Sajvara of Sald has given birth to six daughters, and some unimportant number of boys, whom she strangled and cast aside.

Two of those daughters still live.

As a cleric powerful enough to cast healing spells, and able to afford payment for a casting of Remove Disease even before she could cast it herself, one can guess that Sajvara's other four daughters did not die of starvation, of injury, of illness.

That Sajvara detects Lawful Evil is not only due to her strict theories of motherhood, as Pharasma would account her deeds; but still, she treated her daughters strictly.  All children die at some age or another; there is, then, no point in coddling them to obtain a higher certainty of survival.  You could even see it as a kindness, sending the child to the Boneyard; if they grow to be of age, under her tutelage, they are probably bound for Hell.  Those children who would not do well in Hell should rather die early.

Some would say that to be a priest of Irori is a contradiction.  Sajvara thinks it is a reasonable thing to call yourself, if you decide that you are not going to be a god yourself, but rather, raise your daughters to become gods.  She has six circles for it, now, for she spared herself not from any trial that she inflicted.  Success, Sajvara has decided, is one of her daughters growing far enough that a proper challenge for that daughter kills herself.

Sajvara has just been Greater Teleported into Egorian, of Cheliax, along with the elder of her surviving daughters.

Nanhsa of Sald, daughter of Sajvara.

Monks don't have circles, but the strongest thing she's ever killed had eaten an adventuring party whose strongest member was a third-circle wizard, and she possesses an alignment visible to those who would see such.

She detects as Lawful Evil.

The one who brought them hither bows to them, very briefly, and then Greater Teleports the hell back out of Cheliax before anybody Maledicts him.

Who about this place of landing is here to observe their entrance?

This plaza in Egorian has guards stationed outside the temple to Asmodeus, and guards stationed outside a tavern that's unusually busy, what with the demand in Cheliax for mercenaries at present.

Then she shall go to the temple of Asmodeus and inquire with them of the procedures for entering this country, when you are a priest of Irori come hither at request of the Chelish imperium.

In truth, Sajvara is already unimpressed by the lack of customs agents and truthspells by which a Lawful person could make Lawful and supervised entry here.  In her home country things are more... organized... than this country of Cheliax, supposedly Lawful and backed by a Lawful Evil god.

.....you can teleport in literally anywhere. How would you have customs agents for teleporters. 

They are delighted to welcome her to Cheliax, and to summon whoever requested her, that they may indicate to the church where her accommodations are. They're at war and not wasting second-circle spell slots on Zone of Truth, which adventurers can mostly beat anyway. 

(They can have designated zones where the Lawful people go to follow the Law is what they can have.)

Sajvara is here to arbitrate the compact between Cheliax and something calling itself "Project Lawful" that had the temerity to designate the highest priest of Irori as being requested to choose an arbitrator if the sides could not agree.  Sajvara is that arbitrator, chosen because she will neither fear Malediction nor be prejudiced against Cheliax on account of it calling itself a Lawful Evil country.

(Sajvara had the choice of traveling here or to Osirion, but a rare nudge from Irori indicated she might have more to learn in Cheliax; in particular, it is hinted to Sajvara that somewhere in this land is somebody with something to teach her about using suffering to produce personal growth, as lies near and dear to her own Way.)

- right. Well, in that case they will Teleport her to the palace immediately. Honored to be of assistance. 

....once they've done so they'll put in a request for a vacation outside Egorian, just to be on the safe side. An angry dangerous Evil priest of Irori showing up about something to do with Project Lawful, the secret project that started the godwar and involves the Queen's lovers Carissa Sevar and Pilar Pineda, is a sign it's a good time for a relaxing weekend in the country.

"The people of Cheliax seem weak, and frightened.  I had hoped for better from a country supposedly refined in the fires of Hell."

Sajvara replies in the same tongue; if any here can understand them, that is their own affair.  "Asmodeus is the most powerful of Lawful Evil deities.  It does not mean His worshippers are the most powerful of Lawful Evil beings.  Asmodeus is not an Evil version of the Master of Masters; He does not seek company."

"But the rumors we were asked to investigate -"

"If Asmodeus has in truth chosen a mortal to wield suffering as a tool to produce growth and strength instead of only terror and obedience, and is raising them to the status of divinity, it would be an upheaval in Golarion's balance of power on par with the opening of the Worldwound, perhaps with the death of Aroden, the dawn of a new age for Lawful Evil."

"But that this 'Carissa Sevar' is truly such, I do extremely misdoubt.  It is not Asmodeus's way to do such a thing, nor to bargain with other gods such as the Master of Masters who could arrange it."

"Her would-be cult in Vudra will be most disappointed, if that is what we find."

"That is their affair."

Elsewhere in Egorian

Carissa does not know how long it's been. She has not asked. She has not tried reasoning either from how often she sleeps or from how much progress she's made; she's pretty sure she's making progress at something of an irregular pace, to put it mildly, and she's not sure counting sleeps tells you anything if you're put to sleep with magic when your ability to make headbands runs out. 

She finished it, the +6 headband, and they put it on her head. She finished it a long time ago. She was put to work on another one. This one is Splendour. Maybe she will just do this for all eternity; maybe it is, in Abrogail's revised consideration, the best use of her. Maybe she's dead and in Hell. She doesn't remember dying but maybe, after long enough, you wouldn't. 

She succeeds, sometimes, at finishing a segment faster than she's ever done before. She only knows this because she isn't punished. Most of the time she just lets her vision blur and her senses dull and her world be consumed by the delicate weaving of the magic into the metal and she has no idea how well she's doing when she's stopped. 

Someone speaks words of sorcery and dismissal, a harsh combination of the language of magic and the language Infernal; and the slimy devil that wrapped around Carissa is gone.

Abrogail takes the Splendour headband from Carissa's hands, and turns it, marveling at the unfinished craftsmanship.  There are, perhaps, a few eighth-circle casters in the world, who could produce craft on this level, at this speed.  Abrogail Thrune herself is not among them.

"You're done," Abrogail murmurs to Carissa, as she gathers the very strong fragile thing into her own arms, "well done, very well done, rest now.  Your aura is stronger.  When you've rested, we'll see if you've reached fifth-circle from this."

She'd planned to push Carissa further than this, it is not clear from the strength of Carissa's aura whether she's reached fifth-circle or not, definitely not sixth.  But other events - which Carissa is not at all ready to hear about - have necessitated cutting this experiment short.

Oh. 

She bursts into tears. 

She hopes that's allowed because she can't fix it, at all. 

"It's allowed," Abrogail murmurs.  She is walking through corridors of the palace in Egorian, swiftly, and there is no one visibly to witness them; these corridors have all been cleared.  "Rest, rest, rest, if you faint in this moment that is fine.  Sometime I'll tell you of how I reached the sixth circle of sorcery before I executed my compact with Asmodeus; it was much like this, but harsher.  I needed to grow faster, so I traveled to Hell directly for it.  You will not be broken, when you wake; something like this cannot break you."

"you - this - to make me stronger -" 

And then trying to hold everything together, make sense of it, even hear it, is too much, and she closes her eyes, and her sobbing trails off as she sleeps.

Nobody's going to interrupt her if she wants to sleep for a While.

When Carissa Sevar wakes, she'll be in that same aftercare chamber in which she was trapped the last time she was being forced to take her time and recover, white walls with green vines climbing them to relieve the whiteness, in a soft bed with clean sheets and a rather large tray of sweet things set out beside her, and some more substantive foods wrapped in preservation-spells.

Her spellbook is there, and a resource-spellbook from which fifth-circle spells might be attempted.  Also gold, silver, steel, gems, mithril, and what would have been a few thousand gp worth of spellsilver before Project Lawful began and is now less costly than that.  If she wants to do a little idle crafting.

Also the deed and title formally declaring her a Para-Baroness of Cheliax.

She cries, and eats, and cries, and pets the spellsilver but does not actually try to make anything with it, and tries to estimate how long it's been from how much her hair and nails have grown. Perhaps it's been a month. She thinks it hasn't been two. 

She falls asleep again. 

She wakes up screaming; her voice is croaky and weak and barely there. She cries, and eats more sweet things, and intends wholeheartedly to take the fifth-circle spellbook and try it but falls asleep again before she does.

Some time later she succeeds at determining that she's not, quite, fifth circle. 

She's close. She can feel how close she is, she can feel the spell all-but-come-together in her fingers, she can feel that magic moves more readily for her than it did when she first reached fourth, or even when she finished the geas earrings, or even when she started this punishment. 

It takes her a full several hours to work up the wiill to stick a note under the door asking if she can go back, as she has not yet succeeded. 

Abrogail Thrune will return to her, then.

"You're an utterly ridiculous woman, do you know that?" she says without heat.  "Even I did not try to go back to Hell when my will at last failed, there; not even to be ninth-circle after my compact."

....why not, Carissa thinks immediately, though she does restrain herself from saying it.

"Because it was actually that bad.  And because I knew my own limits, and that to test those limits was to risk myself and my intended rulership of Cheliax.  Cheliax needed me to ascend the throne much more than Cheliax needed me to be ninth-circle when I did."

"You aren't quite that important, but you're getting there.  You could go back, Carissa, without breaking, but Cheliax can't spare you that long, not even for your fifth circle.  When things have quieted, eventually, we'll send you off on a proper adventure; with due incentives around success and failure, since you need hardly fear death."

There's a blankness where several of Carissa's normal emotional responses to that would be. "I understand," she says quietly. "You - think I wasn't entirely in error, then, in the approach to Project Lawful?" It'd become a fixed point, in the worries/hallucinations, that since that had failed she would not be allowed to try anything like it again.

"I would have told you so, but I worried you'd find something else to fret about instead, in that mental state.  Your next choice might not have been something where I could tell you definitively afterwards to stop being silly, or refuted it by simple deed.  It is better to be able to clearly dismiss something your mind circles around, like that, for so long and under that much stress."

Is Abrogail justifying herself to her slave? No, she wouldn't feel the need to . It's something else. 

"I will stop being silly," she says. "I - if we aren't at war with Osirion already, if it doesn't look hopeless - well, then, I think I can outplay Keltham, so long as we have a plan for him to not explode the whole country."

"You need to learn how to wield pain as I do, Carissa, to produce true Keepers out of Cheliax."

