She is not the slightest bit interested in ever having an intimate relationship ever again, unless you count murdering Abrogail! She just thinks that carrying around the statues of your slaves is the sort of thing an aspiring Evil goddess should do!

He didn't say anything.  He didn't even give any expressive looks.  If Sevar feels a need to defend herself, it's because she knows what she did.

...slave stored away for later! Anything else to do in Taldor? Do they have time to hit another city before they're expected back in Indapatta?

Actually no, it's going to be sunset in Vudra pretty soon.

Right then. Indapatta.

She walks in, invisible, and then lets the invisibility wear off; Mind Blank should stop anyone from noticing her before she wants to. She floats, then, so everyone can see her, and speaks. 

What would it be like, to see the world from the perspective of Asmodeus? It is said that He despises mortals, but why? He doesn't seem to stop them becoming gods; no objections has He been said to possess even to the Starstone, which Irori calls cheating at godhood.

Lots of people don't really ask that question. It's not a difficult question to answer, just one you have to think to ask. A lot of questions are like that, and Sevarism could be called the art of seeing them.

Asmodeus hates mortals because mortals, in fact, suck. By Asmodeus's standards, but by any other objective standard too. By their own standards, once they start to develop those. Asmodeus does not hate mortals for being weak; imps are even weaker. Asmodeus hates mortals for being muddled. 

She explains what she means. That people will quote a different price for the same thing depending how the question is asked of them; that they have actual circular preferences, where you can find them wanting A more than B more than C which they want more than A. Project Lawful found some examples that work at least on Chelish people. She hopes they work on Vudrani too, or are close enough to make them think. 

Mortals don't know what they want. They literally can't name it; they can't trade off between things they want; they lie to themselves about what they care about and they lie so comprehensively there's often no real answer underneath all the lies. 

From Asmodeus's perspective, the planet is coated in worms, writhing, wriggling, reacting insensibly to various inputs because they aren't coherent enough to even pursue their own goals. Yes, he hates them. She does too. You will too.

Asmodeus wants people he can see, who do things predictably, for reasons, in their interests. Asmodeus doesn't know how to tell worms to be what he wants, not without torture, and worms are scared of torture and get even more incoherent at the prospect of it. 

Carissa also wants people to be coherent. She is as exasperated, as appalled, as Asmodeus; she sees the weakness in herself. What she told Dispater, when she went before him to sell her soul, is that she thinks she can fix it. Not without pain; her Hell will hurt. But it will not hurt senselessly, horribly; it will not leave people lost from themselves. 

She has done it; she has dug the weakness out of herself and it has left her brighter, clearer, closer to a god. It wasn't easy. It won't be easy for them. And it will be a long time, before a better Hell emerges from her better strategies, because only those souls in lands she has conquered, which have done her and Hell more service than disservice, will come to her. But a better Hell will emerge -- better for Asmodeus, and much better for humanity. The sort of solution Asmodeus cannot see, because of what He is, but He compacted with her, because it amused Him to see her try. 

There are Sevarites all over the world, now. Most of them won't amount to anything. It took careful direct instruction out of another world, to make Sevar what she is, and she's not there yet herself. But if the cults anywhere will amount to something, she'd bet on the one in Indapatta, which are serious about learning the styles of thought that will leave them unmuddled, and serious about following their path wherever it takes them. Not all of those paths, even when they unmuddle, will lead to Hell; but some will. More of them, once Hell is better. 

Hers is not an easy path. Once you know your own strength, your weakness is unbearable. Once you start to see like a god, you won't like anything you see. But it is a path she thinks Irori walked, in part. She got a vision from Him, when she renounced him. The visions of the gods are not easily conveyed, but she thinks Irori will be pleased, to see more people unmuddled, to see them grow into more perfect beings.

She hopes they'll attain it in the world of the living. If not, she will offer it to them, again, in Hell, if they make it to her. She will give them the guidance she cannot give them each individually here. She will not give up on them; she will not break them; she will guide them down this path for as long as it takes. 

Asmodeus deals frequently in deception. Carissa cannot; deception muddles people, it interferes with their learning the pathways among truths, and it's a habit that is in humans close to self-deception, which she has no patience for. So she will not deceive them. And she does not want a cult of the deluded, those who imagine Hell isn't that scary, those who pretend to themselves they believe her if they don't.

She casts Vision of Hell.

She lets it go for a minute and then stops it. 

"You don't have to believe things all the way. You can be uncertain. It's essential, actually, to starting to be unmuddled. You face a terrible thing, and you are afraid, and maybe you want to be sure it'll work out, be sure you'll be safe, be sure you'll reach me; or maybe you want to look away from this, never think of it again, tell yourself I am a fraud, it is a scam.

The truth is that I will, very likely, ascend and become a power in Hell - I swear that to you, I have a plan and I expect it to succeed, I do not have you chasing an unlikely dream. But I could fail. The stakes are very high, and there are no sure things. It is a dangerous thing, to aspire to as much as we, here, aspire to. When I sold my soul, I did not know if I would succeed; I knew only that this was the only path down which greater perfection could take me. 

I think that is true for some of you too. Your path runs through this, the best and perhaps only chance of humanity to change what Lawful Evil is and what it means, for everyone who has ever lived or will ever die. You can walk away from it, but you'll be lying to yourself, if you do. And if you have enough of a god inside you, you'll know that you're lying. For the rest of your life.

