(Carissa is testing a new theory about humans: that they bullshit themselves and everyone around them slightly less when the topic is winning a battle that will happen tomorrow. The Worldwound was better than Cheliax, and she thinks the real concrete consequences were why; there's only so much you can play Who's The Evillest, if you will all die of not doing your jobs. Were there rapists and thugs and bullies at the Worldwound, yes absolutely, were there people who put inordinate effort into elaborately entrapping people or addressing slights to their honor or doing the Evillest thing they could think of, no. The demons did Cheliax a favor and ate those.)

"There's some good ideas there. Now, an ilani, listing off all of those, asks how much evidence are they? How much more likely are we to hear a spy report they're going north, if they're going north? How trustworthy are our spy reports, how hard would it be for them to have sent us lies, compared to how likely it is that if they're truly marching north, we'll hear it? For any bit of evidence, you can think of reason it's conclusive, or think of reason it's a feint, but what you want to do is ask which world it's more consistent with, and by how much. Does anyone want to try venturing, for some of the evidence they came up with, how strong it is, as evidence."

"So for something like - what kinds of wagons they're requisitioning - I think it's maybe like, almost even, if somebody comes and tries to sell you a report like that, because they could just be trying to plant information.  But if you had a lot of different things like that you could check, from different sources, and you got to pick one at random, instead of there being only one obvious thing for your spies to try to learn from one obvious source, then I think it'd be much stronger, like... four to one?"

"Or even more than that, because realistically war involves not that many faked spy reports.  I've never heard of a case where an enemy tried to fake somebody out completely by adjusting a hundred little things like that."

Pilar storms into the classroom, bearing artifact headbands.  Pilar has never really been all that comfortable with correcting other students in class -

- until now.  Now everything is fine, for real and not like she was pretending to herself before, because Pilar knows these people can take it.  Pilar hates that she works like that but she does.

The new ilani will be better.

"All right, you muddled incoherent pieces of slime, sudden new plan for the day.  One of you at a time gets intensively tutored by Carissa Sevar while wearing a +6/+6/+4 headband for an hour, then by Meritxell while wearing a +4/+6/+6 headband for an hour, and then you get a +6 Intelligence headband for an hour to go think about it by yourself.  You can hang around and listen to other people learning, if you want, but don't fucking interrupt them.  This is how Asmodia got her Probability-Sight, more or less, and we're hoping the same happens with you."

"That kind of boosting has caused other people out of Cheliax to go traitor.  You, theoretically, are supposed to be better than that, if my curse worked correctly.  If that 'theoretically' is wrong, speak the fuck up about it.  If you're afraid of being punished even though you're not supposed to be afraid, say that.  Carissa Sevar will decide what do about that, using options that potentially include not punishing you for it so that you retroactively won't have been afraid to speak out."

"Bad thoughts can be corrected easily.  Being afraid to think is much harder to correct.  If you're finding yourself afraid to think, something is going wrong with our lesson plan and we will do whatever it fucking takes to correct that, with options that potentially include running Detect Thoughts on you and hurting you until you start to think again, or fucking not hurting you at all if predictably hurting you would've caused you to never admit to yourself in the first place that something was wrong."

"Raise your hand if you fucking understood that."

About a third of the hands go up.

"Fun.  Well, maybe you'll understand it once you're wearing a fucking artifact headband."

"We'll start with... you.  Monserrat.  This is a +6/+6/+4 headband.  Put it on and don't fucking argue."

"Yes, sir."

...she wasn't really planning to argue?  But she's not going to argue that, either.

Oh.

"This is going to be a bitch to take off again, isn't it," she says.

One of the nicest things about being Evil is that she can swear at people all she wants, now.

Twenty hours later Carissa is prepared to declare - no, she's not declaring anything. That's how the tropes get you.

It went well, though. Pilar's selectees are smart, and motivated, and they in fact have better habits of thought than people who grew up in Cheliax, which is awkward for whoever designed the present Chelish educational system but Carissa doesn't care much about that person.

The headbands are useful for - well, they're concretely useful for grasping concepts more quickly and noticing muddles more quickly and connecting ideas more quickly, and they're less-concretely useful for making people feel like the kind of person who can do mystical things from an alien planet.

Carissa increasingly suspects that an essential ingredient, with Keltham, was that he wasn't just delivering the lectures, he was delivering the treasured lore of a powerful impossibly distant civilization, he was delivering a story in which they would master a new Art, and - as a fact about humans, maybe also a fact about devils - that's more motivating, more powerful, it makes it feel possible to achieve anything and it makes it actually possible to achieve more.