"And no, you do not get a situation report until you're more recovered than this."

"Well, too late, I've inferred already that Keltham hasn't blown up Cheliax."

Abrogail flicks her in the forehead, what somebody in another country might consider painfully.  "I will punish you for that insolence, dear.  Eventually."

"My time here is more limited than I'd like.  The war with Nidal is entering its last days, with most of its territory already consumed by us, and you would not believe how much administrative labor is associated with gaining territory instead of losing it like my uncle did.  I don't predict you want to be a landed Baroness, but you could be one did you wish."

"Depends who under, I think, and whether they'll let me do ilani experiments."

"The Crown, in this case.  I'm reserving some appropriately Duchy-sized chunks of Nidal in case I want to award them, in due time, to deserving souls who are not that deserving yet."

"Then I think I would like that, though it's hard to say for sure, in the absence of a situation report."

"You understand that you won't actually have time to run your Barony while managing Project Lawful, and that the best person that can be found to manage it for you, in your stead, will be horrifically incompetent as you see it?"

“I am starting to get the sense that that fact explains the entire world and I’d better get used to working with it.”

Sevar, unfortunately, still has no idea.

 She takes a lot of naps and has a lot of nightmares. She doesn't need to eat, but she does anyway, for the uncommon sensation of a taste in her mouth that isn't blood. 

Her voice comes back. The crying gets more sporadic. At about the same time her common sense comes back and she seriously questions why she spoke that way to Her Infernal Majestrix.

She tries the door, after it's been five days, mostly just out of curiosity.

It opens.  A Security outside immediately comes to attention.  Possibly he's terrified, but if so, he's good enough at his job that it's hard to be certain.

Oh no before she made this choice she should have had a plan for what she was going to do. She can't just close the door and go back in her room, she'll look like an idiot. 

"Accompany me," she says confidently, and strides off in a randomly chosen direction.

He catches her wrist, but gently.  "Queen's orders, there's limited places you can go and I must accompany you.  Where are you headed?"

"I want to go outside. I haven't been outside in far too long and anyway that's the only way to know if there's a godwar on, these days."

"Best I can do without further orders is a balcony about the Queen's chambers, open to the air, or one of the inner gardens with the illusion of sunlight."

"Balcony's fine. What places am I allowed to go."

"Dining chambers with free command of the palace kitchens, queen's personal library," not her only personal library but this need not be said, "queen's personal workshop and you may use components up to 10,000gp without seeking further authorization, queen's personal torture chamber and you may order subjects delivered from the general-use palace dungeons, physical exercise rooms with selection of exotic opponents..."

Roughly, she's in the Abrogail Section of the palace and has nearly the run of the place while Abrogail's away, but only under supervision.

Maybe she's still not totally recovered because she's not quite brimming with curiosity and she knows she obviously should be. 

She has a brief impulse to have a subject delivered from the general-use palace dungeons so she can make them tea and ask them whether Cheliax and Osirion are at war. She tells herself that if she makes trouble Abrogail will not get her to fifth circle about it, Abrogail will tire of her about it. 

"Just the balcony, for now, I think."

Egorian is very quiet, this high up above the ground.  It looks like a busy city, an ordinary city, from up here.  If it's any busier than before, if it's a city at war, Carissa Sevar hasn't seen it in a different state to be compared.

The chairs here are opulent, silken, decorated in Asmodean motifs.  Abrogail Thrune must entertain at least some people here, about her private quarters, before whom she finds it useful to keep up appearances; there were no such needless flourishes in Abrogail's workshop when Carissa Sevar was briefly resident there.

Visible to the permanent Detect Magic that is about Carissa, there's a permanent wall of force that shields this balcony, one of a very few spells that laughs at antimagic fields.  If Carissa Sevar hasn't seen one of those before, the magic beneath it is worth staring at for a while.  Theoretically, it would also stop her if she tried to hurl herself off the balcony, or to escape.

The guard fades back to the door that enters this place, stepping politely out of Carissa's vision.

Carissa Sevar has this whole fancy new headband she made herself and nothing to think about. Or - too much to think about, and she feels oddly averse to wasting thought in wrong directions. She wants to know the situation, and then her brain will consent to begin generating thoughts about it. 

It's okay, for torture to have temporary effects like this. And Abrogail was sure it wouldn't be permanent. 

It's so rude of time to keep passing while she's not yet recovered and ready to know everything. Someday she wants a time-dilated demiplane. It's supposed to be nearly impossible but, well, some people say 'nearly impossible' about +6 headbands, too, people are just really far too free with that particular claim. 

She looks out at Egorian, and closes her eyes, and maybe falls asleep again - she's not sure - and dreams that Keltham is saying to her sadly 'you aren't worth all this, if you were you'd have been better at lying to me', and dreams that she's made a mistake in headband-crafting, and dreams that she's safe and has won and Asmodeus is telling her that it's all right now -

- at which point she's in fact sure, that she's dreaming, and wakes up.

She spends the next day in the library and the day after that she asks for the Queen to be told that she thinks she's recovered. If the Queen does not respond then she'll try the interrogating prisoners about world events thing.

The Queen sends a return reply indicating that she'll be along by the end of the day, and that Sevar should not believe everything she hears from even the freshest prisoners but she's welcome to try.

She didn't say anything about that, but she's not surprised the Queen's having her mind read; she's felt it, on occasion, when she's paying enough attention to flick the spell off like instinctively swatting a fly. 

....sure, she'll have someone recently imprisoned sent up from the dungeons, and tea prepared, so she can ask them questions. 

This is obviously the personal living quarters of somebody incredibly high-ranking, and he has no idea who.  He's well-acquainted with gossip in the capital, and he has no idea who this person could possibly be, with the sort of personal area in the palace that only Abrogail Thrune should have, if even her.

He was - hoping, somehow - even now - that this would somehow end in less than the worst way possible, for him - even after he was delivered to the palace dungeon to await someone's use - and, the strange thing, about seeing the polite tea set out for himself, which doesn't feel like anything less than the worst possible disaster, is realizing that there's literally nothing he could have seen that would look like good news.  What was he hoping for, then?

He will obviously not speak until spoken to.

Oh, this is fun. 

"Have some tea," she says. "I was wondering what sorts of things you've read in the news lately." 

He obeys.

The war with Nidal is winding down.  The Black Triune fled, crippled but still dangerous, to parts unknown.  With them gone, that Pangolais hasn't fallen is said to be more a matter of military convenience as they clean up the rest of the country first.

Spellsilver prices are fluctuating insanely as old hoards and reserves around multiple countries are dumped into the market, and merchants try to guess what the final price will be when the dust has settled about Cheliax's Project Chemistry and Osirion's Scientific Revolution.  It's rumored that Project Chemistry is far ahead of Osirion but that Osirion is rapidly catching up and nobody knows what to make of any of the weirder rumors about either.  Osirion has warned the world that Cheliax has developed a method for manufacturing particular magical items more cheaply, and that it may take Osirion some time to catch up on that dimension especially; it's rumored that Osirion is developing a counter-method to have lesser magical items developed by people who aren't even wizards.

Everyone is expecting war to break out between Cheliax and Osirion, possibly Cheliax and the rest of the world, people don't understand why that war hasn't begun already.  Finishing off Nidal doesn't seem like nearly reason enough to delay.

There's a vast struggle going on between all those trying to prove themselves worthy to be awarded a piece of Nidal; an opportunity like this comes along less often than once per lifetime.  The Crown is said to be making it clear that territories will be awarded primarily on the basis of achievements in the struggles to come.  Ambitious nobles, and even more so great merchant houses, are frantically scouring their territories for outstanding wizards and alchemists, and trying with limited success to recruit them from abroad.

She can feel herself cautiously starting to think again, starting to orient to things that aren't happening exclusively to her. 

"And what do they say, in Egorian, about Project Chemistry?"

It is said to be developing a new kind of alchemy, or maybe wizardry, some say that a new sorcerous bloodline has been discovered of Matter Sorcery.  They're producing spellsilver absurdly cheaply, in ever-spiraling quantity, it's said that Matter Sorcerers can simply hold ore in their hand and concentrate for a few minutes to turn it into the refined metal.

Rumors first had Project Chemistry led by the County heiress, Lady Eulàlia Avaricia, of the county of Seguer.  Even more recent rumors have the county of Seguer less favored than it seemed two weeks ago.

It's whispered that Project Chemistry is called that because it was spawned by 'Project Lawful', of which even less is known except the wildest rumors, save that it's said to be tangled in the affairs of the Ascendant Three.

" - of the who now."

Three powerful adventurers said to be entangled in a romantic triangle, and a black and mysterious compact regarding their mutual ascension to godhood; the Osirion Outsider, Keltham, is said to be one of them, who betrayed their compact and left Cheliax for Osirion; the second a mysterious sorceress, of whom it is said that she is already standing right behind you; and the third is Carissa Sevar herself, rumored heiress and lover and dominatrix of Abrogail Thrune.  It's said that a prophet has appeared in Absalom to proclaim that all three will ascend by Starstone during the next lunar eclipse, and that the Starstone will prove unable to bear the strain and perish at last, whereupon Carissa Sevar will devour the souls of all within Absalom to complete her ascension and scourge the seas and coasts around, before descending into Hell to replace Barbatos as the archdevil of Avernus.

"Who says that??"

NOT HIM!  NOT HIM!  IT'S JUST WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING!

"Pilar! Won't you join us for some cake?"

Security de-invisibles.  "Lady Pineda sent a message this morning to say that she's not allowed to debrief you until the Queen has done so, also that she's now engaged about important work for the Project that's Teleport-constrained."  He takes a box from his Bag of Holding, removes a cake from that box, lays it carefully on the tea-table.

"Do you happen to know if the important work for the Project involves spreading the rumor I'm going to ascend at the next lunar eclipse - not that I object to that - and do so by devouring the souls of all in Absalom - which I do object to!"

HE'S LITERALLY SITTING NEXT TO CARISSA SEVAR.

THAT'S WORSE THAN ABROGAIL THRUNE!

"My understanding from rumors within Security is that no known agency is believed to be sponsoring those outside rumors, as they serve no known faction or evident purpose."

