"Trying to overthrow Asmodeus, I thought, but if it were that he'd be working with the Good churches. Trying to summon dath ilan, maybe, if he's realized something about them that no Golarion god would be willing to go along with, like if they figured out a way to kill their gods. ...compacting with some Outer God to replace Pharasma? That's the kind of terrible idea he might come up with, if he drove away everyone and had only dath ilani logic about - cleaning up ugly bits of reality - to reason with -

I do think that he'll go for a plan to, instead, claim Hell and Abaddon and build Civilization in Golarion, if I have a plan to do that."

"I hope you are prepared to persevere should your Way prove more difficult than that.  Especially if Keltham is right in any way about this being a story."

"I personally think it would be your story, but then I'm prejudiced in feeling that the Irorian is clearly the most interesting character in it."

"The alternative to persevering might literally be that Asmodeus destroys the world. And - there are people who pray to me, now, I have to answer them.

Keltham's - more interesting when he's not broken and also not deceiving everyone and also not trying to betray them all. He's - really cool, actually, when he's not doing that. Maybe once I've fixed this I can introduce you."

"I have attended some of the classes Keltham taught to the Scientific Revolution.  He was using your glibness pin, and the use he was making of it was to speak unreasonably quickly and be unreadable to anyone there."

"If you mean to introduce us in a less formal setting, I believe I'll decline, at least until it's proven definitively that interacting with Keltham in that way will not cause me to end up becoming his woman as arranged by things above Pharasma."

"My guess for what's going on with 'tropes' is that Nethys is steering, and He's steering from - the thing that is omniscience without prophecy, which has to be, just, how is it going in all possible worlds.

Some worlds differ by random chance, slight changes in the weather causing a shutter to bang closed and wake someone at the wrong second, and it's hard to steer for that even if you're Nethys, so He mostly uses things that are straightforward to reproduce across worlds - lots of spellcasting circles for the people useful to Him, romantic entanglements that'll make people try particularly hard to save each other under a wide variety of circumstances, ways to tie bunches of worlds together like bundles of hay and make their points of divergence predictable.

This is, uh, also part of why I didn't tell the Most High the instant I realized Keltham's probably trying to overthrow Asmodeus. If I were the kind of person who'd do that, Nethys would've landed Keltham near someone else instead, and they might be a worse person to stop him from fucking up and destroying everything."

"Sounds like cheating.  I'll be a lot less impressed with Nethys if that's how it works."

"Also, why would Nethys do that."

"We thought initially it was to build Civilization, which will have lots of amazing magic research and lots of big explosions to launch things into the sky on pillars of fire. I'm pretty sure, now, that it was never that, just like Cayden Cailean absolutely was not collaborating with Asmodeus because Asmodeus's victory was inevitable. 

But - if you look at where they've been intervening, what their interventions have achieved -

Pilar. Kind of suspect some strings were pulled, to make sure she was in the initial group. She's weirder than any of the other girls - you'd be less likely to have one like her, in a group of twenty promising Asmodean wizard students - or for that matter a group of a thousand - Nethys and Cayden arranged for her to go to Elysium and come back still an Asmodean. They arranged for her to have incredibly bizarre powers that are like nothing I've ever heard of, that are like a game only it's never been clear what they're trying to achieve. They put what must have been an obscene amount of effort and intervention budget into helping her find the new ilani, who are picking it up really quickly - it turns out that Chelish people make worse students -

And me. If I'd figured out at the very beginning that Asmodeus won't, actually, refrain from annihilating people if it happens to be convenient, I'd have gone to Iomedae, probably, unless She sucks more than advertised which She might. I'm undecided on whether she's with Cayden and pretending not to be, not with Cayden because She is willing to tolerate more risk of the world being destroyed in exchange for not having to compromise with Asmodeus than Him in which case fuck Her, or not with Cayden because She's not okay with the very real possibility we fuck up and the world gets eaten by Rovagug, here, in which case She's good enough and I'd just Atone. ...I'm pretty sure I could Atone. I don't especially want to but I do hate the person who did literally all of the things I've done with my entire life and want that person turned into a paving stone, which seems like the right attitude. 

Anyway. Instead of cheaply telling me at the start 'hey, here's how many souls got annihilated in Hell last year', a lot of things more expensive than that to the gods have happened. Asmodeus told me to try to be corrupted and Aspexia and Abrogail and Subirachs and Maillol worked really hard on that and they shaped who I am today, and I'd try to undo that on the grounds that it was hostile interference in my personality and values except that I think maybe my being more and properly Asmodean was part of the plan. I think maybe I'm supposed to ascend and become a Power in Hell and fix it, in line with the terms already established for how I can do that, except interpreted some clever twisty way Asmodeus didn't see coming.

