"Iiiii think probably changing Keltham's mind about things is not actually literally impossible."

"I was trying to do it!! By every rule I know about!!"

"Yep! And still, you failing does not very strongly suggest that it's impossible."

"- you know, if you were Chelish, you would hurt me, when you said that, for being stupid, and I think I strongly prefer that."

"Too bad, kid. Look, I think convincing Keltham to take more time is a good plan. I suspect it is not actually impossible. If convincing Keltham to take more time actually requires destroying Cheliax, then yes, we should do it. But - you two talked for...about an hour and a half."

"But what if I can't convince him and then trillions of people die because I was not good enough at convincing people of true things."

"It sounds like you are so, so, so scared, all the time, and that's why the slightest thing going wrong talking to Keltham drives you to extreme panic, because when you're this scared it's hard to deal with any additional scary things happening. Because you genuinely might have to destroy your home country where you grew up, not even to save the universe but to save a couple more months we can spend on trying to save the universe, and that's awful."

"How do you - be this scared, and keep going -"

"The Church of Iomedae is actually kind of useless on this topic because Iomedae, being a paladin, even as a human could not feel fear. And most of her followers are paladins and also can't feel fear. I've mostly been just, you know, imagining, if we have to explain ourselves, later, to Iomedae, to our grandchildren, what extremely reasonable questions will they have."

"...probably Keltham's going to tell me I am 'not allowed to get paladined for the fear immunity' because that's 'just as stupid as the plan to blow up all of Cheliax today just to be on the safe side' but I am suddenly tempted to Atone Lawful Good and pay Abadar to paladin me."

"Prayer is disallowed on base, yeah. I wonder if a useful habit for you, talking to Keltham, would be saying 'clever tempting solution that probably doesn't work', before presenting your strikingly clever ideas you come up with on the fly which are quite good, as ideas you come up with on the fly, but still usually don't work, as is predictable for ideas you come up with on the fly, so then you and he don't get drawn into debating blowing up Cheliax."

"He actually handled that very reasonably, just suggested we take a break and said he didn't want to be in a role of shooting down every idea I had. ...I just wish he'd been acting like that about my ideas to test if we're in a story that wants us to rush ahead while manifestly unready."

"If he had been, what would he have said?"

"I genuinely feel terrified at the idea of testing what happens if we ignore the children-based incentive to move quickly. This is already a situation where one of my deepest oldest and most important values, my own personal children not being born into a nightmare universe where they may end up eternally tortured in Hell, has mysteriously turned out to be at stake. I find it terrifying to imagine what might show up next if I prove unable to be moved by those stakes. The experiment would totally give us valuable information but it might well give it to us in a format so horrible I don't want to contemplate it, like 'now Carissa is in Hell and being tortured to insanity by Asmodeus personally and I have to act while there's something left'."

"...worth it, though, if it improves our odds."

" - I think in some important respects you're a very admirable person, Carissa, but if that were to happen the odds of this going well are just worse."

"Because of Keltham's own personal shortcomings! - that's not fair but I wanted to say it anyway to make myself feel better."

"Every person I've ever met has fracture points, Carissa, at which they can't keep moving forwards no matter how much they calculate that they ought to."

"I don't. - also not fair, also just said it to make myself feel better."

"But if Keltham's too scared to experiment on the story thing, and I in fact think this definitely won't go well if we rush it, what do I do."

"I don't know. But putting the question to him when you've both had some time to cool down seems worthwhile. And if you don't get anywhere, then we'll talk about what we can do instead, which might include stabbing Abrogail Thrune, probably doesn't include blowing up her country, and doesn't tip our hand about Keltham being much more than a first-circle wizard."

"Why don't you just talk to Keltham, you'd be better at it."

"We've talked some. I think I am missing a lot of context that is helpful for arguing with Keltham about anything complicated, and I am not, fundamentally, a person who explodes the world even if I've encountered an impeccable argument for doing so, which makes it hard to entertain arguments for doing so."

"There was something else Keltham wanted you to explain to me. Uh, he said, 'I've never killed anyone'. I - I fundamentally don't understand what he was trying to get at, beyond 'I have feelings about losing my virginity', which - I realize that's really uncharitable -"