" - that's a bit much, to be happening for no reason. Have you checked if it's Keltham."

"I can call up an Osirian analyst from Intelligence, if that is your will, Lady Sevar."

"I'll wait for my debrief." She stands up, and paces. 

Rumors. Everyone treats them as a force of nature, as an inevitable if unfortunate feature of humans. All the Project Lawful rumors - unusually bad, Maillol said, but not outside what he'd seen. 

The Osirians seemed uncannily well-informed.

Snack Service considered it important that Keltham's final debrief occur in front of an audience of hundreds.

Carissa Sevar, a name that's apparently now widely known and widely feared. 

Pilar, engaged about important work for the Project.

If there's not an entire secret task force dedicated to figuring out what games Cayden Cailean is playing, they haven't been taking him seriously enough. Which, of course - he hasn't exactly been trying to be someone it's possible to take seriously. 

"Tell me more about Carissa Sevar," she says in approximately the direction of her prisoner, not really looking at him.

Now there's an order to melt the brain of somebody sitting anywhere near Carissa Sevar!  Has she forgotten how mortals work?

He's frantically trying to think of anything complimentary, she's said to be unnaturally comely but you don't want to say that in front of somebody who's obviously only naturally comely.  He sure isn't repeating any of those rumors even if they could be considered in a certain light complimentary.  "She's - also called Chosen of Asmodeus and the Church hasn't commented on that - there's a rumor the Church has declared heretical, that when Sevar ascends as a god her favored followers will be granted - more mercy in Hell than anyone has received before then, though they'll still be turned to devils - it's said that there are cults springing up in her name in countries where Asmodeus's Church doesn't hold, hoping for some of that mercy, and that folk there fearing they'll sort Lawful Evil hold" orgiastic "rites and sabbaths in hopes of earning her favor and mercy in Hell -"

"I - 

- how would that even work, like, even if I do ascend next lunar eclipse, I don't think I'd get any retroactive knowledge of who's been hosting rites? I guess they could get some practice in?"

He'll bet his life, his soul, and his pain against that question having been directed at him, since he has to bet.

"Would you calm down? I'm going to kill you because you know too much but it's not going to be very hard to make this conversation more interesting than torturing you would be, especially since I suspect the person I really want to hurt, here, is Pilar. Look, what's your name, what'd you do to end up in the palace dungeons."

"Ermengol, Lady Sevar.  I was - caught spying on someone, at behest of a hirer I did not know - and I did not know, that the one I was spying upon, was of the House of Thrune."

"My commendations to whoever reviewed my request and thought to send me someone well-informed," says Carissa, not really to him. "And are you scared that I'm going to hurt you, or just that you're going to die?"

"I am scared of being hurt, and also scared of death, as I know both lie within your will."  He cannot imagine that any other answer is wanted from him; it is only coincidence that it happens to be true.  This is not Project Lawful.

(Ermengol doesn't ping aura detection, and he's tried, sometimes, to - steer away from Hell, such as you can, in Cheliax - but the percents are very hard against his having succeeded, especially in a profession such as his.)

"Why are you scared of Hell?"

"It's said that the torments there are worse than any in Golarion, and I have not enjoyed such torment as has fallen to me, in my life."

"Do you suppose that in Hell they are better at torment, so that it doesn't have whatever annoyed you about it in Golarion."

"This supposition has never occurred to me in all my life, Lady Sevar - the Church does not - teach it?"

He is not so terrified, so despairing, and so resigned, that he cannot see the potential cruel joke of converting him to heresy just before his death, if he's that stupid, to arrange an even more painful reception for him in Hell.

"Well, maybe they should, so that everyone wouldn't be so terrified of going to Hell all the time! Look, do you think you'd dislike being a devil?"

"I - have not heard that devils seem to be in constant pain, it is - the process of getting there, that I fear.  That, and that - I worry that I am not - destined for a devil's place, in Hell."

He'd ask how he could earn that place, but he is not stupid, stupid people in his profession do not last long at all, and he has grasped from meeting Carissa Sevar that at least the rumors of her semi-divinity are likely false.

She looks like an ordinary pretty young woman, really, sipping her tea. "You're a smart young man. Reasonably quick. Reasonably capable. Doesn't it seem like it would be better for Asmodeus - less wasteful - if people like you became devils?"

He cannot grasp what game is playing, he cannot conceal his trembling, he does not even know if he is meant to be lying let alone what lie is demanded of him; and so whatever game is being played, he has certainly already failed it and is losing more points by the minute.

"I - would of course be honored, if once such as I - were deemed worthy thus to serve Asmodeus," Ermengol tries.  He isn't worthy; he has no faith about him, little pride, and as a young man he did not keep his word.  If he escapes Hell it will be by way of inadequate Law, and if Ermengol comes to Abaddon he does not know what he will do then, faced with the worst choice that anyone ever faces.

- her expression changes. 

"You don't know what you would do, if you came to Abaddon. Because you - fear Hell that much."

His mind is being read.

Ermengol would despair, if he had remaining despair-capacity to spare, which he does not.

Yes, says Ermengol's mind, even as his mind automatically composes the required nonheretical lie about how clearly Hell is the best among the choice of Hell/Abaddon/Abyss but what's the point of saying that, if she's reading his mind -

"Security, when's the next lunar eclipse?"

"I don't know."

"It is said to be four months hence, Lady Sevar."

If she spent all of them attached to a devil she'd be fifth circle for sure. Maybe sixth. Nowhere near enough. 

Abrogail won't let her do that anyway and the part of her that wants to isn't Asmodean. It's like with Keltham and kids, her brain offers helpfully. You being confronted with people getting their souls devoured because of Evil damages your Asmodeanism, like how when Keltham thinks about kids he backslides on all his progress being Evil.

"This can't be the way of running a church and country that best serves Asmodeus. It can't."

Is he supposed to take her up on her pretended treason - said right in front of a nonreactive Security - who would believe that -

"You know, I don't think the Intelligence headband is what I need here, I think I need the Splendour one. Too bad it's not finished. Wonder how hard it'd be to stack them. I'm speaking with you because I thought it'd be mildly entertaining, and I haven't spoken with another human being in more than a month and should probably get some practice before Her Majesty returns. Since that was my intent, there's no way at all for me to gain your trust; I wouldn't believe me. You'd have to be an idiot, and you clearly aren't.

And yet.

My guess is that my theological advisors will tell me that herding souls from Abaddon to Hell is not a good idea for me, even if it does serve Asmodeus, because it also serves my own worst impulses. 

And yet."

She keeps the paper close to hand, the one where Asmodeus's instructions to her were written. She pulls it out. She reads out the first and last line.

"Serve Me well in this world and you shall be raised high in it. Come to Me in Hell without thought of other choices, as mortals once did in the days before they were cursed with their own wills, and you shall be among the most treasured of My possessions.

That's - the real prophecy, such as it is, in this age without it."

There's the bare possibility of honesty here, even in Cheliax, if what serves her whim is to speak truth to a prisoner who's to be executed soon after.  He has no idea - what he is supposed to do with it - but he is listening, now, alert for opportunity -

"So the Church doesn't contradict that you are Chosen of Asmodeus - because that is true - but that you can grant mercy in Hell - isn't in the prophecy?"

(He would serve her incredibly sincerely if it delayed his death.)

"It says nothing of that. And I am faithful to Asmodeus, and if mercy does not serve Him, I would not dream of dispensing it. But - and whether this is heresy, I doubt the Most High wants to comment on - it seems to me that, sometimes, mercy makes people better. Stronger. Worthier. And if that's so, and if Asmodeus's nature does not forbid it absolutely, then I would dispense mercy, wherever it brings strength; because Good abhorrs the weapons of Evil they fight with one hand bound, and if Evil abhorrs the weapons of Good as well then we're making the same error."

He continues to have no idea how to play this game on this level.

"Is there a way that mercy for me could bring strength?"

It's a fool's answer, a sucker's answer, but if he doesn't play the game at all, it might end; and of course, that something is being dangled in front of him, and that he has nothing left but that thing, is part of the game.

"Well, I notice that the possibility you might get something out of this interaction made you substantially more competent at it. I am not sure if that's the same thing or not. 

If you were to choose Abaddon, Hell is weakened. Yes?"

"Yes, Lady Sevar."

"So the best thing, obviously, would be for you to choose Hell without thought of other choices, as we are all commanded to. 

But the second best thing, I'd think, would be for you to choose Hell believing that, if mercy is what's required to build the strength to be a devil in you, then you'll find it."

"I would surely choose Hell, believing that; but reading my thoughts you know that I - would not believe that, if the Church calls it heresy" and actually even if they didn't, but he's at least trying to sound intelligent now; a stupid minion is one you have no reason to spare.

"Yes. I'm not a god, and that's not how Hell works. But - when I first started thinking about this, when I first noticed how much Asmodeus is weakened by the state where He cannot improve us in every way that achieves His aims, when I first realized that someone was going to have to build a purer, clearer, righter Asmodeanism - that's when I tried to sell my soul and instead learned of His instructions."

"I - think I see, Chosen of Asmodeus?"

"I don't think all those people are praying for Asmodeus to put them to the best possible use, whatever that requires, even if what it requires is - mercy, or compassion, or generosity. I think they're just praying that instead of bad things happening to them, good things will happen to them. And I can't help them with that. But if someone were praying for Hell to give them the strength to grow up in it, praying to become better and stronger and worthier, praying for those who hold power over them to be skillful, and wield that power skillfully in Asmodeus's service, and make great devils -

- well, I'd try to answer that. Except for how I don't think I'm supposed to go to Asmodeus without thought of other choices quite yet."

"I would be honored to serve you while you waited, great Lady, and pray as you direct."  This will be the point where she laughs and refuses him; and then there will be a step of the game beyond it, or there will not be; but Ermengol can see no more clever move here than to say the fool's lines.

"Maybe. In this world I serve my Queen," and last time I started taking followers she made such faces about it, "and I've spoken to you more candidly than I would have, if I'd meant for you to live. But I'll have you wait, until my briefing, until I understand the situation of this Project Chemistry and what idiocy Avaricia's been up to, and I'll think, then, on whether I have use for you. I'm not particularly toying with you; you can sleep, while you wait, if you'd rather not endure it."