It's so much steering - such costly steering - I think they're aiming for a very small target, which is to say I think they have some probability of missing their target, which is terrifying given the stakes, but -"

" - but it's not just Keltham, right. If you build Civilization, if you build a society of people who think about whatever they want to think about, a lot of them will notice that serving Asmodeus is not in their interests, that Evil is not in their interests, that they don't like the Asmodean direction of resolving the muddles inside them, that if the strong do as they please and the weak suffer then they should be trying to be strong - even Abrogail can't think to herself that she should overthrow Asmodeus, I don't think, I bet her compact has a clause in it like mine, about remaining in His favor -

- if it were just Keltham then maybe I'd end up agreeing that it was better for Otolmens to squish him than for him to risk the whole world on whatever stupid idea he's had. But it won't be just him. In a world without prophecy, where the gods can't destroy them preemptively like they always have, it'll happen again and again and again for as long as Hell is run by Asmodeus or anything like him. You'd be crushing the best among humankind over and over and over -

- and if we ever make contact with a Civilization like dath ilan's, they'll annihilate us without a second thought, we'll have traded everything away for safety and not even be safe - 

- I don't know if that's what Nethys sees. But it might be why he's pouring everything into steering this, instead of just getting it to stop."

There's a number of thoughts Derrina has about this.  Irori, in the vision, did not seem to know about a place Keltham had in the state of affairs, nor did Abadar to whom she was sent.

Irori, on this theory, ought to be part of the conspiracy right in there with Cayden Cailean; Irori can hardly be happy about the gods generally and Achaekek specifically crushing all those who'd grow into divinity.  Derrina has her own speculations, in fact, as to what Irori might be doing about it, and of those she won't speak.

Nethys, on this theory, should've told Abadar at once of Keltham's significance, and let him be taken swiftly to Osirion, or granted more than only four cleric circles.

Why is it only Nethys and Cayden Cailean, apparently, who are conspiring in whatever conspiracy this is?

Derrina weighs words, weighs thoughts, for each time she uses information out of Irori's vision, she is careful in what she says -

"The Raise Dead was successful," reports a stressed Osirion Risen Guard from the door, watching Carissa Sevar warily. "We've, uh, arrested the subject, at the pharaoh's command."

"Mmmhmm. Tell him I said to cooperate and I'll do what more can be done as quickly as I can."

"Perhaps we should take that interruption as a sign, carefully arranged by Nethys perhaps, for otherwise our discourse shall have no end."

"As much as there are many many things of which I wish to speak to you, Carissa Sevar, my advice to you is that you take some time to yourself to think before Keltham comes for you.  If after you've thought, you're still here, and you'd still wish to speak to me, I will remain about this place for a time."

"Thank you. I assume Keltham's been informed, of my coming here? I did expect I was coming directly to him."

"He has not been seen in Osirion for six days, I'm told.  I know not where he now abides, if not here, or why he'd expect to be safe if not for the Black Dome."

"Well, in my estimation he'd appreciate more and more expensive efforts to get in touch with him. And in the meantime, I'll - think, and try to put the rest of the picture together -"

"I'll leave you to it.  Good luck convincing your young man to let you take rulership of Hell rather than his slaying Asmodeus.  Also, may I recommend to you in the future that you try for less dramatic relationship issues."

"I'm thinking in the future I will only do things because they advance my goals instead of because they seem like what an obedient Asmodean would do or because they hurt people I dislike or because thinking about them too much would be painful. We'll see how it goes."

She is not sure Carissa Sevar is totally clear on what Derrina was trying to convey here, but nonetheless, she will quietly and non-dramatically depart, making no fuss about it.

Well.

Carissa's to-figure-out list:

Is Maillol going to be okay? Is there something more she can do? Osirion tortures people sometimes, right, do they know more about how to do it better, or encourage subsequent recovery? No, showing any interest in him only would make him worse-off, at this point. 

Can she explain matters to Olegario? Should she try, is that fair to him when she might fail, and when he'd be worse off for having chosen the side of a traitor? Does he hate her now for having him murdered? Would he feel allowed to hate her if he wanted to?

Is there any productive mental motion that's nearby to 'being revolted with yourself over having done awful unproductive wasteful things that hurt people who trusted you'? Or is it just a complete mental waste of space she should try to get over as quickly as possible? Oooorrr do neither of those options wisely describe the best thing to do here. 

What is Keltham doing? Where is he? What changed when she sold her soul, that made him embrace working with the Padishah Empire when he'd previously been unwilling to? Why are only Cayden Cailean and Nethys apparently involved in what should be an operation most of Good and Neutral favors? 

