"Sometimes the best thing to do probably won't work. The - core skill - of working in this world where Asmodeus is a power, where the Worldwound is a thing, is doing the best thing, even though it probably won't work and definitely won't leave the world in an acceptable state afterwards. Just, figuring out something that could matter that you can actually do and doing it even if you're still almost definitely going to fail. 

I don't actually know that you need to master this skill, though, because it sounds to me like you have five Wishes that he wants, and if you can't buy the stuff you need to have a functional working relationship with your ex from him for five Wishes then this magic item price deflation is really getting out of control."

"Is this, uh, Good-speak for, 'you're being pathetic'."

"Mostly 'you're being pathetic' isn't something I find myself ever wanting to communicate. But 'you have the resource to accomplish your goals and are directing your energy at figuring out why it didn't happen to you already' comes up a fair bit."

"I think that's just being pathetic. Or, well, a flavor of it."

"It makes sense that you would have a complicated relationship with Asmodeanism, but from my perspective, there's no baby in that bathwater, and you should just toss it all."

They're completely fucking off-script.

I find it literally impossible for Myself to mourn this fact, what with being a Chaotic Good goddess of revolution.  I'm surprised You are capable of it.

Nethys did warn Us that the divergences would amplify the further We got into the playthrough.

Milani, as much as I'd ordinarily celebrate mortals saying 'fuck you' to the complicated machinations of destiny which a bunch of meddling gods had wrought around them, it seems like NOT THE BEST TIME.  Have you never memorized a script and acted in a play, where other actors relied on you to follow your lines?  Never listened to instructions from a swordmaster showing you exactly how to guide your weapon?

...no?  Very few of my instructors were competent, and none of those very few ever asked me to exactly imitate instructions I didn't understand.

Carissa Sevar has raveled more of the situation around herself, earlier than expected.  Keltham is pulling himself together faster.  We have carefully played through all of the flag events in Nethys's walkthrough, hit nearly all of them, and now Carissa and Keltham are both doing better than in the possibilities Nethys has seen before; which is why they are, from our perspective, going off-script.

Well, yes, that's very wonderful, except for the part where at this point I'm not seeing how Keltham gets the Wishes and the headband from Carissa, in a way that obeys the decision-theoretic constraints, if Keltham has already refused to allow Carissa to make the mistake of trying to repay him for the hurt she considered herself to have dealt him, and Carissa has already figured out that Keltham is targeting Pharasma rather than Asmodeus.

Yes, they're off the script, off the trodden roads, and making their own path through the untracked wilderness.

MILANI.  We have OTHER CONCERNS than how many Chaotic Goodness points We are scoring, here.

Cayden, it's not that I can't see Your point, it's that I can't, actually, value things the way You're valuing them.

...which, yes, is why You and not I were put on-point for a lot of these interventions.

I suppose You're going to tell me that We may, at this rate, finally be on track for Nethys's hypothesized Good Ending?

Of course not.  There's far too many plot points We're obviously not hitting.  Asmodia is in the Gardens and We don't even know how Broom was supposed to be relevant.

Cayden, I'm not saying We're not in enormous trouble, here.  It's just a kind of trouble that I can't help but approve of.

Why is My life like this.

We wouldn't necessarily see it ourselves, if they were going to solve matters for themselves by virtue of being Lawful.  And they are, in fact, both relatively Lawful for mortals.

So now we watch, and hope for the best out of the chaos that inevitably results when mortals try to be Lawful at each other.

There's a difference between getting drunk and breaking some rules, and getting so drunk that you stop thinking it's a good idea to follow the well-trodden forest path back home while you're in that state.

If you say so, Cayden.  As for Myself, once I was clearly not on the path anymore, I think I'd enjoy seeing a bit of the forest, so long as I was there.

...fair enough, Milani.  I'll try to enjoy it despite the TERROR.

When Keltham comes out of Sarcini's room Carissa will be sitting on the floor, making a headband as stress relief.

The man who emerges from Sarcini's room has changed to a +4/+0/+4 headband and is not currently under Owl's Wisdom.

He hears out a quick report from Tarnish (who has a nearly halfling-like ability to lean against a wall and promptly have everyone else in the room forget she exists).

He continues on to Carissa, the casual headband-maker.

"Ri-Dul wants to talk Spellcraft with you, at some point," he says to her, on seeing this.  "He is, on his view of himself, one of those eighth-circles who properly perfects their Spellcraft, instead of just having absorbed a lot of magic by being in a lot of fights."

"Of course, Ri-Dul would immediately terminate his employment, and possibly break his oath and try to kill me, if you told him you believed I was going to destroy the world.  Which... gets us back to the problem where I got excited and didn't have you, make any promises, before you got here."

"I have figured out the conditions I need to be willing to work here, if you want to talk about that now."

"Sure.  Let's negotiate.  It's seeming to me like there's a good chance that I've already shattered what I was supposed to do, here, which was just, not warn you, and accept the Wishes and headband as your apology, because there were so many many things so vastly more important than, how I'd have felt about that, and at minimum I'm going to lose Egorian, now -"

"What conditions."