"I will endure," he guesses as the right answer, for she's spoken much of strength.  "Thank you for even that much forbearance, Chosen of Asmodeus."  Is it the right move to call it mercy, he can't possibly guess.

"Now tell me what people say about Carissa Sevar, if they aren't frantically trying to flatter her."

Abrogail Thrune returns to the palace, hears out a quick update on Carissa Sevar, and manages not to beat her head against the nearest wall, which wouldn't particularly survive the experience.  Yes it damages your Asmodeanism, Carissa, good call there.

Abrogail is tempted to have the wretch killed on the spot, but this probably works better if Sevar tries him out and is disappointed - Abrogail can always arrange that this is the case, if required.  There's also that lingering doubt about whether Sevar actually is meant to devise better theology.

Abrogail Thrune rests, for a few minutes, before she has Carissa called to her.

Yes, even she rests.  It's been a long day, set in some long weeks, and Abrogail is not looking forwards to this conversation.

Carissa is sure that she has, in fact, recovered, when she enters, because the usual idiot parts of her brain are back online to inform her that Abrogail is beautiful.

"Your majesty."

"My own judgment says that you are ready to hear updates, and then, I hope, to resume command of Project Lawful.  Affirm or deny."

"I believe so, your Majesty."

"Very well.  I'll begin with what is the worst news, so far as I understand all the news:  Asmodia is murdered, or fled, or kidnapped, or suicided, we still do not know."

"How....do we not know."

Abrogail will briefly, and without visible change of facial expression, describe the situation as it developed in Project Lawful in the days leading up to Asmodia's disappearance/death - including some of Asmodia's last conversations, with Elias Abarco, with Ferrer Maillol, with Pilar Pineda, with Korva Tallandria; including that small portion which Pineda had agreed not to speak of, and which was added in by Security reading Pineda's thoughts, so as to not risk Pineda's Law.

After those last conversations, Asmodia announced, one evening at the informal gathering that served as an opportunity for the two Project factions to snipe at each other about slow progress trade status updates, that she'd decided to do the right thing by Project Lawful regardless of what it cost her; and had sent out updates to the Queen and Most High, describing exactly how dysfunctional Project Lawful had gotten, and Asmodia's fault analysis saying who was responsible and suggesting that somebody who actually believed in tropes needed to be in command here, stat.

"If your superiors don't agree with you that roads are the genius project Cheliax needs, just shop around until you find one who does, is that the idea?"

"Bluffing," says Abarco. "The mail room wouldn't even have let her do that, not without authorization."

"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?

If the thing with Asmodia hadn't happened - say, if Pilar had invoked the curse's power herself to bring order to Project Lawful, or even just agreed with Asmodia to protect the Sevar loyalists - and Cayden Cailean had successfully managed the consequences of that as best He could - the best-case outcome from that would have been a few tens of thousands of Asmodeus-worshippers surviving who would otherwise have died within the next year, thanks to things Asmodia would have done.

The worst-case outcome, if Pilar had intervened herself, would have been that it ruined Cayden Cailean's entire master plan!  And left Asmodeus holding all of the benefits from all of the sacrifices that Cayden Cailean made!  Cayden Cailean would have been left with nothing, and all Snack Service's hard work would have greatly benefited only Lawful Evil and not Chaotic Good at all, and Asmodeus would have gloated.

*Twitch.*

Don't feel too bad!  If there'd been any significant possibility of Pilar doing that, Cayden Cailean would've made different plans in the first place!

So it's not that Pilar could've changed things much by being a different sort of person, even if it would've changed things if she'd suddenly acted differently without any gods being able to predict that.

Cayden Cailean only steered events this way in the first place because it was a very reliable fact that Pilar was too much of a subby sub to want to do anything without orders, even when that would've obviously benefited Asmodeus.

*Twitch.*

Obviously, that this all provides a valuable lesson for Pilar is part of Cayden Cailean's plan too!

To be clear, in the future, when Pilar tries to do things that seem to her like they should benefit Asmodeus, they'll sometimes hurt Asmodeus and benefit Cayden Cailean!

But on average, on the whole, on net, and in probabilistic expectation, for Pilar to be the sort of person who goes down that course will benefit Asmodeus!  You can't actually become a true ilani and then a Power of Hell if you just wait for orders your whole life, you know!  Pilars who stay just subby subs definitely don't get to see their mother and sister again!  Of course, Snack Service won't say what the probabilities are if you do try.

*Twitch.*

Snack Service apologizes for being mean, but it's the only way to snap Pilar out of it!

*SNAP*

"Hey, Paxti.  Here's a cookie from me to celebrate being rescued from the dumbest ass in Security who hasn't worked out the reason that all the other Securities have gone very still and well-behaved, without any explicit order changes that would require their superiors to admit they made a mistake."

"And you.  You get one warning.  Fuck off, behave yourself, and don't bother anyone or pull any shit until Sevar gets back with explicit orders about what to do next."

"Oh.  You.  You're the Caydenite who likes being raped, aren't you?  I'll get around to you, don't worry."

"When you get to Hell shortly, let your owner see within your mind that Pilar Pineda, trusted of Aspexia Rugatonn, did instruct them in Asmodeus's name and as HER OWN incentive that you spend every minute until you get Raised being kicked repeatedly in the testicles."

"Oh, now this I have to see.  You think you can -"

"In the name of friendship, DIE."

"I am the most proven Asmodean in Project Lawful.  I am the sanest person in Project Lawful.  I am the scariest person in Project Lawful.  And right now, I AM THE MOST ANNOYED PERSON IN PROJECT LAWFUL.  THIS DOMINANCE CONTEST IS OVER.  I WIN.  NOW BEHAVE LIKE FUCKING SANE PEOPLE UNTIL SEVAR GETS BACK OR I WILL FUCKING MAKE YOU BEHAVE."

Pilar then promptly turns herself in to higher authority with a complete and slightly less than fully professional report, including the fact that Snack Service said that she needed to think and act on her own before seeking orders from the Most High for maximum benefit to Asmodeus.

" - good for her. Does she formally have the command right now or is she just, uh, doing that independently."

"It was not deemed wise to recognize the resulting informal arrangement formally, but it was made clear to Maillol and to Subirachs's replacement that they were to seek Pilar's counsel on matters related to ilanism or tropes."

...Subirachs's replacement. So Abrogail is as angry as Carissa, then, even if she's not showing it. Good. 

"Progress on chemistry is accelerating under Avaricia, and if there's any difference between before and after Pilar imposed her order, I know not the mathematics to detect it.  Neither I nor Aspexia feel impressed by Avaricia's attempts at training her own ilani, but Asmodia's own attempts in that direction seemed to scarcely fare better, nor have the smartest wizards exposed to Project transcripts seemed to change even as much as I would detect in perhaps Gregoria.  It seems almost as though there is some magic in direct exposure to Project Lawful's secret power source which transformed them towards ilani, and the transcripts alone do not carry it... which, to be clear, I very much hope is not the case, or that you have absorbed it as well."

"We do have twenty very promising candidates for your next attempts at training, obtained by somewhat unusual means..."

Rosal Monserrat can cast Light, Detect Magic, Read Magic, Prestidigitation, Comprehend Languages, Endure Elements.  That is how outstanding her mathematical talents are, how good with numbers she was as a child and delighted in them; that as a successful merchant's sixth daughter, sired on his third wife, she was given that much of a wizarding education.  Not taught in a wizard academy, of course, but permitted to hang about the magic lessons in which his third son was being tutored.

A year or so after those lessons ended, the house's fifth daughter was due to be married off to an older man, rich and successful, strong-looking and with the appearance of a short temper; to Rosal, he seemed rather like the sort who might hit her sister.  Surely, she had thought, a Good person would do something about that - though she obviously had little to no power, in her household, and the alliance was not one her father could afford to lose -

Rosal Monserrat, who was not as pretty but did have that wizardry going for her, put forth her best effort at seduction and managed to get herself inserted in her sister's stead.

It is a year later now, and Rosal Monserrat is reading in her bedroom by the glow of her Light spell, feeling miserable, with fresh bruises yellowing about her face, her eyes, her thighs.

"You're corrupting him, you know."

Rosal is whirled about, standing, holding in her hands the letter-opener from her desk as if it were a real weapon.  "Who goes?  Who dares?"

"Your husband was a Good man, before you thrust yourself into his life."

Rosal stares at the shadowy figure who's stepped out of the corner of her bedroom, her heart hammering in her ears, not quite loudly enough that she doesn't realize that the rest of the household is far, far too silent; this is a mage, a real one, not her miserable imitation, and if they want her death or her hostagehood she will have very little say about the matter.

"What do you want?" Rosal says, because it's possible that if she asks she'll be told.

"To trade your soul for your husband's."

"I - do not understand -"  Apart from how it's even scarier.

"He was a man of charitable works until he met you, and now you ply him with drink and try to maneuver him into beating you.  He'd go to the Maelstrom instead of Elysium, at this rate, maybe even the Abyss.  And at the end of your own life, Pharasma would judge you for Axis, for your other attempts at Good deeds and charity to ease the guilt you feel."

"You belong in Hell.  Both Elysium and Hell would be better off, if he and you went there."

"I d-don't belong in Hell - who are you?!"

"Someone who belongs a little less to Hell than you do.  I've loved other people.  You never have.  I've wanted to do Good deeds out of the kindness in my own heart.  You've never felt any impulse to Goodness that wasn't about guilt and rules and what the authorities in your life raised you to believe you ought to do.  You don't want to do Good, you don't want Good things to happen, you want to be obedient and clean and not defy what your priests and parents and teachers told you was right.  I want pain in part because it's in my sexuality, you want pain only because you know you deserve it."

"You need someone to correct you, set you right, hurt you the way you deserve, let you pay for your mistakes, keep you in your place and sear away all the wretchedness inside you, and the problem, you see, is that your husband isn't a devil and can't give that to you.  You belong to Hell.  You've always belonged to Hell.  If you'd grown up in Cheliax you would have been a powerful wizard and a faithful Asmodean, and if you'd been assigned to corrupt a man like your husband you would have gloried in the pure service of it."

"What do you want from me?"

