"Yeah, uh... how."

"I just flatly do not believe it is a harder problem than destroying the entire multiverse, though I admit in the very distracted two hours I've had to consider it I haven't solved it yet."

"Destroying only a part of something is often much more complicated than destroying all of it, and in real life, complicated plans usually do not work."

"But - you can look.  Out of context, of course, it would fuck over everyone in the multiverse, if you found a solution like that, and convinced me that it was better than destroying Creation, with a solution that didn't also fix the Abyss or the Maelstrom.  But that's all the more reason why you ought to try, and I ought to let you."

"We're not here to make 'threats', after all, and it's very important that we do not look to gods like we were doing that.  Which, non-Keeper mortals being what they are, means I have to never at any point start thinking like it's all okay because I can get a fixed multiverse from Pharasma because She prefers that to destruction.  I'm telling you to do this, not because it's better than the outcome I expect out of context, but because maybe you'd find something better than the total destruction that I must constantly think as if I will get."

"...I hope that fancy headband is enough that you're tracking all this, because, if you aren't, you might want to step back from things before you accidentally destroy the multiverse.  On my end, of course, I've read like a dozen novels where somebody has to deal with weird decision theory twisting up all their reasoning into a pretzel, because, like, novels with straightforward decision theory are boring."

That's obnoxious but it's also Keltham, her Keltham, recognizable and clear, and her heart is doing something funny in her chest.

"It's a very fancy headband," she says flatly. "I follow you."

"Right.  Well, third part you're not going to like, and I want to emphasize that I do take this seriously and am not just - playing relationship gotcha, at you - is that you have, unfortunately from your standpoint, and I'm sure unintentionally, convinced me that Asmodeus is likely to be more of an issue about this than Pharasma.  That even if Pharasma nods along, Asmodeus will say, sorry, I have My pride, even if that wasn't technically a threat, we can die in a fire anyways."

"I was trying to think of distractions for all the gods, while I ascend, that would actually command all Their attention sufficiently well away from me, even if They noticed Achaekek being destroyed, which They probably would."

"My new plan, which I fully expect you to try to talk me out of, is to give up and go with my obvious original plan of releasing Rovagug as the distraction, so that all the gods including Asmodeus will fight It together, instead of the gods having to fight Rovagug with Asmodeus on Its side when Asmodeus releases It later."

"I think that's all of the major things you're likely to be upset about."

"Rovagug will eat Golarion. Even if they stop it. They won't stop it in time."

"Possibly, yeah.  I realize you have family and friends here and that this is, from your standpoint, not okay even if we try to get a few particular people into Axis or Nirvana or wherever."

"I will obviously see about My exploding Rovagug if the fight is ongoing after I finish ascending and rigging the multiverse for destruction, if It's a kind of thing where exploding It can help.  Though, also obviously, I would demand that Pharasma have signed a compact with Me first."

"I don't think She can!!! I don't think that's the kind of thing She is! She is - from limited angles possible to get to change things, like, it did happen somehow that people going to Abaddon get a choice, there's not zero flexibility possible, I wouldn't think it was insane to go for 'Malediction is banned now', and I even have a shadow of a hope that if we set everything up right we can get Her to say Asmodeus is not the legitimate authority over Hell. But that only works because Hell cares who Pharasma says is in charge there. Most things you could say to Her She actually can't do and probably can't even comprehend you saying them!!"

"I... am not at all sure that is how anything works inside Pharasma's Creation, and one of my concerns is that She is vastly underplaying the degree to which She can potentially intervene in events, such that She can fiat-nope all My attempts to rig the multiverse to go pflomp."

"But if Pharasma is intrinsically noninterventionist, I'd be fine compacting with a sufficient supermajority of the other gods to get things done.  I mean, I do not see any way around the conclusion that Urgathoa dies or gets put in a box, for example, and then We're going to have to take and defend a lot of the Abyss's surface, the parts contiguous with Material planes and mortal planets.  We either need much better conditions in the Boneyard or we need a lot more clerics around to stop half the kids born from dying before they're sortable, preferably both.  There needs to be a first-circle divine spell for reversible contraception and enough clerics for that.  I'd imagine that Pharasma has a lot more cleric-juice than any other god, maybe more than the rest of them put together, and could do all that if She had to... but if not, well, I can negotiate with the other gods too, if Pharasma will let Me fix things and stay out of My way."

