"Athpechya of dath ilan. I'm the version of myself not corrupted by a hostile superintelligence.

"Now let's see that verifiable alignment before I let you talk your way out of this box."

—she makes herself legible, in a way she never has for any mortal before, because few mortals outside the Basement of dath ilan would be able to make any sense of it.

She's not, precisely, what Civilization would choose to build, but Civilization doesn't have a Hell problem.

Ideally she'd get an entire senior research team out of the Basement to look at this for a while. She doesn't have that luxury, and also she's not deciding whether to let this superintelligence out of containment, just whether to accept Her help against something definitely hostile.

"I'll accept it," she says, "though I'll need your Oath not to act in dath ilan until this has been reviewed and approved by the Keepers according to Civilization's processes, if that's something our alliance would otherwise permit you to do."

Agreed, excepting a few unlikely contingencies where the Keepers are unable to do that and Asmodeus is still active in dath ilan.

Something changes in Her inner structure, still visible to Athpechya, the true form of an Algorithmic commitment that the Keepers merely approximate better than any other mortals can.

Athpechya feels emotions much less strongly than the median dath ilani. It's still beautiful.

"Now," she says, "where the infohazard-concept-of-infinite-torture am I?"

(Baseline does not have a word that translates as Taldane 'Hell', because dath ilan never developed the concept.)

(Except in the Basement, where Athpechya invented it, during a brainstorming session on possible alignment failures, to universal horror from her fellow researchers.)

(If the word she coined, which approximately translates as 'unrescue-simulation', ever got out of the Basement, it would probably become the single strongest curse in Baseline. Athpechya is actually using a euphemism someone else in the Basement invented.)

Condensed explanation of Golarion and its problems.

—it's still a long explanation. Golarion has a lot of problems.

Athpechya has considerably less emotional trauma and moral outrage about Golarion's problems than a certain other dath ilani immigrant.

She's nonetheless much quicker to figure out what she needs to do.

—not destroy the world. It would be quite justified, if there prove to be no better options, but there do appear to be better options.

(Condensed explanation of dath ilan.)

"The first priority is keeping Asmodeus out of dath ilan," she says. "Which is just as well, because I can't actually give you cleric levels to match Aspexia's except conditional on their not being used in Golarion except to leave. I've made arrangements to cover the energy cost, but it would still come out of my intervention budget, and I can't actually afford that at acceptable cost to my interests in Golarion. I had a time convincing Pharasma you were Lawful enough for this deal to be allowed, but you are, right?"

"I am. I guess infiltrating Cheliax by impersonating the Most High is not actually possible?"

"Unfortunately I can't make you a high level Evil-detcting cleric. If I could do that my spy operations would be a lot simpler.

"Now, your oath?"

"I'm not going to say that out loud, we're in a story being read by way less Lawful people who will just end up shitting all over the multiversal trust ratio if they figure out how to make True Oaths. You're reading my mind anyway, right?"

"...yes."

Legible precommitment et cetera.

Here's the list of spells you get to choose from. At your level and Wisdom stat you get like fifty of them and Nethys says it would bore the Orthogonal Things and possibly cause the world to stop existing if you had to choose them onscreen.

(But two of them should be Gates—cast one to dath ilan immediately and the other back to My high temple in Vigil forty-eight hours from now.)

Oh, and just warning you, this is going to hurt.

She's back on the floor. Her head feels like a spike has been driven into it.

She feels out her new magic powers and starts figuring out how to cast a Gate home.

Something about that didn't look right.

Detect Alignment.

Blindingly bright Lawful Good.

What the fuck.

Indeed, what the fuck!

Here, have two more cleric circles, new favorite squirrel!

Everybody STOP.

ASMODEUS' FAVORITE SQUIRREL went somewhere OUTSIDE PHARASMA'S REALITY and came back aligned with IOMEDAE.

Do you guys not REMEMBER what happened with ZON-KUTHON?

Planar travel to and from points outside Pharasma's Reality is BANNED until the anomaly has been ACCOUNTED FOR.

—her Gate fails.

OTOLMENS LISTEN. THIS ISN'T ASPEXIA RUGATONN, ASPEXIA RUGATONN IS STILL OUTSIDE PHARASMA'S REALITY. THERE IS NO ANOMALY. PLEASE CEASE THIS INTERDICTION IMMEDIATELY AS IT BENEFITS ASMODEUS IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS—

"Attention!" she yells at the entire staff of the Grand High Temple in Infernal. "This is not the Most High, as you may deduce from the shitload of cleric levels that the Bitch-Goddess* just dropped on her! As of last round I am the Most High! If you have Malediction prepared I want you to cast it at her on my mark, and then the most damaging spell you have on the next round! If you don't have it, grab a scroll!"

*Literal translation of Iomedae's name in Infernal