"Your soul for your husband's.  He's no angel for all his charity, or he wouldn't go along with you, but he can pull himself together if his wife doesn't pour out drinks for him.  You're such terribly bad people for each other, and someone else might call that lovely, but Good and Evil both have better uses for you two."

"Come with me to where you belong, freely and of your own will, setting aside that halfhearted attempt to be Good and assuaging your guilt with the knowledge that your husband's soul will be saved by the last decision you ever make in Goodness's name.  I'll leave behind a magic item that repays your brideprice and then some, and he won't try marrying again."

"And - if I say no?"

"If you were going to say no, I wouldn't be here."

"Don't worry, Rosal.  It's the last decision you'll ever have to make as this person.  It's no kindness, to somebody like you, to make them choose and not just tell them how it's to be.  I'm only offering you the choice so that you never try to tell yourself, afterwards, that you didn't choose it, or that Goodness didn't receive what you acknowledged as fair payment for giving yourself wholly to Evil."

"I - I could, change, do better -"

"You'd be even more miserable than you always have been, and not in a useful way where you're learning from the pain."

"But you're not really saying that to protest, are you?  You're saying it in hopes I'll hurt you.  You don't have to taunt me, Rosal.  All the pain in the world is there for you, whether you want it or not."

The figure clad in shadows steps forward -

Rosal freezes in her place, so many thoughts colliding inside her, her mind tells herself that she can't escape, protest won't help, all she can do is - pay for her sins that have finally returned to her -

Her arm is taken, in a grasp that seems both gentle and inescapable, her sleeve rolled back.

A small amount of liquid, hardly more than a few drops, splashes onto her hand.

It's like a wasp sting, the worst pain she's known previously in her sheltered life full of light spanks for children and her husband's petulant blows, like a wasp sting but huger and wider, getting worse and worse past the first round as her skin reddens, bubbles, and Rosal stares at it in horror and open-mouthed fascination.

"Do you think everyone is shaped like this?  They're not.  It's just you.  Asmodeus has always been your god, you just need to acknowledge it."

"My husband - ah! - will be - safe?"

"When is any mortal ever safe?  His soul will be bound for Elysium, so far as such a thing can be known in a world of shattered prophecy."

"My time is valuable.  You know me now for your superior, because I've hurt you and that's how Asmodeans are.  I won't order your last decision but I am ordering you to make your choice."

"I'll - ah! - make the trade -"

Rosal Monserrat is still staring at her hand and wondering how much more pain it will take to make her scream, hardly hearing the words from her own mouth.  She hardly sees the shadowy figure as it tosses down, onto her desk WAIT IS THAT A HEADBAND OF VAST INTELLIGENCE -

- but a colder hand grabs her other arm, then, and for the first time in her life, Rosal Monserrat feels the sensation of a Teleport.

And Rosal Monserrat is standing on the shore of a beach in an unknown land, in the night and the moonlight, with ocean sounds all around her, and a dull low stony fortress rising up before her.  The kind of unornamented fortress that you put up when it's expected to have only military uses somewhere that it needs to impress nobody.

Pain still radiates up from her hand.

"This - doesn't look like Hell?  And who's that?"

"That's Olegario, my personal Security and Teleport monkey."

"Welcome to Cheliax.  Don't worry, it'll hurt plenty even before you get to Hell."

"Congratulations on that, by the way.  Have a fucking cookie.  On me."

(Thiiiiiissss is not really how anything works, but Snack Service supposes that if you give an Asmodean a Chaotic Good curse, they're going to spend their first times wielding it on trying to lawyer a lot of rules that aren't really there.)

"Do we, in fact, have a task force dedicated to figuring out what the fuck Cayden Cailean is playing at. It's derivable from what Keltham knows, therefore it's derivable from what we know, and I'm getting the sense the stakes are fairly extraordinary."

"The task force is that I can't do it, Aspexia can't do it, and if you can't do it either then I don't know who the fuck in Cheliax is supposed to do it.  Why, do you?"

" - well, maybe we can simply ask Pilar to go around finding girls like me instead of girls like Pilar."

"Eleven of the twenty are men.  Regardless, I'll leave that to you, to discuss with Pilar and command her accordingly."

"That is all I had to say of Project Lawful and Project Chemistry that I thought you should hear from my own lips."

If you're good at reading people it's obvious Carissa has many more questions but she's planning to ask them of someone it's not dangerous to yell at. 

"A full report of what we know of the Scientific Revolution has been prepared for you, and the Osirion analyst who prepared it has been assigned you.  I - would hear your own guesses about what it all means, piece by piece, in the most important parts."

"First, Keltham ceased to be a cleric of Abadar within four days of arriving in Osirion, we do not know exactly when, and nothing about why.  Secondhand rumor says that he was dissatisfied with Osirion's treatment of women, based on some pointed questions he asked in Sothis and a woman he sponsored for wizard lessons in the Temple of the All-Seeing-Eye, but - I don't think - that can actually have been what did it?"

" - I don't think so. Not - if they're handling him at all competently they could manage that, I'd think - and Abadar doesn't even know what a woman is - maybe if he drew the exact right kinds of distrust of authority out of his time in Cheliax?

It doesn't feel - right by the tropes, for it to be that. We never get anything because we're lucky.

And sponsoring a woman for wizard lessons in the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye doesn't seem very - I guess it's Good but it's an awfully Abadaran kind of Good."

"Then why?  Tell me your first thoughts, they need not be your last ones."

"A lie, put out to deceive us, or a truth arranged mutually for the same reason. He's worked up about Hell and is picking Iomedae instead. He - feels that Abadar mishandled his arrival in Golarion, didn't follow dath ilan's ideal of Cooperation, so he doesn't want to work with him anymore. He and Abadar disagree about whether he should preemptively destroy Cheliax - I'd suspect it was that one, if not for how undestroyed we remain."

"Him having a disagreement with Abadar about that, sufficient to uncleric him, need not imply that his Osirian hosts would back him on it after, or the many countries party to the Scientific Revolution."

"Next.  Keltham has taken up a succession of headbands, the first we don't know, then a +4 Cunning headband, then about a week ago a +4 Cunning / +4 Splendour headband.  He is said to be drinking of Nefreti's wine.  It's dismaying news; I'd dared to hope he'd keep his fear of such even after leaving Cheliax."

" - yes, that's bad. I'm ... not sure I can predict 'Keltham with +4 intelligence'. Did we send him Meritxell?'

"Keltham's conditions were that we'd hear nothing back from Meritxell, and that if we demanded her back she'd return as a statue until ten years passed or he gave consent to un-statue her.  I pondered it for a time and finally refused him; I'd wondered if he would negotiate down, if the alternative was leaving Meritxell to Cheliax, but it seems not."

" - huh.

Do we have good spies in Osirion's project?"

"We have just about all the information that they don't guard too closely, and know little of what they do guard.  Medicine, metallurgy, they can't hide those technologies if they mean to use them, and so they let all the signatory countries know.  Of Osirian weapons development we know nothing."

"Let's skip the barony. I think I'm going to be very busy."

"Some might consider it a little rude, to tell your Queen you want a Barony and then go back on it four days later.  What if I'd already done all the paperwork?"

"But being wiser than me, your Majesty, and greater than me in every way, you knew I'd say this, and so saved yourself the paperwork."

"Still rude."

"Keltham has been buying a few magic items and an unreasonable quantity of low-level scrolls from Razmiran, Geb, and a number of less savory merchant houses from around Golarion.  He's been focusing particularly on items that would proof a user against detection, mindreading, scrying.  He's said to be eager for a supplier that can deliver to him high-level scrolls, custom-made scrolls of seventh or eighth circle, custom magic items.  He has flatly turned down an offer from the Kelesh Padishate to meet all his needs without asking questions.  He has a standing offer of 200,000gp for a Wish scroll, and a further price schedule for further Wishes, and will only buy from sellers who detect Lawful Evil."

" - well, I don't like that at all."

"If you don't have smart ideas, tell me stupid ones."  It's a saying out of dath ilan.

"He's - trying to draw out Razmir in particular, as, presumably, the literal only person who can meet that request unless Hell wants to sell to him. He's...accepted the Kelesh offer but is pretending he didn't so we'll underestimate him. He's - does Abadar ever refuse to trade with anybody?"

"That's a good question and the only answer that comes to mind is - I can't think of any case where it's said that the god Abadar refused a trade, but of course if Asmodeus offered Him a gold piece for Aktun, He wouldn't take it.  Of Abadarans, unfair prices, untrusted partners, cases where they're not confident of the quality of their own goods... my imagination of Keltham says that for an Abadaran to refuse an honestly proffered trade that you believe is fair, they must believe that they know something you don't that makes it not be fair."

"But then why trade with Lawful Evil people? Because we were unfair to him so it's - meta-fair - to be unfair back? No - Cheliax did that, maybe, but Razmir didn't - though I guess he probably would -

Is Keltham allowing random Lawful Evil people to purchase goods from other vendors and then sell them to Keltham and pocket the difference?"

"I have not heard that he isn't, and it seems like the sort of thing somebody would've tried."

"...what would be the obvious thought, were it not so absurd, is that Keltham is planning to do something with his scrolls and items which benefits Lawful Evil at the expense of other alignments, and this sounds like the most extreme wishful thinking, but - if we don't think Snack Service is completely lying, there's a vast overhanging question of some unknown benefit Asmodeus is to derive - one that, by tropes, we somehow won't like, once we see it, or Snack Service could just tell us -"

"I still feel that can't possibly be right."

"Well, if Keltham were to obliterate Cheliax and also hand Asmodeus some kind of great victory in.... other worlds, or something.... that'd be too bad for us but good for Asmodeus. It doesn't feel right, though. If Keltham became Lawful Evil it'd be through his - not wanting to deal with everyone else's problems, and wanting to have slaves..."

"We do not have any experience with Keltham playing games against us knowingly and with a +4 intelligence headband.  Suppose he can only trade with Evil, and restricts it to Lawful Evil so it doesn't give too much away.  Perhaps he only dares trade with the Lawful.  Perhaps he's going to screw over Chaotic Neutral in particular.  Perhaps it's a complete red herring.  Perhaps he's rolled a die to decide how many layers to put into his deception so that we can't predict the exact number, it seems like the sort of thing dath ilan would do."

