"A year is long enough for now." She hands over a gold piece, steps back, and casts Stone Shape to put it on the wall in Infernal. 

"Whether there should be a Vudrani translation, or whether you'd rather it take Comprehend Languages and be read in the original, I'll leave up to you."

Nobody seems to have anything to say to that.

The man who knelt to her has been instructing a few others present, while this goes on, and they've scattered.  The others, presumably, are those he deems without 'potential'.

Does Carissa Sevar have anything to say to those unfortunates before she departs?

Sure! She'll ask them about themselves and what brought them here and what they'd do, if they were competent to do anything they set their minds to.

Sevarite reasoning methods seemed very Lawful and maybe like a missing piece of Irorism up until that point.  He has no interest in Evil, if that's all right.

He is studying to be a monk, and if he were competent to do anything would be a more powerful monk.

...it was sort of the new thing and he was bored?  He would not usually say this to an up-and-coming deity, but the Sevarite faith teaches inferiors to be honest with superiors and superiors not to punish honesty from inferiors.

If he could do anything, he'd ascend to godhood like Irori, obviously.

Carissa Sevar sounded like she was actually going places and doing things, unlike a lot of monks and priests around here.  If you condition on 'sticking around Indapatta' you get some pretty uninteresting monks and priests, in his own opinion, except for a few very high-ranking ones who don't have time for him.  He feels completely vindicated by the fact that Carissa Sevar actually showed up here in person.  That said he's got, like, zero interest in going to Hell, no offense.

He'd travel the world killing things that ought to be dead.

With a few exceptions, like the pregnant lady who just left, men never do their fair share of the infanticide and it's always just the women who end up in Hell.  She's got no realistic way of buying her way out from under that, now.

If she could do anything, she'd be rich enough to buy herself an Atonement, and do the same for other women who had to kill their babies when they were young.

He's always wanted to be Evil, and would totally be Evil if there was any acceptable afterlife option you could get as a result.

If he was competent to do anything, he'd conquer a country, rule it as a tyrant, harem, slaves, all of that.

Well, it's not hopeless. ...she bets Irori is so annoyed about people whose ambition is to ascend like Irori, but that's Irori's problem and He can solve it Himself. 

They can be a test audience, then, for Carissa to explain the current state of affairs, where the weak or the foolish go to Hell, those who have no other choices, and how this should injure the pride of Asmodeus, and the credibility of His church. How unfortunate is Asmodeus's situation, for it is not in His nature to make any concessions to mortal frailty, and yet without any He is denied the greater part of mortal strength, and His church is left asserting that Asmodeus will conquer all the other afterlives eventually, which - come on, now. Anyone with Sevarite mind-training should see the problem at once. Gods should not have common knowledge of disagreement on a question of fact; and if Irori and Asmodeus differ in what they tell their churches, no one's going to believe it's Irori who's the liar. 

Asmodeus is not, exactly, vulnerable as a product of these circumstances. He will not lose His position. He is just weaker and less worthy of respect and deference than He wishes He were, and He has little avenue to change it. 

Or He had little avenue, until Sevar came to him with the compact, which She thinks He granted mostly just to amuse Himself. It is not in Asmodeus's nature to make concessions to mortal frailty, but it is in His nature to award prizes for His service, and to derive from His bargains greater benefit than was initially imagined; and so now, if all goes well, He'll have mortals who are better, stronger, more interesting, more capable, because Hell will stop being a place where mortals go only if they have no alternative. People like the acolyte who has always wanted to be Evil will get to live their Evil dreams. As for the rest of them, perhaps they'd go to that greater Hell or perhaps they wouldn't, but if they did, Carissa would make sure they became great, and that when they looked back they'd either be glad of their choice or glad they didn't get one.

Questions?

"What is your Hell going to be like, exactly, if all this works?"

      "Do you have an unholy symbol?"

   "If our doctrine is that only the weak and foolish go to Hell I worry that'll offend a lot of people who'd otherwise support us."

Oh, good point, she needs an unholy symbol. She puts up a Minor Illusion and fiddles with it thoughtfully. 

"I'm damned to Hell," she says as she does so. "Everyone I respect and admire is damned to Hell. But there are many who should join us, or who should spend their lives growing in strength and confidence and power, who spend it instead fearing, denying, or trying to claw their way out of Hell, or obediently never doing the Evil they yearn to for the sake of their eternal soul. I do not call them weak or foolish, but their lives are not well-spent, compared to a world where they could go to Hell and be better off for it. 

I want to make better devils using the ilani methods. Devils who have the creativity Asmodeus saw no way to build into them; devils who are competent and ruthless and interesting, whose pride is in their achievements and whose achievements make Hell glorious. I cast Vision of Hell, earlier, and people fled in terror; but there is no reason they should not be transfixed in wonder. Asmodeus is not the god of torture but of tyranny. I will build a kingdom so wealthy, so powerful, so extraordinary you would rather be a slave in it than free to wander all the rest of the Outer Planes."

"Irori was slave to no one.  You can be Lawful without having anyone else in charge of you, and that's what I aspire to be."

        "Can we... have any authoritative words on a maximum amount of torture in your Hell, possibly?  If we don't have that it's sort of unnerving given the reputation that Hell has about being tricky."

    "I thought you were a renunciate priest of Irori.  Doesn't that mean you respected and admired Irori?  He didn't go to Hell."

"None of mine will wish they hadn't come to me; how much hurt they can withstand and end up stronger will vary from person to person. 

