Awww, too bad. She'll just Stone Shape her compact into the nearest wall and go, then.

It doesn't even last 24 hours, but several enterprising people copy it down and sell the text for a few coppers to local newssheets, which print it verbatim so that everybody can see the dangerous nonsense that Sevarists believe.

So now all of the actual Sevarists in Isfahel know the compact terms, if that was the goal; and shortly after, most of her followers in all Kelesh.

(They're definitely on board with conquering and ruling at least the Kelesh part of Golarion, if... someone would lend them the raw military power for that?)

Taldor, a nation in some ways very nearly identical with its enormous capital city of Oppara, is proverbial for its complexity.  Anybody who knew Taldor could tell you that Taldor would never ban Sevarism, because 'ban Sevarism' fits into two words and is therefore far too simple to be anything that Taldor's government would or even could do in real life.

"...felt it wiser to deemphasize the entire - well, all this talk of the mathematics of thinking.  It's strange.  Unaccustomed."

The man speaking, name of Modavian, looks thin, almost to the point of wasting; this lack of bulk is not much ameliorated by his enormous puffy beard and hair.  He seems not much intimidated by Carissa Sevar, the supposed object of admiration of the fanclub that he claims to lead; possibly because he's confident that she lacks much actual pull around here, possibly because he's trying too hard not to act scared, possibly because she's a beautiful young woman.  It's hard to tell with people like him.

"- I see. What have you been emphasizing instead."

"Worship of you personally, proclamation of your inevitable deityhood and superiority to all other mortals.  That's a recognized aspect of religious sects, and doesn't make people feel like they're in a cult."

"Can't have people feeling like they're in a cult. What... are these people hoping to accomplish by worshipping me?"

"We currently try to downplay talk of 'accomplishing' things, so as more clearly distinguish ourselves from certain Sevarist splinter groups who've taken that as a rallying cry, like the Effective Asmodeans.  To be clear, we try to cultivate an appearance of being allied with the more politically palatable offshoots, but at the same time, we need to clearly distinguish ourselves from them so as to retain our own identity in the eyes of the public."

".....okay, so, in public messaging, you're not talking too much about accomplishing things. But.... privately, what are you trying to accomplish."

"Maneuvering our sect into a position of greater political influence in Oppara...?" he says in the tones of somebody confused about what other life goals anybody could possibly have.

"...."

"And is that what the splinter cults are trying to achieve too?"

"No, they're much more politically naive.  To give you some idea of how naive they are, some of them have allied themselves with the Greens, the color currently in power, even though everybody with any sense knows that the color not in power tends to be more generous towards its supporters.  Their cozying up to the Greens made it substantially more difficult for sensible people like myself to bribe some Green senators to denounce you as a threat to Taldor's sovereignty, which is how I was able to get the Blue faction to endorse you as probably a better ruler than Prince Stavian, which in turn ensures that Prince Stavian can't suppress Sevarism without looking weak and fearful of us and risking Blue riots.  The post-Sevarists are even more firmly Blue, though they would generally be considered an enemy of Sevarism in the eyes of everybody except the general public which can't tell the difference.  But a serious and ongoing problem is that the so-called This Part Of Taldor, which split off from post-Sevarism, contains multiple openly Green luminaries."

"I am genuinely concerned that Sevarism may start to be seen as apolitical, which is to say, without political defenders or allies; and the so-called Mathematical Sevarists have not been helping by going around saying that Sevarism should be apolitical.  Oh, they don't use those words but it's what they mean."

"....tell me more about the Mathematical Sevarists."

"Well, they're practically wizards, is the problem.  Or worse, wizard wannabes, rather than actual wizards who at least have wealth and influence to make up for the immense facepunchability of having wealth and influence while being neither nobles nor gladiators.  They're openly supported by, and allied with, a sixth-circle wizard who lives near but not in the capital and doesn't have any color allegiance, which is nearly the worst look imaginable for Sevarism.  Their political doctrine, insofar as they even have one, is that the Reds, Whites, Greens, and Blues are all... I can't even remember how they put it, because my mind is wincing away from it too hard.  That all of the color factions are ultimately just chariot-racing fans?  They are extremely 'cower' rather than 'strut', if you take my meaning.  If I could have them all killed tomorrow I absolutely would."

"I'll see what I can do," she says dryly. "I was here to ensure that my sect leaders possessed the full text of my compact with Asmodeus, and to buy souls if there are sellers, but it seems like the game you are playing is too sophisticated for the compact with Asmodeus, or Hell itself, to feature much in it."

"We've been downplaying most talk about Hell and Asmodeus, for obvious political reasons.  But you making a clear statement that I am the leader of your sect here, and other groups should fall in line behind me, seems like it could bring at least the Mathematical Sevarists into line.  And while the Effective Asmodeans deny your divinity, I think they do respect you a good deal... at least some of them, anyways."

"I will go talk to these other sects and see what I think of them.

What, uh, are all of the sects."

"They're not sects, they're splinter groups -"

"Ahem.  The Effective Asmodeans are by far the largest, most popular, best-funded offshoot of ours, though most of them would deny that they're an offshoot of Sevarism and, to be fair, may have no idea that they are.  Their doctrine is 'Do the Most Evil' and by that they mean, use Aura Sight on groups being paid or supported in doing Evil things, in order to measure the number of alignment shifts from Good to Neutral or Neutral to Evil, and use that to determine the most cost-effective ways of producing alignment shift per gold piece.  Though they tend to restrict their investigations to legal and politically popular activities, of course.  At present, their most effective intervention has been determined to be supporting women in inducing abortions, for instance by providing them with safe hospices and medical care afterwards, as is very popular with Blues, unpopular with Greens, and impossible to openly oppose without angering the Church of Calistria and getting mysteriously stung to death by wasp swarms."

"...and why are they trying to do the most Evil? As a service to Asmodeus?"

"It's more that they advertise themselves as, if somebody else is trying to sponsor the doing of Evil - because they want to go to Axis instead of Heaven, believe themselves to be in need of that, or want to make a visible point about needing it - they can do it by donating to the Effective Asmodeans and get a lot of Evil done per gold piece, in a legal and politically popular way that makes you look good to your friends.  I mean, it's obviously not actually the most service you can to do Asmodeus, He's not going to conquer Golarion that way, except insofar as activities like that make Asmodeanism look more palatable.  A lot of them basically say so?  They get a significant amount of support from Asmodeus's Church, obviously not because Asmodeus's Church doesn't have any better way of doing Evil, but because it helps make Evil look good in Taldor."

" - but why are they doing that, if it's not to serve Asmodeus."

"They're serving Asmodeus in a legal, politically popular way that leaves a lot of room for anybody involved to declare afterwards they were really just trying to help young women in trouble, if the whole Sevarism thing doesn't work out, and in fact doesn't require them to be openly Sevarite at all."

"I see. 

What...else."

"The second-largest splinter group is post-Sevarists, whose primary doctrines are that you're not a god yet, you haven't conquered even a single country, and Abrogail Thrune is prettier than you.  They also say that your reasoning methods can't reduce all of life to calculation, you can't make real decisions just by assigning numbers to everything without using any intuition, that we shouldn't suppress all of our emotions and replace them with pure cold numbers, and that the whole thing isn't original to you and was mostly copied off Keltham."