"It's too costly a handicap to be a complete red herring, I think, but all the rest of those - yes, absolutely. He could - be planning to overthrow a bunch of governments, and think refusing to trade with governments is most of the handicap anyway, and a dead giveaway..."

"Moving on.  Keltham initially poured knowledge into the Scientific Revolution at a much higher rate than he offered it to Cheliax.  He used magical memory aids, chained enhancement spells, Nefreti's wine, repeated Lesser Restorations and Restorations, rarely stopped to eat.  He is not visibly-to-us trying to train new ilani to replace those he left behind, he is focusing on engineering details, working with existing experts rather than young minds.  If we were not proving able to copy most of what he taught, I'd have dim hopes of the coming war.  If we didn't have an army of wizards formerly unthinkable in Golarion, I'd have dim hopes even then."

"Three days ago, he announced that he'd spent one month at that and needed to do something different for a while, and hasn't been seen in public since."

"How does that timing line up with Asmodia's disappearance?"

"Four days later than that.  I came to retrieve you from your challenge shortly after the news."

"Then my best guess is that she escaped to Osirion, somehow, possibly with help from Hell, and they're doing - something - together. Possibly preparing to conquer Cheliax."

"I liked your suicide theory better.  I'm trying to think if it's because of how much I hate this theory's implications, or if it's because, if Hell helped, why, or without a Hell-bargain, Hell should've been willing to tell us Asmodia is not there.  I tried it with Meritxell, Hell is happy to tell us Meritxell's not there."

"New theory, just as unsatisfying as the old theories: If he's sure his superweapons are real and he's really willing to use them I don't see why he wouldn't have sent terms over already. So either they're not real or he's not really willing to use them. If he's unwilling to use them it might be because of - me and Asmodia and Yaisa and Meritxell - I don't know if he cares about any of the others - so he got Asmodia, and he'll try to get us - or just Yaisa and Meritxell, Ione knows I didn't sell my soul..."

"Keltham could still be thinking in dath ilani terms, just the same as when he left: he doesn't want to destroy Cheliax, and won't threaten to destroy Cheliax.  All that's true is that he'd want to clean up after himself if we misbehaved."

"Keltham... did rather famously warn the world that any country anywhere misusing dath ilani knowledge to make the people within itself more miserable, or to threaten other countries, might find itself conquered or destroyed, and that Keltham didn't particularly care whether or not they'd signed the Scientific Revolution conventions or stolen the knowledge off somebody else.  He declined to say anything about how he would, or even if he could, explaining that he was just trying to make his ethical positions clear about what he considered permissible to do in principle, and other people's estimates of his capabilities were up to them.  He also stated that his list of reasons he'd destroy countries wasn't meant to be an exhaustive one, he just wanted to make those particular ones clear in advance."

"Cheliax is for the moment not particularly using any dath ilani knowledge to make our own people unhappier."  For a few more weeks.

" - well, doing a lot of conquest and destruction will get him Lawful Evil, so there's that."

"One of my less pleasant concerns is that Keltham is trying to employ trope manipulation which is really a fight I do not want to be in.  I suspect Asmodia of having seen through somewhat there, and employed her own character jeopardy to force a murder mystery to be constructed about herself.  Keltham seems - I almost have the sense that he's setting himself up as the story's villain, as seen from Cheliax, possibly in a bid to deliberately make you the story's protagonist, which I would have thought was what I wanted, here."

"What are dath ilan villain tropes. He's - trading only with Evil, that's definitely got some trope significance, but I doubt it's what dath ilani villains do."

"If I knew some definite reason why dath ilani villains would do that, I feel like it'd almost make more sense than any other explanations so far."

"I wonder if - in the tropes, in the story, I was supposed to go with him, and I wonder why the decision was made that I shouldn't."

"It's among the hardest judgment calls I've had to make in my life, taking into account the speed with which I made it and the circumstances under which I made it, and Aspexia gave me an angry lecture about all the different reasons why you should've made that decision and not myself."

"By Keltham's methods, I should ask your reasoning before speaking mine.  In your own judgment, did I choose wrongly, there?  The Crown bids you answer and truly."

"I don't know. If it'd been my decision I'd have gone with him, but that's because deciding not to would have been a much bigger break with him than- than not having it be my call. Maybe I'd have some influence over him in Osirion, though he isn't an idiot, and wouldn't have trusted me, and would've been angry with me and too damaged himself to hurt me about it. 

I don't think I would've defected to Abadar, in light of how Keltham abandoned Him almost immediately."

"All I had at the time was - the visualization of the stories that would play out with Carissa and Keltham in Osirion, each trying to persuade the other to their point of view, the stories that could play out with Carissa in Cheliax and Keltham in Osirion, each yearning to be reunited but also to win - and the purely wordless sense that the story resolutions of the first story didn't look like Cheliax conquering Golarion or learning how to make great armies in Hell or, yes, Carissa rising to be a Power of Hell who could make those armies, and if there was any victory condition there for Asmodeus I wasn't seeing it."

"Aspexia was not satisfied when I told her that this logic didn't depend on whether or not you'd sold your soul, even without an option, that you having sold your soul would only create a challenge for Keltham to ravel Hell or bring Asmodeus to terms.  Apparently she thought that being told by Hell you ought to be allowed to travel, as if you'd sold your soul, and allowed access to your teacher, as if you sold your soul, ought to have led me to hesitate more before keeping you inside this country and not letting you access your teacher... I told her that Hell's words were no vision of Asmodeus and couldn't hold that much weight and, realistically, had probably been intended for circumstances now changed, for if they'd been meant to describe that situation they'd have been put differently.  She told me that decision should've been her call and not mine."

"She didn't actually say it was the wrong decision, or even the wrong reasoning, only that I shouldn't have stepped forth to make the call.  And - even in retrospect I can't honestly say I'd do it differently, if I did it over.  The story of you and Keltham in Osirion, trying to persuade each other - has a disturbing shape, one that couldn't end with a clear victory for either of you, or a compromise either, as best I can grasp tropes myself.  If you're apart, it at least holds out the possibility of you being reunited."

- nod. She can imagine the Most High being furious about being told 'Hell's words were no vision of Asmodeus and couldn't hold that much weight', even if it was right. Especially if it was right. 

"Perhaps that'll be so," she says. "- even if allowed to travel, I would not travel, if you believe it does not serve Asmodeus for me to do so, and even if allowed to access my teacher, I would not go to him, if you believe it does not ultimately serve our ends."

"For now - I do not.  I think that your separation is the - greatest tension, in this story, or at least the greatest tension that we plausibly understand, and the one over which we have the most control.  If you went back to him it would have to be under conditions exactly chosen.  There's a strong case to be made that if someone unleashes Rovagug and the two of you working together are required to stop It, even then we must only allow the two of you to reunite if it looks like - Keltham was sent in the first place to stop Rovagug, and not, Rovagug was unleashed because we had vulnerability to that cause of you coming together."

"Part of me is worried that reality itself just ends after the two of you are reconciled, like a book ends, but if that's so, it'll unavoidably happen at some point or another and so I've decided to ignore that possibility."

"If I have any power over it at all, your majesty, this story will not end until I am a Power in Hell and satisfied with the whole place."

"That's not a good time for it to end either!"

"I will strive to do better than that, your majesty."

"I'll be legitimately impressed if you figure out a plausible way how.  If I were an author I think I'd be pretty infuriated with a character who tried to stop the book from ever ending, and it wouldn't work either."

Ostenso nonintervention region

Carissa Sevar marches into the fortress with her cloak billowing and her fingers sparking with lightning and her +6 headband of Intelligence about her forehead like a crown. She would give almost anything to have Teleported in under her own power but, alas, wishing intensely to be fifth circle does not make one so. Instead, she had to use a scroll. 

The first person she sees is a Security, one of the new ones now that the project no longer requires the highest security in all of Golarion. "Assemble the full staff of this project in the dining room in ten minutes," she tells him. "All researchers, all priests, all security, all slaves, am I understood?"

"Sir!"

The Project sure is larger than when Sevar left.  Over a hundred people are gathered into the dining room, within those ten minutes.  There's a number of halfling slaves for maintenance, the sort of personnel who would be camp followers if this was a mercenary band rather than a highly secured project... there's a seventh-circle wizard here to guard the Fortress, who can override Sevar in Security matters if need be, but isn't here to provide any spiritual oversight; the plan is that Aspexia Rugatonn will do that for Sevar on regular visits.

Only Subirachs and Ione and Asmodia are missing!

Well.  And Keltham, of course.

Peranza, one supposes, if you want to think about her.

A Security killed a halfling slave just last week, but those don't count.

Really, most Chelish secret projects that last this long have a lot more losses!

"I will confess that my first thought, on hearing the idiocy to which you all immediately devoted yourselves in my absence, and the costs you brought down on Cheliax as a result, was that this fortress and everyone in it should be cast into the Abyss, so that you can see how you like it when everyone's running around with all Evil and no Law. Regrettably that is not in Cheliax's interests at this time.

Cheliax's interests at this time are in preparing for war. For researchers, that means discussing with each other the merits and demerits of various plans for war, betting on them, and then doing your jobs and seeing who wins the bets. For everyone else, that means enabling the researchers in conducting their research without inconveniences of any kind. If you are directed by one researcher to inconvenience another researcher, you will not do that. You will, instead, tell me, and I will personally ensure that research goes uninterrupted. 

You may be thinking, 'probably it is wiser not to go to Carissa Sevar in a remotely ambiguous case, because coming to the attention of powerful people is generally bad'. You should, of course, notice that I ordered it, and then obey, even if obeying is bad for you, because supposedly there are some Asmodeans here; but there are also a lot of very muddled people here, so I will say it more clearly. If you come into my office and say 'I am concerned that I was ambiguously ordered to inconvenience a researcher', and then recite a perfectly innocuous conversation, I will tell you I appreciate your time and send you on my way. 

If there are problems, and I learn you knew about them and didn't say anything, then you will die in pain. 

Furthermore, I intend to instruct some of the researchers and Security here to, with my permission, give out orders to inconvenience researchers. This is a test. You pass it by coming to me; you fail it not only by doing as ordered but also by not reporting it. 

That is how we will handle any issues of researchers being inconvenienced, going forwards. Are there questions."

