"Disguised myself nonmagically just enough that I wouldn't look visibly like Asmodia.  Dozens of new people added to the Project in the last weeks, mailroom wouldn't expect to recognize them all.  Prestidigitated some water to ink and some ink to clear.  The envelopes appeared addressed to completely innocuous Palace targets, and would only change to apparently target the Queen and Most High by the time somebody went to pick up the packet, who would, of course, assume that there'd been prior authorization."

"There isn't any actual Security on this Project site, at least not where ilani are concerned.  Just a presumption that those ilani will not find it in their interests to bypass the pretend Security."

- he still thinks she's bluffing. Maybe. But he will certainly escalate this to Maillol.

"The Queen or Most High, whichever comes here, will, obviously, punish me.  I have been insubordinate."

"I hope that being able to say under truthspell that we were headed for disaster and something had to be done, will count for something with Lawful entities who recognize the existence of timeless bargains, and incentives."

"If they don't come here to punish me, and only send back an order regarding my excruciation, then I've failed.  That's the last stakes I can offer, and the last gamble I can make, before this Project folds in on itself and Sevar comes back to find only wreckage of what she left as a smoothly functioning organization."

ASMODIA WHY.

She cannot possibly be - she cannot possibly imagine that she'll be punished less, down this path - nobody out of Cheliax could possibly, possibly be that stupid -

A bluff?  Why would she?  What could she gain from it?

And Maillol realizes with horror that what Asmodia's set up can only possibly, possibly work in any sense whatsoever if she believes everything she's saying and is actually, as she sees it, trying to save the Project from disaster.

Possibly involving something with god-fucked tropes that, yes, he wouldn't have understood.

All they can do, now, is wait for the Queen and the Most High to come and pass judgment, or send back an order that will be Asmodia's end.

Maillol doesn't particularly consider trying to punish Asmodia himself, before that happens; there is not the certainty of the Queen or Most High approving.

Though Maillol will obviously order somebody in Security to have a look at Asmodia's thoughts, and inform him if she's planning anything else, or if anything about her thoughts doesn't match what she's said.

No thoughts Detected in Asmodia that fail to match her presentation, sir.

(It's one of the Securities that has seen Asmodia's Gorthoklek authorization; a number of them have, at this point.  He mostly couldn't Detect Asmodia's thoughts at all; but he knows this fact is under the seal of Hell, that he must give no sign of it, that he is to answer as if he was able to read Asmodia's mind with no problems.  He wavers on whether to try to warn Maillol somehow that he can't confirm Asmodia's presentation, either; but decides against it.  If you know about Gorthoklek's authorization, then Asmodia's claim to have a direct line to Church and Crown is much more plausible as a gambit that ends well for her, and maybe not for Maillol.)

"...and then Asmodia, so far as anyone could tell at first, disappeared.  Her spellbook was left behind in her bedroom, in its usual place.  Her one-use item of Modify Memory*, given to her in case of Peranza Syndrome or anything similar, could not be found.  Locate Object could not find it either."

"After a great search, it was determined that a vat of sulfuric acid had a low fire lit below it with no logged experiment in progress there, then that the acid was contaminated in a way consistent with a body and clothing having been thrown into it.  Asmodia's Wisdom headband was found at the bottom - thankfully intact.  The Modify Memory item was also there, discharged, shielded by the vat walls from the Locate Object spell."

"The area containing the acid vat was outdoors, but shielded from sunlight during the day by an awning that also blocked direct Security vision from fortress overwatch.  Greater Detect Magic shows the Modify Memory effect discharged there, and no other unusual magics cast in that place; many, including Asmodia, had used Prestidigitations and Mage Hands there within the time limit of the spell, and Securities had cast Invisibility and Detect Thoughts and the like."

"No alarm spells tripped to show an attempted exit from the Forbiddance volume, nor were any other personnel missing."

"On the surface it seemed a strangely futile attempt at either murder or suicide.  But then scries could not detect Asmodia, nor Asmodia's soul."

"After the next dawn, Aspexia Rugatonn tried a Discern Location.  Even that did not find Asmodia, which implies Mind Blank, or the intervention of divinity, or that she was wholly destroyed, or that she traveled to strange places beyond known planes."

"Aspexia essayed a True Resurrection."

"It failed."

"We cannot attempt even a Commune, let alone a Miracle, unless we make a decision to move all Project Lawful out of the Ostenso nonintervention zone, as a Miracle would certainly be intended to affect events there."

"We have sent urgent queries to Hell of the matter, and have yet to receive any response."

"Truthspells and Detect Thoughts upon all Project Lawful have failed to turn up anybody who remembers themselves to have decided to target Asmodia or help her; nor to have had any unusual means about them that could aid Asmodia's escape or kidnapping; nor any means to destroy, trap, or hide Asmodia's soul.”

(*) Bards are rare in Golarion, those that make and sell items are rarer.  The single-use Modify Memory items issued to at-risk Project members are repurposed Chelish spy tools, based on a 6th-circle spellform derived from the Memory subdomain of a Mephistopheles cleric.  The resulting spell effects are 'instantaneous', rather than the more versatile standard 'permanent' form of Modify Memory, and permit erasing memories but not modifying them.  The standard form would require the caster to concentrate for an equivalent time to the original memory modified, making them useless for erasing or modifying infohazards, since the caster would just form new memories of the hazardous info as the old info was being erased.  This implies that nobody on the Project was given complicated false memories, or at least, not by Asmodia’s issued item; and that the spell effect from it can’t be Detected, Dispelled, or Break-Enchantment-ed after the fact.