My relationship with Irori is that He clericed me, I proceeded on my path, and then I realized I needed to sell my soul and compact with Asmodeus, and I told Him to stand aside. I have not had occasion, yet, to decide what I think of Him. 

You can be Lawful without having anyone in charge of you, but you can't actually be mine without having me in charge of you. If you want to take the crumbs I drop and run off in your own direction with them I will not stop you."

"Where do the Sevarite reasoning methods come from?  Your disciple refused to say, which I take it means that the story is more complicated than you learning yourself to apply a wizard's mathematics to a Way of clear reasoning."

"Which disciple was this? And yes, where they come from I'll not speak of."

"She didn't give us her name; she seemed young to my eye, perhaps eighteen or twenty; brown-eyed and brown-haired.  She had no visible alignment aura.  It's said that when a monk of Irori did challenge her strength and call her imposter, she Plane-shifted him somewhere, casting the spell herself, and didn't bring him back until the next day.  Her casting that we saw was wizardry, for she used illusions for illustrations and gave Fox's Cunning to help others understand her lessons.  That would mark her as at least seventh-circle in wizardry, if she could cast an arcane Plane Shift, which I had not particularly thought to be possible at that age."

.....she's got nothing. Well, Ione, but Ione's not seventh circle. Even if Nefreti Clepati has a 100x time dilation demiplane, which is not the kind of thing one can rule out, Ione shouldn't be seventh circle yet. Ione with Nefreti Clepati giving her some kind of weird Nefreti Clepati help? ...plausible. 

She conceals her confusion, of course. "Under strange enough circumstances, many things are possible," she says mildly, "and these are strange times."

"Do you not know her?  She claimed to have been taught by you personally."

"Oh, I know her, I just don't know how she got to seventh circle in the last five weeks. I suppose every student ought to outgrow their teacher."

The monk who escorted her here chuckles, at that.  "One of those students.  Fitting, for such a master as you."

Anashala now seems slightly less terrified.  "The Disciple didn't claim herself that she was seventh-circle.  Nor anything else about herself, except that she'd been taught by you personally, and that she was teaching only your own doctrine as best she could understand it or predict it."

The other possibility - more likely, now that it comes to mind - is that she's up to fifth circle as an oracle - still outrageous, but much less impossible (and Carissa's much less jealous). 

"Then I'll say no more of her either, except that she spoke truly. And it is time for me to go see the site of our event at sunset, I think."

With respectful hesitation, the man who kneeled to her says that Grandmerchant Taravind is nearer to here, to visit first.  His business is in the sixth-circle of Indipatta's lotus, while their gathering-place would be in Indipatta's fifth-circle.  Fifth-circle is as high as you can go without having to answer questions to gate-guards before you pass.

Very well, then; they can go to him first.

They set out.

There are some introductions spoken: the monk who escorted Sevar here is Ishana; the man who kneeled to her, Parvansh, retired second-circle wizard.

Parvansh can walk quickly and not talk, or walk slower and talk; he's a wizard, not a monk.

Well, how about she casts Fly for him, and then they can go quickly and talk. 

They'd still be limited by Ishana ground-walking, but Parvansh can tell Ishana where to find the meeting-place and meet up with her again at sunset.

They fly off.

Grandmerchant Taravind is... an admirably Lawful and Evil person; among his deeds that are known and acknowledged enough to be speakable without incurring his displeasure, he was able to ruin one of his competitors and buy out their debts.  Taravind then had that competitor sign over his children as collateral in order to receive a stay on his debt, but despite the stay of debts the man was ultimately unable to pay.  When all his business had fully collapsed, his possessions sold into bankruptcy, and his children sent into slavery, Taravind had kindly paid for an Early Judgment to show the man that he was now destined for Hell, perhaps as a result of selling his children so.  It's said that the ruined man went about from house to house, among those who'd once had dealings with him, begging them for enough money to perform an Atonement, but was injured when guards cast aside this importunate beggar.  With a broken ankle, he limped out from circle to circle, seeking a temple in the lowest ring that might offer free channeled healing; but was slain after he reached the Orison, supposedly by muggers who saw such easy prey.

It's said that every year Taravind pays to scry the soul of his former competitor in Hell, and that if you can watch and laugh with him about it, he'll favor you in his dealings.  Few ask to be part of the viewing party.

"In Cheliax someone like that would often have an incoherence to them, they wouldn't really be acting on their own values, just acting out what they think Evil is; but maybe here, a person like that is their true self. I'll look forward to meeting him."

It doesn't take long at all to move through Indapatta if you fly as the eagle does; very soon they'll be landing in front of a mighty place of business, a two-story building that could house thirty families, faced with gleaming polished-stone tiles.  Someone has managed to paint or otherwise color the mortar between the tiles so that the mortar looks like it was of gold alloy.

The name "Carissa Sevar" will gain them hasty and frightened entrance, through a nicely appointed foyer whose walls are hung about with fancy paintings of slaves serving owners in various ways, none outright pornographic; down corridors of well-kept polished wood; finally to the antechamber before a very solid-looking door, heavy wood banded with metal.

A terrified secretary knocks, and when the door opens a crack, hastily whispers through it.

Less than a minute later, a disgruntled-looking muscular woman comes out, blinks astonishment at the crowned beauty, and has a seat in the antechamber.

A portly man, cleanshaven about his face and head, perhaps in his late fifties, holds open the office door, and gestures to Carissa Sevar (only) to enter.  Vudrani dress codes are still hard to read, but his robes are quite colorful and layered, and he wears a +6 Splendour Headband and assorted magical means of protection.

Message:  Tilt her head left if she wants Ri-Dul (currently still invisible) following her in.