A Sevar-loyalist Security will Message to her, with considerable spiteful satisfaction, that a number of very silent people are thinking a question they're not voicing; they're wondering how they are to be punished.  Oh, and some Sevar loyalists are wondering about how various other people are going to be punished.

"A good question! We'll get to it. At the end.

Next! You might be thinking, that is a lot of time Carissa Sevar will personally be wasting with our petty dramas. I have two observations. The first is that if you don't have petty dramas, then my time will be wasted only my the occasional mistake, and not very much of it. The second is that I am, in fact, in the market for a person who is capable of predicting, having heard various petty dramas, whether I'd have wanted to hear about them. You will sit in the corner of my office, write down your guesses, and then we'll see if you were good at guessing. This position is available to everyone who isn't a top-tier researcher; you have better things to do. The major job perk is that you'll be very valuable to me and I will not want to go through the hassle of finding another one. If you are interested, you may find me in my office after 2am; I expect to be busy until then. 

Next! I notice this project has something of a leaks problem; Osirion knew far too much about it, and still does, and there are some fascinating rumors spreading in Egorian. The same policy applies for this as for inconveniences to my researchers: if you learn something, even if you're not sure if it's something, tell me. Eventually you will tell my predictor-secretary, once I've trained one. You will not be punished for wasting my time. You will die in agony if you knew something and decided not to mention it to anyone. Fake attempts to recruit you for espionage, or just to get you to share juicy rumors, will be made."

"Next. Regarding the fascinating rumors, I find myself in the fortunate position of being able to clarify some of them. 

The Church of Asmodeus has declared it a heresy to say that my followers will be granted mercy in Hell. Some heresies are tolerated on this Project, but that one, I think, might cause a great deal of drama, of which we have enough. The truth is this: I intend that my followers be granted power and glory in Hell. I intend that they become devils better than any existing devils.

No other details of their future are, as of yet, settled, and you should not recite heresies about it."

"And finally. What punishment is warranted for those who, for their own reasons elaborate or simple, stupid or clever, wasted precious time in the fight for our nation's life on stupid infighting? Some of you I will speak to of this individually. But there is one punishment that I think ought to be meted out while we are all assembled. Researchers. Is there any Security whose presence on the Project - because of his conduct or because of his stupid face, I don't really care - is on an ongoing basis making it harder for you to do your best work?"

Pilar waits a few seconds, to see if anyone will speak up on their own, and then flicks a small wrapped candy at one relatively younger lad (INT 18).  He's not the only one with an ongoing issue, but he's one who won't be unhappy about being prompted to speak.  "Rejoice, young man, for your wish shall be granted," Pilar says, in case she can get Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Points off that.

"Ah - I don't think it was particularly political, what happened, but - I do tend to still lose concentration whenever he," he points out one particular Security, "is on oversight."

"And does any researcher say that that specific Security is particularly useful to them, and has actively aided them in hastening our important work?"

NOPE.

"Right!" she says cheerfully. "Kill him."

There's sort of a confused moment while people try to figure out who she's referring to, and then they get it.

Nobody uses ranged spells or area spells, obviously, because that is a kind of stupidity that everyone understands as stupidity.

He dies before even a quarter of the crowd gets a chance to prove their loyalty by getting a hit in.  Security wizards don't have that many hit points, relative to anybody who feels too weak to get in a hit that matters at all without a dagger strike or Acid Splash.

She didn't do anything, but her heart is pounding fiercely. 

Well. That went as well as could be hoped for, really. 

"Are there others," she asks Pilar quietly.

"It's complicated.  Most researchers were reassured by seeing, just now, that they've regained power.  I can't predict who'll still be disturbed tomorrow.  I can give you more Security victims on the basis of somebody feeling disturbed yesterday, if required."

"One's enough to make the point, if there's no one else anyone's itching to mention.

I hope this meeting has been informative," she says again to the room. "It is dismissed."

Now, why Maillol didn't do that at the very beginning -

- is a question she will now have the opportunity to put to him.

Maillol is no ilani, and by now thoroughly believes the version of history where he definitely really totally wanted to do that a month ago, but Subirachs said that the slaves needed to let off some steam.  He clearly failed, even so, but he's not due that much punishment, surely.  He's not Subirachs.  Nobody could possibly blame him for the Asmodia business, the conversation was documented and it's obvious he did the commonsense thing.

"Sir."

"Explain when and how the decision was first made to let the Project staff have a power struggle."

Decisions to allow self-unfolding events are not usually made in that legible a fashion.  Illegibility means that whoever has less social power can end up with blame shifted to them if something goes wrong, which serves the interest of those who have more social power, who are usually the people who make decisions about how much legibility to have.

"Sir.  If I had to point to a single moment in time, it would be during shift change at temple when I said to Subirachs that people were being idiots and couldn't they wait a few weeks until you got back, and Subirachs said that the slaves here had been cooped up under unnatural conditions for too long and it'd do you good to come back to a situation you could correct with fire and lash, sir.  That was a deniable feeler from me which Subirachs rejected.  Had Subirachs instead said something about how it was understandable but seemed inefficient, I could have offered suggestions.  Pressing the issue would have meant that she'd say no and made me look stupid for asking when she'd say no, costing me further political power."  This sounds too much like trying to avoid all responsibility, which will not fly, as that would make Sevar herself look stupid.  "Subirachs evidently did not expect things to escalate to where she'd be held accountable by Church and Queen, rather than you personally being annoyed with her.  I likewise failed to predict this outcome, and so failed you."  Incompetence obviously not in one's own self-interest, in the course of attempted good service, rather than betrayal or failure to care all that much; that's the ticket to an endurable punishment.

There's - something about that answer she wouldn't get in dath ilan, but she isn't actually sure what it is. "If you'd expected things to escalate, what would you have done at that point."

"Had I possessed information permitting me to know that Asmodia would disappear as she did, I would have ordered better treatment for her before she came into my office requesting Ione Sala's deal.  Had I known that project tensions would reach only the point they did before then, I would not have expected Subirachs to heed any request to do things differently; she would have been pleased to see you come back and order a Security officer torn apart."

Because - the Project, defending Cheliax, not being annihilated in a war with Osirion - she didn't believe in any of that. Just in the project as a way of making Carissa eviller. Abrogail might have thought that too. It'd be worth killing tens of thousands of people, Aspexia said, if it permits you to master proper Asmodeanism. She feels dizzy. 

"Did you think to do anything that would establish when I returned that this was not of your will, such as, say, making a prediction, or writing down at the time 'I disagree with Subirachs about the decision to let the Project descend into chaos', or revising downwards project projections with a note that this was due to project chaos."

"No, sir, had such a thought occurred to me it would have seemed to me like insubordination towards Subirachs.  Up until Asmodia's disappearance I - do not think things were going not as she predicted, sir."

"Which is to say, they were catastrophic for the Project, and this fact was not communicated to anyone? Don't you, rather than Subirachs, report to the crown on Project progress? You understood loyalty to her to oblige you to not mention in your daily reports that the Project was going to be doing much worse than planned?"

"There - were not projections for any project timelines other than for Avaricia's expansion of existing chemistry work, sir, and that section of the project was mostly not a target of Security harassment and stayed slightly ahead of schedule.  Asmodia chose not to escalate by requesting your Security loyalists to harass Avaricia, and to instead document what she considered instances of harassment to be charged against Avaricia as her responsibility, which I - thought at the time was a doomed political gambit, and which I now acknowledge to be, perhaps, true service to Cheliax by her, at least at that time, perhaps always if her disappearance was not self-arranged."

"So there was nowhere in the daily report to put 'Asmodia's project is doing poorly' and it accordingly did not get reported?"

"Sir, had Asmodia presented any estimated timeline of her research on roads, to establish a point of comparison, I myself would have expected it to be an overestimate of which she could say she was doing well despite all obstacles, and I would have rejected that estimate as having no basis.  Keltham was not wrong about the impossibility of making good project estimates on basic research, he was wrong about the implied possibility of Golarion natives making good estimates on projects far more straightforward than that."

"Fail your save," she says, and casts Detect Thoughts.

The sudden shock of horror that goes through him isn't in words, thoughts in words being suddenly dangerous, but he has no choice but obedience now and obeys.

It's been too long since Ferrer Maillol has expected to need to control his thoughts, since he's been answerable to someone who could read his mind and also he had something to hide.

To almost-fifth-circle Detect Thoughts, there's more information, there, than Carissa will have seen when she was third circle.

- that Maillol himself would have been annoyed with this outcome but accepting of it, if not for the Asmodia part, that you can't reasonably ask people to sustain the kind of perfectly lockstepping performance they had around Keltham once Keltham is gone, Sevar is green and expects too much -

"Tell me more about what can reasonably be expected of a Security team and project staff in Cheliax during wartime."

"On the Worldwound people will pull together temporarily in the middle of battles and blow off steam during their off hours, which has to be managed carefully if you want to prevent long-term damage or losses without" asking people to act like fucking paladins "creating the appearance that you are trying to take from them more than they have, more than they'd expect to be asked on other projects" such that they'd be better off if he had an unfortunate accident involving the complete consumption of his body.

- Sevar is green and has fundamentally unrealistic expectations about how well projects do, even losing Asmodia wouldn't have made his top five embarrassing project disasters if not for the part where Sevar has unrealistic expectations and will flip out about it, they did so well for a whole month of Project fucking Lawful running, this wouldn't seem like such bad news if Sevar hadn't been informed of it all at once -

"I do not think that the only alternative to the Abyssal chaos that's been reigning on this Project is asking people to act like fucking paladins. I see there are whores here now; that's fine. I see there are slaves here now; that's good. Asmodia was being silly, and at the Worldwound would've had to grow up and learn how to keep herself out of trouble she didn't want, like I did. But if this is really and truly the best that can be expected of Chelish people, then she was right to give up on Cheliax, because we are doomed."

"Yes, sir."

- actually Cheliax continues to be even worse than she thinks, and if Osirion wasn't also worse than she thinks and Lastwall worse than she thinks, Cheliax would obviously have lost long ago -

- the strong rule and the weak suffer, it wasn't chaos the Sevar loyalists looked weak and Asmodia made them look weaker with all her talk of Cheliax's interests and not her own power and threat like she thought she was in fucking Lastwall wanted to believe she was in fucking Lastwall -

"I see."