Carissa stares dumbfounded at Abrogail for a moment, torn between being baffled and being sad.

So either Asmodia figured out how to arrange her escape to Osirion - likely with Clepati's help - or she committed suicide, plausibly still to be Raised by Osirion - or she committed suicide and successfully, somehow, got herself eaten -

(no)

- and there's another feeling, rapidly catching up with and then outpacing the bafflement. 

"The idiots. All of them. The fate of Cheliax at stake and it took them a matter of weeks to break Asmodia's remaining loyalty, which was based on our competence and potential for achievement, because - what were they thinking -"

"People's remembered thoughts do twist and change, under such circumstances.  Maillol now believes himself to have been thinking that Asmodia was a promising young lady whose coddling by the Project's earlier circumstances was threatening to entirely ruin her, that Asmodia had been led on with far too much mercy, making her believe herself to have a far stronger negotiating position than she did, to lose her necessary and protective fear of her superiors, to engage in openly traitorous speech and finally outright insubordination; and that he was applying a carefully measured correction based on a previous punishment in Ostenso which had not then broken her."

"I expect that what Maillol was actually thinking was that Asmodia had no way out even in death and no choice but to serve well or suffer worse, that she was being unbearably insolent, and that she needed to be put back in her place.  This in fact would have been a completely unexceptionable belief in a world where tropes did not exist."

"And, of course, it did not occur to these idiots that possibly, if Asmodia was acting like she had a strong bargaining position, she was pretty sure she did?"

"I'm not sure that would have occurred even to me," especially if Abrogail herself had not known about Asmodia's sealed thoughts or Gorthoklek's authorization.  "I don't like thinking about tropes either, and the possibility that Asmodia had made herself their mistress and could deliberately invoke her own character jeopardy to arrange a murder mystery around herself would have taken me absolutely by surprise - Carissa, you can't just treat everyone who acts like they have a strong negotiating position as if they do."

"Your majesty, Asmodia is not of a character suited to Hell, and yet she came back from it happier, more alive, more driven, stronger. This was of interest to me, because I want to know why Hell can't do that reliably. She refused to tell me anything, and Hell shared nothing, and so I imagined I wasn't supposed to look further, but -

- but there was more than usual cause, to wonder if she wasn't bluffing. Her first owner died, in the mere few days he held her. Maybe from ilanism it can be derived how wizards can keep their powers in Hell. Maybe she made arrangements with her next owner to let Keltham raise her. Maybe there's something afoot in Hell beyond our imaginations. I doubt she was murdered, or at least not without her cooperation. It's a stupid move, from people who expected Crown and Church attention on whatever came next, and she had more reason to think there was a next step to her plan than anyone else on site would have had to think she couldn't simply be resurrected. 

Anyway. The idiots let the whole project go to the Abyss, then tried to call her bluff, and she wasn't bluffing. Why did they let the whole project go to the Abyss in the first place."

"Because the Project was twisted up in a strange shape around Keltham and he wanted to see what a normal shape was before he began to fuck with it, said Maillol, because the slaves needed to be allowed to exercise their natural impulses after so long and your subordinates' failures would give you a stronger psychological position in their minds to come back and tell them how you wanted it, said Subirachs, because when I briefly looked in from Nidal I didn't have time to run everything myself and I was hoping a strong natural leader would emerge from among the half-formed ilani if their former leader and protector was removed and they were threatened a tiny little bit, says Abrogail, and because she was busy in Nidal and did not herself understand what must be done to create Keepers but it would not involve shielding them from adversity, says Aspexia."

"To be clear, we were not correct."

"A wise assessment, your majesty."

Careful, Sevar, Abrogail does not say, because she has in fact failed, and if this is the start of Carissa Sevar deciding to remove her from her throne then so be it.

"If you wished something else to happen you should have commanded it so, Sevar," she says instead.

"Your majesty, I would like to return to my project, that it may serve you better in building ilani and outpacing Osirion and resembling the Abyss a little less."

"Then I will finish out this debriefing.  You have heard the worst that there is to hear, and it's the worst thing that happened in a month of your being away from Project Lawful, which is not very far above the Project's 'base rate'."

"At least one good thing came of the affair.  Possibly.  It's hard to be sure..."

If Snack Service knows anything about this -

Why is Pilar even asking.  Of course Snack Service knows exactly what happened.

Obviously!  And Snack Service isn't telling!

Pilar is in fact seethingly angry about this.  The Project is confused, paranoid, distracted, and this does not benefit Asmodeus.  Is there a good reason Snack Service isn't telling?

Resolving that uncertainty would benefit Asmodeus, sure, but it wouldn't benefit Cayden Cailean!

It's just like why Snack Service let the whole thing happen in the first place!  Asmodia being gone hurts Asmodeus, but hugely benefits Cayden Cailean, so Snack Service did nothing.  Snack Service only acts when the interests are aligned.

There would be a very noticeable *twitch*, at this point, if you were watching Pilar and had a reasonably high Sense Motive.

Is Snack Service willing to say how Asmodia being gone benefits Cayden Cailean?