"That She can just stop you destroying the multiverse seems quite likely! If you try to bite off too much you might well get nothing at all, instead of getting just - Hell fixed and the Worldwound closed, and we can take Abaddon in the next century, if we get that -"

The man's voice grows sharp, then.

"One.  Pharasma's apparent level of power, nonintervention, and incomprehension is constrained by numerous apparent observations including that She has clerics and that She could benefit from the cooperation of other gods in defeating Rovagug and coordinated with them about it.  I am concerned that Pharasma may not be what She appears.  What She appears as looks manageable."

"Two.  I do not, when thinking at this scale, care about the Worldwound, an issue of one planet.  I in fact don't care about the Worldwound emotionally either because I didn't grow up here."

"Three.  It should be obvious that I don't care about the Worldwound and that it simply wasn't a valid consideration at scale.  Your failure of perspective-taking on that reflects a general type of reasoning error where, if you commit it with respect to Pharasma and decision theory instead of myself and utility functions, you will potentially get everybody in the multiverse killed unnecessarily.  If I think you're not able to reason at a grownup level better than you just did, I will say under truthspell that I consider you a danger to the survival of the multiverse and invoke the relevant clauses of our compact until I can get you enough intelligence augmentation that it's worth trying again."

"I did not damage myself just by being a teenager who got traumatized by Cheliax and you.  I also damaged myself by needing to constantly strain myself to think in the right patterns so as not to unnecessarily destroy the multiverse, and the one time I made an exception to that, I did something with you that I worry went off-plot and will lead to Pharasma destroying the multiverse, because you knew too much and the wrong things when you decided to bargain with me."

"Do not bother comparing this to whatever you suffered from having the Queen reading your thought transcripts.  You were not trying to do something this difficult or precise and, I expect, could not do any thinking this precise while being the Carissa of Cheliax."

"I'd forgive you for having no practice, but Pharasma will not and therefore I am shutting down my capacity for forgiveness."

"This is me caring about the survival of the people of the multiverse.  Thinking carefully.  Not making mistakes like the one you just did because I got emotional and wanted the argument to go a particular way.  I am not going to suggest that you don't care, because you do, but that you care means nothing if there is no pipe going from the caring bucket to the precise thinking bucket."

"I don't own you and can't give you orders, so I cannot order you to grow the ass up, but I can state as a nonthreat that I will act as I must to preserve the multiverse if I see you endangering it with generalized sloppy reasoning of that level.  That may be fine for surviving in Cheliax under constant threat of Hell but does not cut it for being a mortal trying to participate in godnegotiations."

"The reason that I think we need the Worldwound closed in addition to Hell handled - and I'm optimistic we can close the Worldwound ourselves without relying on it as an outcome of god-negotiations, but I do think that negotiations which don't ensure it if it hasn't already happened leave us much farther from a good outcome - is that it's the non-Rovagug avenue by which entities interested in destroying Golarion, the planet, could do so in a way that's vastly cheaper to do than to prevent, and possibly unpreventable if the gods are all exhausted from fighting Rovagug. 

The reason I think that is an important consideration is that I think building Civilization with industrial knowledge and cheaper spellsilver, on Golarion, is basically a necessary step for the universe being on an improving trajectory from here. The gods are very unlikely to be able to do it, no matter what agreements exist among them; the best it seems remotely likely we'll be able to get from them is an agreement not to stop us from doing it. A lot of the things that make peoples' lives good and interesting and valuable aren't actually things that can be granted by divine miracle anyway. And this is not going to be the last threat to the multiverse, and we can't plan on solving every single situation with someone trying to personally ascend and threaten to destroy the universe, I doubt we make it through three more crises that way. 

So - Civilization. I could be wrong that Golarion is by far the strongest contender for where to do it, but I don't think I am. We know a lot more about where to start building a Civilization of humans than a civilization of anything else. Golarion has a bunch of ascended formerly human gods; from what you said earlier, it sounds like they're pretty sharply local. I should expect once I ascend I'll be at least somewhat local, at least for the first few thousand years, as will Pilar if she ascends, as will anyone else we ascend if we kill Achaekek and it turns out to be the case that with Him dead there's a substantial waiting store of suitable people for it. Losing Golarion makes things much much worse on the scale of the next couple thousand years, and I think likely means something bad happens to Creation before we can dig ourselves out of that trough and get back to where we'd have been if we didn't lose Golarion.