Putting on an artifact headband delivered directly from Hell serves the same purpose, anyway. The kids -

(some of them are older than she is)

- the kids are doing well. At this rate in a few days she'll be able to explain her work on corrigibility and one of them will have a useful insight and she'll have something to show off to Aspexia Rugatonn while she makes a fuss about how the Church should let her say, truthfully, that you might come to Carissa Sevar in Hell if you cry out for her. 

She was going to think about Cayden Cailean and Keltham, and maybe have one last spirited go at hanging a fifth-circle spell, but she's asleep the instant her head hits her pillow. Knowing you're on the right track is great for that.

Pilar goes to sleep shortly after, reminding herself that it's acceptable for an Asmodean to feel proud.  Even if all of this is a long game by Snack Service to crack her open after deceiving her in Elysium about how difficult she was to crack, even if the +4/+6/+6 headband is for herself and it turns her into a traitor like Asmodia, even if Lord Dispater sealing off her mind from simple Detection was just part of Snack Service's plan -

- Cheliax will survive.  Hell will triumph.  These new candidates are not as flawed as Pilar, unless everything about her curse including the magical feedback sensations are lies.  Asmodeus will have His ilani and His Keepers no matter what.

The next morning, Security may be concerned to hear from Carissa Sevar's quarters a

WHOOP OF UTTERLY UNDIGNIFIED GLEE!!!!!!!!!!!

WAS IT THE BEST USE OF FOUR HOURS OF HER PRECIOUS TIME ABSOLUTELY NOT

 IS IT IMPORTANT AT ALL IN AN OBJECTIVE SENSE NOT REALLY

BUT

CARISSA SEVAR

HUNG A TELEPORT!!!!!!!!!!

Technically many places don't count you as fifth circle until you can prepare a full slate of spells including a fifth circle one, which she cannot, this scaffold is a goddamned mess and the Teleport messily drooped on it is the only thing she'll have prepped today, BUT

- right. She's got her students waiting. The plan for today was a morning lecture about how Keltham broke the Conspiracy, as a useful object lesson Carissa happens to have particularly in-depth information on, and then an afternoon spent preparing the Plan For If Duties Call Carissa Elsewhere so it's less of a shitshow than it was last time.

....she can still fit it all in, more or less.

Gather around, little ilani, and hear the tale of Project Lawful's greatest success and greatest failure, as they are, after all, the same tale. It's a very dramatic one. You'll want to take lots of notes. Some details are elided for confidentiality reasons but not all that many of them; everything Ione knows and everything Keltham knows is known by Cheliax's enemies already, after all.

She skips lunch. She's riding a wave of glee and anyway no longer needs to eat. She spends two hours patiently writing an org structure and plans for various contingencies poking her Teleport on the scaffold and watching it jiggle -

- and then two hours writing up an org structure and contingencies, because it is, actually, important. Pilar is her second-in-command on the ilani project, and should also make judgement calls related to tropes or conduct towards researchers generally. Meritxell is on the ilani project after Pilar; she actually did pick up a fair bit from Keltham's Keeper training, doesn't seem to have broken about it, and is reasonably able to pass it forwards. Carissa's glad they didn't send her after Keltham, though slightly confused about how that call was made. ...possibly there's something more to Meritxell than she's been assuming. Put it on the list of things to think about once she has some time. 

About halfway into writing this document she realizes that the obvious person to assist her in this task is Maillol. And the reason she hasn't called him in for it is that she doesn't want to face the fact she damaged him and now he's worse. 

Well, the nice thing about being a coward is that once you notice you can just stop. She orders Maillol sent in.

The effects of torture, as Carissa Sevar did once observe, are not linear.  Maillol has been tortured by Gorthoklek, but under conditions where he knew Gorthoklek was an expert and would not break him and Maillol only needed to... not endure, he broke immediately, but just, hang around hurting and broken and screaming and not trying to do anything else.

When Carissa Sevar tortured him, it went on and on, and she was not an expert and visibly did not know how to be careful even if she wanted to, and Maillol did not know what she wanted from him, or how long it would go on.  If the Chelish system was throwing him away now, if he was being just broken now as an example the way he'd broken others, not important any more not useful not in the inner ring just one of the little people who get made examples of, if it would end in anything but Hell.

Pain alone can break people, and leave them never what they were; pain and fear will do it a lot faster.

Something walks into Carissa's office, wearing Maillol's face.  It's holding itself together better than the last thing Carissa saw wearing Maillol's face.  It can probably be useful at administrative tasks so long as it doesn't need to show initiative.

It is very terrified of Carissa Sevar.  It spent a long time being terrified of her.