I hope that's so, but even you, Pilar, have found yourself muddled, on occasion."

"I asked my curse for them to not be me, sir."

"To be less - what?"

"Less Good.  To not have any huge cracks in them where they didn't want their family going to Hell."

"Would you have not wanted your family going to Hell, if you'd had more confidence Hell would find the strength in them?"

"Asmodeus doesn't want me to care."

"I guess I didn't - put it exactly in those words, to my curse, there's only so much you can ask, when you've only got one planet to pick from and you're looking for people who already speak Taldane besides.  But I was looking specifically for people who could be ilani and Asmodeans, and I did not tell my curse to premise that on your form of Asmodeanism, sir, because I was acting on my own, and I thought, I don't want somebody like that breaking down if Sevar never comes back."

"I'm not the best possible version of what I am.  I don't believe the tropes made the one best person on the planet to be a Keeper of Asmodeus end up in Ostenso.  Somebody like that wouldn't have fit into the story they were weaving around Keltham.  These people should be the real thing, once they get training, what Pilar should've been for Asmodeus, that's what I asked, wanted, for my curse to find."

" - all right. We'll see if they can handle it, then; if they can't, better to know that sooner anyway."

"How much of the day, and night, should I plan on having you for?  With Asmodia gone, I think you're the only one here who still has what she called Probability-Sight, for the new ilani candidates to pick up using the artifact headbands."

"I can do this all day. This is, actually, where it all stands or falls, probably, not in some party in Egorian."

"As you say, sir."

Pilar doesn't like the driven and domineering person she turns into, when she wears the +6 Splendour headband; it feels tantamount to insubordination to make so many suggestions to her superior.

Her feelings are irrelevant.  Pilar will go on wearing this headband until her superiors tell her to take it off.

Or until Pilar realizes that she can serve Asmodeus better by taking it off!

Fuck off and die.

But yes.

Carissa resumes her lecture. 

"I think trying to do this on test cases where you know that there's something to be found trains only a part of the skill, and perhaps the least valuable part; the important thing is noticing it where it hasn't already been pointed out to you. But let's try some test cases anyway, just in case it at least helps develop the habit. You're a general; you need to know if the enemy army is moving to attack at the north pass or the south pass. They might feint, to try to trick you. They might split their forces, but they probably won't; it's a gamble and if you handle it right they'll lose both. You hear a report they've given their soldiers orders to make for the north pass, but the report could be a lie to deceive you. 

What features of reality are you looking for, what are you trying to see to figure out what's going on?"

"There's just - sight, sound, and magic, isn't there?  You can try to scry the pass or the approaches and even if scrying is blocked, if it's blocked in one place but not the other, that tells you.  You can post lookouts and check in with them, and if they fail to check in that's a sign, because absence of expected evidence is evidence of absence.  Or do you mean things on a bigger timescale like - if one pass is muddier, you see if they requisition supply wagons with wider wheels?"

"How many troops are in the report?  Were famous elite warriors spotted?"
 
         "Smoke from fires, and refugees; they're less likely if there's a feint, too."
 
     "Actual attacks at either pass suggest not feint, unless they're unsupported summons, which implies feint."
 
   "Whichever pass is more vulnerable they're likely to attack."

       "That's 'priors', you fool, she asked for 'evidence'."
 
  "If they can't fit their whole army in one pass, dividing their army is more likely."

        "Also fucking priors!"
 
 "A lot of this depends on the quality of your reconnaissance; do you have Lesser Planar Ally'd imps for recon? Or other invisible teleporting summons with good senses?"

        "That's a factor that affects which evidence you get, it's not something that you look for!  Am I the only person who understood the question here?"