That is, of course, also an objection to the Rovagug plan, but I actually am immediately coming up with enough ideas there to be tentatively optimistic. I think if we play our cards just right, we make Asmodeus commit Himself fully to destroying Rovagug in time to save Golarion. 

I think it's interesting that, when I said I thought the Worldwound was important, you instantly assumed I couldn't comprehend the stakes and had just decided reasonlessly to worry about a minor problem on a planet you intended to have eaten anyway, instead of, you know, asking me 'under what assumptions does the Worldwound matter'? I think you did that because you have never fundamentally respected me, never fundamentally respected anyone on this planet, believe that you alone are capable of reason.

Your failure of perspective-taking on that reflects a general type of reasoning error where, if you commit it with respect to Pharasma and decision theory instead of myself and utility functions, you will definitely get everybody in the multiverse killed unnecessarily. I didn't promise not to give you orders, so, grow the fuck up."

"Perhaps.  You're entirely right that I don't consider any other mortal on this planet capable of thinking at around the same level of coherence as me.  If you've learned how to do it after a few hours of being allowed to actually think with a headband more impressive than mine, I'll be surprised but appreciative."

"Unless you know something I don't about the Worldwound, it's not a real issue even for Golarion.  I expect the reason the gods haven't shut it down already is that either none of the ancient gods care, or that it's Golarion's own personal Rovagug equilibrium where Cheliax and Mendev needing to cooperate on that, or expend a lot of resources on that, is considered advantageous by a weighted majority of the ancient gods compared to what mortals here would get up to otherwise."

"Golarion is valuable to general Civilization, so far as I can tell, only because it's somewhere prophecy is broken and the gods can't intervene.  Aside from that, and if enemy gods are prevented by negotiation from shutting things down, I'm not seeing how it sets Me back by a thousand years to lose it."

"It's possible that you were reasoning clearly in attaching importance to your personal home planet of Golarion and even its little Worldwound.  I'm not convinced either of the object-level thesis or that you're demonstrating meta-level clear reasoning, and if you want to prosecute that further I should swap to +6 Intelligence and augment Wisdom.  My latest attempt at having a personality while doing all this just fell apart anyways."

"If there are a bunch of ascended formerly-human gods on some other planets, that'd change my thinking about how much Golarion matters in the next thousand years. I expect there aren't; what I've heard about the Starstone makes me believe it's unique within Creation. If Iomedae, Cayden, Irori and Norgorber are by far most able to intervene on Golarion for some reason that won't apply to me and Pilar and anyone else who ascends if we kill Achaekek and blow away the Starstone protections, that'd also change my thinking. I don't understand precisely why you think the Worldwound would be easy for the gods to fix, but I have no specific opinion on that either way and it's not decisive in my reasoning: even if it's easy for them to fix, it would also be easy for one of them to use to destroy the world while everyone's exhausted from the godwar you propose provoking.

I am not very invested in arguing either specific question, which I am uncertain about and which I might better put to those history researchers you mentioned and/or to Dispater, but if arguing the object-level point while you wear a fancier headband would help convince you that there exist people in this world who can reason more clearly than you then that seems well worth the time."

"Information about other solar systems seems nearly impossible to come by, including by trying to buy it from Abadar; I've tried.  Irori's nephew supposedly ascended by writing a perfect book, which if it's true or metaphorically near-true suggests either that Achaekek only prevents duplicated ascensions, or that ascensions use up some conserved resource of local divinity specialization.  There are other members of the Vudrani pantheon who come with similar stories of mortal ascension and which are equally, let's say, subject to potential doubt.  If we take those stories at face value then they predate the shattering of prophecy, and are probably a sort of event that's allowed by ancient gods.  However we are not going to settle object-level issues on this level quickly, and there's an unknown curve of increasing danger before we use your Wishes in Hell."