What is Cayden's aim for Pilar? Why is he spending such an obscene share of His ability to act in the Material on it? What is his aim for Carissa, and is He on track to achieve it? What is the minimal set of interventions to get Carissa and Pilar into their present positions, and what interventions don't fit that?

What conditions would Asmodeus accept? What conditions would Keltham accept? Is there any overlap? Would it be all right with Keltham if Hell still involved torture, as long as no one was made pointlessly useless? Are the statues that decorate Dis fine as long as they're not conscious? Would Carissa accept a solution that involves lots of people not being conscious? How do you fix a paving stone? Would Dispater participate in a scheme to overthrow Asmodeus and give Carissa His throne, if it was a good enough scheme? 

Would she be a good Lawful Evil god?

- No, wrong question, the best Lawful Evil god is whoever successfully acquires, and keeps, authority over Lawful Evil. It's like the claim that a nice thing about Asmodeanism is that if your superior says you did a good job you know you did a good job, which claim turned out not to be true because your superiors might just not care about what you care about. If you're in charge, you know you're supposed to be in charge. 

Why does she have a cult? Is the cult part of the plan? Should she be actively encouraging her cult? How does one actively encourage a cult? ...actually she's totally been doing that, with Abrogail's help, at the party and in her address to Project Lawful where she halfheartedly condemned the rumors of heresy. Was that strategic, or was she just doing it out of thoughtless amusement? The Ascendant Three - does that mean anything, or is it just another bit of silliness in the Egorian rumor mill?

- actually, how much of what she heard bubbling in the Egorian rumor mill was silly?

What did Keltham and Abadar sever ties over, if it wasn't a plan to overthrow Asmodeus? ....actually, when Keltham severed ties with Abadar, he couldn't have been expecting Carissa'd be in a position to play any useful part in his plans. So what was he planning at the time? What did she realize, the first time she sat and thought without her mind being read, that set her on this course, that drove her to sell her soul - was it just that she was on the wrong side -

What would she be like, if she'd grown up in dath ilan, or for that matter in fucking Absalom, somewhere where she would have been able to think, able to breathe - would she still be evil - does it matter -

- would anyone really be evil, if they grew out of their muddles carefully in whatever direction they chose, or would they all choose Axis - 

- well, there are lots of people, it's a big world, it has PIlar in it - whatever Cayden's steering her towards -

....Carissa requests urgently that Cayden Cailean talk to her and explain herself? This is absurdly presumptuous but it worked on Irori. 

(Cayden Cailean cannot even begin to hear Carissa Sevar from all the way over here on the alignment chart.)

He strolls up to one of the entrances of the Black Dome, walking and at a normal walking speed, his acquired Teleport destination having been a couple of miles away in Sothis.  He does not particularly wish to make a production about traveling too quickly, through the city, including by flying about invisibly, and he's not wasting multiple Dimension Doors on popping around that way.

"Hello," Ri-Dul says to the fanciest-looking guard there.  "I'm told you've acquired a certain Carissa Sevar.  I am sent here by my employer, Keltham, to bring her to him."

He looks unmagical and like he doesn't have an alignment aura.  Unless somebody is looking very hard, in which case he has magic items filling practically every one of his slots and is very Lawful Evil.

Osirion wants to be clear that if they were selling Sevar to a potentially-adversarial government, at this point, they would demand a price that's more than even Keltham can reasonably afford, and if they're handing her over without having even interrogated her for everything she knows about Chelish war preparations they're going to need some substantial reassurances that this is reasonably in their interests.

Well then, he'll take out an absurdly expensive magic mirror - still without radiating any magic, unless somebody is looking quite hard - and exchange a few words.

"My employer, Keltham, says that he does not mind if you question Carissa Sevar about Chelish war preparations for a short time, if she's amenable.  He understands if you do not want to rely entirely on his own intentions to destroy Cheliax if they attempt that.  If you are also checking Sevar for compulsions, truthspelling her about Chelish plots, and the like, he requests to be told any results so as to avoid duplicated inconvenience to her."

"As for the other part, Keltham does bid you be told this:  He's not, particularly, offering to buy Carissa Sevar from you, unless she's given herself to you as a slave, with intent to be sold on to him at some absurd price.  Which, knowing her, he hasn't actually ruled out, he says.  But otherwise he's assuming that Carissa Sevar came to Osirion thinking that Keltham was there.  If Carissa Sevar does not say otherwise, then Keltham considers her to be an important noble and official of his potentially-adversarial government, that went to Osirion thinking to meet him."

"He is willing to pay tenfold a reasonable amount for any trouble you went to, or consider other favors."