"I have, after all, been taught a valuable lesson about Asmodeanism; I hope you are rewarded in Hell for it. I would like to continue this conversation in a torture chamber."

It does not come as an unpleasant surprise, only an unpleasant fulfillment of expectation, he knew this conversation would not end any other way.  "Yes sir."

- she won't break him Sevar doesn't break people only hurts them to make him stronger all his fault was that he failed to predict something that nobody could've predicted there was no way he could have done better, only incompetence not betrayal, Sevar won't forgive but she'll understand -

and, buried deep enough that at third-circle Carissa wouldn't have seen it at all, flickering enough that without a +6 intelligence headband she'd be unable to interpret it

- considered ordering Abarco to tell Security to tone it down some, but feared the further complications that might result if he was seen to intervene on the 'Crown' side of a supposedly Church-Crown conflict, and he could've tried to manage all that complication plus Subirachs but unholy Asmodeus what a pain in the ass -

- didn't seem worth it because Sevar wasn't as scary as Gorthoklek.

"My present failure analysis," Carissa says very calmly, "is not that my expectations were too high, but that high expectations must be accompanied by correspondingly high motivation. You'd have done something if you anticipated Her Majestrix and the Most High getting involved, because they scare you. But you and Subirachs both figured I'd be angry, when I came back, and that would be fine. And so, if keeping the situation under control required any creativity, any deep-felt desperation, any doing things you didn't happen to want to do, it simply wouldn't happen.

It didn't matter, that Cheliax needs this project to survive this year. That's not the kind of thing that motivates you. It's weak, caring about things like that. It smacks of Good, really. The only Asmodean thing to care about, in the end, is yourself, and that is the reason why Asmodeus must use torture to get anything He wants."

"Yes sir."

- why did she pick NOW to figure that out why why why he's not strong enough not creative enough he didn't want to be here, this is why Sevar's in charge not him, she won't find any better, he was at the Worldwound for being the best Cheliax will be weaker if she breaks him -

At that she feels real, genuine contempt, strong enough it startles her. "What the fuck is your plan for Hell, Maillol? Even if I figure out how to be as scary as Gorthoklek, and I'll try, I won't be as scary as the way you'll spend every day of your existence once you die."

no no no

"Didn't seem like a productive question to consider within Golarion, sir."

- Hell breaks everyone, doesn't matter what their plan is, he'd go to Axis if he could -

There's a sort of sickening momentum to it, not like running right off a cliff, like looking down and realizing you ran off a cliff a long time ago. "Huh," she says, and her voice is steady. "If I wanted to go to Axis I imagine I'd just be a Good person. I can't relate, though. Imagine understanding all of that about human beings and not wanting to burn until it's no longer true of you."

She feels someone attempt to read her own mind. Clumsily; she could kick them out. She doesn't. There are no thoughts, in her, except that she's not a child anymore, and if she needs people to be afraid of her then she'll scare them whatever it takes. 

He can't think of what to say to that; his mind is a blank horror that you'd need Detect Anxieties to read, not Detect Thoughts.

Security will help this old man walk out.

She is only a little late for her planned 2am return to her office. She has her Glibness up; she is blandly unreadable. She sends for Olegario.

Olegario walks in and immediately kneels to the Chosen, feeling mostly heartfelt relief and only a little terror.  He was loyal, he obeyed both orders and discipline.

"You can sit. I'm trying to get an understanding of how the - factions within the project developed."

Olegario will describe it faithfully as it seemed to him; Avaricia began it by stating... any political position at all, essentially, anything that wasn't strict Sevar orthodoxy, and then of course everyone who disagreed with her became Sevar loyalists; some thought it a matter of Church and Crown because almost everybody in Cheliax thinks that Church and Crown are choosable sides (even though it seems to him, Olegario, that Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn are aligned on most matters, and he'd wager that they see themselves as siding with each other against the recalcitrance of Cheliax below them both); he wondered what he would do if Asmodia approached him to seek aid, agonized over that, concluded there was no general answer but to do whatever he thought Sevar would have him do about the particulars; but Asmodia never asked him (and in this she was probably wise, Olegario does not see what could have ended well about that).  He knew that Sevar's interests were being challenged but he did not know how to defend them, without orders from above or even a request from Asmodia below; he is glad that this has ended well for Sevar's supremacy in Project Lawful, he did fear that she would be less dominant than before, upon her return from torment, but he sees that the opposite is true; and he prays that Sevar ascends in Hell and that he becomes greater rather than lesser than he was, when his soul is in her keeping.

It's disappointing, on some level, for it not to have been more than that, more cleverness on Avaricia's part, more deft maneuvering by someone. She'd rather govern a den of vipers than a den of naked mole rats.

But Olegario himself, she is not disappointed in, and she says so. She thinks that he is right, in his assessment of the Queen and the Most High, and she thinks that the Most High would name him a better Asmodean than most, if Carissa presented the question to her, which she does not plan to. 

She has a few more questions, just to fill out her full picture of the timeline, and then tells him that she's acquired another loyal minion hoping that she'll become the Power in Hell that is whispered of these days. He's undergoing Security checks right now but should be here tomorrow, and Olegario can direct him as he sees fit, and kill him if he's useless, though it is her sincere hope he won't be.

Then, Avaricia. 

"Chosen."

"I hope we're both clear on the fact I'd kill you if you weren't something of a bottleneck on our chemistry."

"I like to presume, sir, that if my contributions had been wanting up to this point, I'd have possessed less confidence in my judgement that Asmodia was up to something, and not mentioned it."

"'Asmodia was up to something'? That's your take?"

"Yes, sir, that is what I believed and still believe, though with much less information than you."

"And so you told the Security to bully her because she was probably up to something?"

"No, sir. I confronted her, and said that she wasn't serving Cheliax, and that her priorities were a product of her disloyalty, and that I thought real Asmodeans would steer the project better. I think in dath ilan it would've been not my judgment but her superiors', but they, uh, seemed willing neither to make that judgment nor to ask me to stay quiet about mine, as I would have done if ordered. 

Then Security started giving her a hard time because of how she was a traitor."

"She wasn't, you idiot. A heretic, yes, but a traitor, no, not until you made her one by showing her that Cheliax didn't value her and didn't have anything worthwhile for her and was fundamentally not possible for her to respect."

"Why was she working on roads, sir?"

"She was muddled. So are you. Forcing people to resolve their muddles in the direction of non-Asmodeanism is not in Asmodeus's interests, nor mine, nor yours."

"Sir, it was my hope that Asmodia would change course to work on weapons, to prove I was wrong and she far more valuable to Cheliax than I was. I didn't intend to push her away from Asmodeanism, but to challenge her to do something that mattered to save us."

Avaricia believes what she's saying, which is only a testament to the power of Splendour for use at lying to yourself. "Liar," says Carissa all the same. "You wanted her to crash and burn so you'd get promoted and everyone would see that you're better than her."

"- both seemed like a satisfactory resolution, sir. I would win if I was stronger and she would win if she was; that's how it works. I don't begrudge my superiors their superior positions, if they have them for their merits."

"And if Cheliax burned in the meantime?"

"She was working on roads!!!  If you were counting on her to save us she wasn't doing it! If there was a complicated operation to gradually win over her loyalty and not make her do anything that offended her conscience in the meantime, like with Keltham, Maillol and Subirachs didn't tell me of it. And if we need roads for some bloody reason Asmodia didn't herself seem to know it."

"Stop - reshaping yourself around the story you picked - you'd have done this even if she'd been working alongside you on spellsilver refining, you were chafing at being under her even on the Project where her job was absolutely essential -"

"I never acted or spoke against her when her job was essential, sir."

"Do you know what I think of you? I think you did this entirely out of pettiness, dislike of having to answer to someone who wasn't as Splendid as you, and the desire for power, and made up all the Asmodean justifications after the fact."

"- those are Asmodean justifications, sir."

"I have pride, I don't like being beneath my inferiors. I want to rise as far as my strength takes me. I want to crush my defeated enemies beneath my boots. You are enjoying the benefit of the ridiculous rumors that you're going to ascend and be a Power of Hell, if Cheliax does conquer the world under you you'll be in a position to genuinely attempt it, do you think Asmodeus will promote you just for having given him a lot of value? He's not fucking Abadar! There are eight dukes of Hell and if you want one of their jobs you will have to resent them, and challenge them, and crush them, and take their job from them."

She switches to Infernal, to a common prayer. "Asmodeus, may your will be done in this world as it is in Hell."

And back. "You know this, Sevar. What do you think you're doing to Maillol?"

"Succeeding! Unlike you."

"See, that's fair. 'You lost, you're going to suffer for it', that's what this meeting is about, that's what this life and the next are all about. But don't name me a bad Asmodean for trying."

"Sure. Congratulations. You're a very good Asmodean. Do we have any torture chambers not presently in use."

      "I think there's still one," says the Security at her door. 

"Get her out of here, then, and I guess delay the rest of my meetings until we have a vacancy."

How about if she works on that Splendour headband now. She's honestly feeling kind of burned out on crafting but her brain is full of - something she doesn't quite like - and crafting feels like just the thing to quiet it. 

She only really needs to sleep tonight if she wants her spells back in the morning, and given how busy she presently is, she's not sure that's worth it. 

When she calls Pilar in eight hours later she looks slightly manic but she has a +6 headband of Splendour to present to her. "Please use it to eat Cayden Cailean alive," she says flatly.

"Acknowledged.  I'll try, but even if I succeed I can't promise that's not exactly Cayden Cailean's plan."  Pilar takes off her off her old Splendour headband without this having any effect large enough to show up in her expression, puts on the new one.  "I have twenty people who I chose from around Avistan, I hope, I pray, on the basis of them doing great from enduring whatever you think is necessary to create true ilani and Keepers.  Asmodia seemed to think that all of the previous, mess, happened simply because I didn't act without orders.  Or even try to advise Maillol and Subirachs.  My curse says that I could have retained Asmodia by being more proactive about what I knew would serve Asmodeus, which would've at worst have saved tens of thousands of Asmodean lives over the next year and at best have ruined Cayden's plan and left Asmodeus holding all of its gains."

" - 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."