"I am largely expecting you to end up reasoning more clearly than myself.  From a standpoint of dath ilani tropes - which, to be clear, haven't always worked for analysis - this story would obviously be shifting to have you as the protagonist.  Along with a contrived reason why you've got to work by poking me along highly constrained directions, and can't simply go off and solve everything yourself using your own solutions.  I am an average punk kid from another plane, and you are the incredibly driven person that I noncoincidentally landed on at the Worldwound.  I'm effectively certain the abilitystats here don't capture all underlying capabilities of thinkoomph, but the Intelligence abilitystat still counts for an awful lot.  It's not just possible but probable that, driven as you are, you can spend a week of subjective time having higher boosted Intelligence than anybody in dath ilan and rederive more effective thinking skills than anything they were able to teach me at INT 18.  I wouldn't bet on you against a higher-rank Keeper but I'd bet on INT 29 Carissa against INT 29 Keltham in the limit and maybe even a week later."

"That I do not, right now, have confidence in being able to navigate the Pharasma-looking-through-me aspects of that - or for that matter, confidence in not just having you talk me out of destroying the multiverse because you can talk me into anything - is why I'm not okay with you boosting to INT 29 before I do."

"Right now, however, you've been free to actually think for a matter of a few hours, busy ones.  You still thought initially that most people in Hell didn't want to stop existing.  Your entire cache of theology comes from Cheliax and needs to be invalidated.  I have been thinking about this for a month and you have not been.  All of your reflexive cognitive cache about whether Carissa knows more or less than Keltham about Golarion, comes from having spent three months keeping me trapped in a false reality while having 4 higher Intelligence than I did.  And you definitely don't have a Keltham-comparable understanding of decision theory, and we may be playing in sudden-death mode about one wrong thought at any point destroying the multiverse."

"I could swap to Intelligence and we could argue this.  No, actually, I think I swap to Wisdom and spell-buff Intelligence."

"Or we could wrap up this part and boost my stats, before using your Wishes in Hell gets too much further along a curve of increasing danger whose slope is unknown to us."

"I agree that you know a lot more than me about the world and I - appreciate hearing - that you don't think I'm going to be lastingly stupider than you. I did, actually, infer you were quite likely right, when I realized that you were assuming Golarion's not particularly remarkable, because it's a question you'd have had more time to look into than me. I just resented - you know what, never mind, this isn't about us. Let's go do the Wishes. Fair warning, I'm expecting that one plausible good strategy for me from here involves, in fact, attempting to conquer the world, so that when you unleash Rovagug Asmodeus is willing to expend far more than He otherwise would to stop It, so I'm going to be playing to that, for the pit fiends."

"I'm going to do Greater Spell Immunity: Trap the Soul, Malediction, to be determined.  Protection from Evil, cloak of Spell Resistance, swap to Splendour headband, invoke your Glibness, and then not say or do anything.  If we don't think that's enough to avoid my giving things away, then I've got a scroll of Dominate Person you could use on me -"

"Actually we should maybe head out of the Rope Trick and over to the whiteboard area to plan this out.  People with access to the demiplane Forbiddance are people with full clearance, or they're supposed to be."

"I bargained for safe passage, you should be fine, but that all sounds good. ...do you happen to know your present alignment."

"I got re-Atoned to True Neutral a few days ago, don't know if it's still holding.  I've got a scroll of Early Judgment I could use to check.  Why?"

"It'll get back to Cheliax. If you were Lawful Evil they'd be more likely to believe I was playing a long game where I'm still on their side. Also, you seem pretty Lawful Evil" what with the plans to in expectation murder tens of billions of people to improve your negotiating position "so I thought I'd check. It's fine; I don't even know if I'll end up doing this plan."

"I'm not risking Lawful anything, in case I do something Evil and die at the same time.  We could hit up Absalom's temple to Norgorber, and see if they can do a quick Atonement to Neutral Evil before we go."

"Don't think that helps. Also can you just....do that? Atone to wherever you want? I thought you had to, uh, repent. Maillol figured an Atonement wouldn't go through for him."

"I'm currently in a mental state where I can regret virtually any of my life choices by putting in twelve seconds of work."

"If it doesn't work, I'd have learned something about myself, Pharasma's sorting system, or Atonement spells, I guess."

"Okay. In that case I guess let's put protective spells up and go. - do you have Planar Adaptation? Hell's going to bother you."