The alternative is to stay. To learn. To teach - because I'll need more followers, to do the things I need to do. To grow. And, when the time comes - and you'll know when the time comes - to come to me in Hell. It won't be safe. It won't be easy. But it is a path to greatness and power and godhood, and it is the only path free of lies."

It lands, some parts more than others, some people more than others.  It's clear that she's more persuasive than they expected, to the extent that muddled beings like mortals can be said to have expected anything.

...nobody seems eager to sell their soul today, among the high-potentials.

They are here to consider an alternative path of Irorism, mostly; because Sevarism had something that completes Irorism, was missing from it.  Maybe even they are here in hopes of regaining something that was suppressed within the mortal soul, by the horrendous and inescapable punishments for expressing Lawful Evilness within Pharasma's Creation - as it stands now, where Asmodeus claims almost all who enter Hell.

They get it, clearly, much more than Taldor gets it, because there is a base structure of Irorism to build on, and it's about finding your own Way and ascending along it, and doing that by remaking yourself and correcting errors within yourself.  That nobody could be Lawful Evil, if their own Way took them there - that there are possible Ways, within themselves, that they wouldn't be allowed to walk, if that was where their Way took them - well, it just puts into sharper focus why Irori was always said to despise Asmodeus so.

...it's just, people in Vudra, even Sevarites, don't want to irrevocably commit to Hell, right now, while Carissa Sevar hasn't yet ascended.  Even the people who are Evil right now, or suspect themselves to be, don't want to sell their souls and lose all hope of ever making it back to Neutral.  You could always live a humble life working at an orphanage for long enough, volunteer for the Worldwound and live long enough to slay a demon or maybe just take a claw for a comrade if your sin was light enough, become rich and buy your way back, become very rich and buy an Atonement.  There's the hope of that, or a lie you can tell yourself about it being possible, but not if you've sold your soul.

It's not really the prudent decision, in the end, to sell your soul to Hell.  So nobody the organizer considers 'promising', in Vudra, wants to do that, apparently.

Good for them. 

She means it. Inconvenient for her, but she can pick up some souls in other more muddled places. They should follow their path where it takes them. Irori isn't her concern, she renounced him, but she comprehends Him more having seen His city and His people, and she thinks He'd be proud of them. For being here and also for refusing her their souls.

She wishes them well, and goes on her way.

He Teleports her around to a few more places, of great variety of sub-cult-cultures, and ends in Absalom.

It's nighttime now, in Absalom, but the city's more thriving sections hardly go to sleep when the sun sets; even in the height of summer, which this is not.

A full moon hangs in the sky, which is plenty of illumination to make your way down streets this wide and well-paved.  At least one business per block seems to have found the wealth to put up a Continual Flame to illuminate itself, which goes a long way towards making sure the whole street never gets quite so dark that nobody could find their way along it.

The density of wizards is not quite what it is in the cities of Cheliax, but many a walker seems to have Light about themselves.  A copper will buy you that cantrip lasting ten minutes, if you find a wizard apprentice to cast it for you.

Is Sevar going disguised here, by the way, or openly with mithril crown and Hell-bought beauty?

This close to Cheliax? In the place she is rumored to be planning to destroy? Disguised. One thing to take that risk in Indapatta, a continent away from home, in a Lawful country that other countries would hesitate to provoke with assassinations/kidnappings anyway. Entirely different to take it in Absalom. 

Though if she does get kidnapped the world doesn't end so she can't bring herself to get worked up about it. 

Are there people who'll answer queries from a teenaged wizards-apprentice girl about Sevarites?

Absalom is, for the most part, going about its daily business trying to be cheerful.  Mentioning terms like 'Sevarite' or 'Carissa Sevar' brings a change to people's expressions; fear, nervousness, angry dismissal.

It was claimed to have been prophesied, earlier, that Absalom had until the next lunar eclipse to stay alive.  And then another prophecy, supposedly attributed to Ione Sala, said that Absalom was due to be destroyed in sixteen days from today.

Word has now come that the Oracle of Nethys out of Nefreti's Temple, called the Last True Oracle, has publicly and categorically denied this claim just yesterday: pronouncing that, if Absalom were to be destroyed, she would not know when it was to happen.

This... hasn't really reassured people.  Such official authorities as Absalom possesses, who see their job as being to suppress 'panic' rather than say help evacuate the island, tried to interpret this as 'the day of destruction must be a long time away, or not be particularly likely to happen at all, if we have no idea of when it will happen'.  Most people were not foolish enough to go along with this logic.

She won't be able to warn them in advance, of course. 

"That's why I want to find the Sevarites. They must know when."

There are no Sevarites in Absalom.

Anybody who believes in Carissa Sevar's message, or the words of Her Disciple, has gotten the fuck out of Absalom.

Anybody who doesn't believe in Carissa Sevar's cause, but believes the word about Absalom being doomed, has gotten the fuck out of Absalom.

Anybody who doesn't believe in any of that, but who believes that the followers of Urgathoa and Achaekek believe it, wants to get out of Absalom before the battle starts.

Anybody who doesn't believe that those forces are converging on Absalom, is nervous about panic and riots from the people who do believe that.

Those who are stuck here, too poor to leave... aren't really happy with Carissa Sevar about the matter.

There are no Sevarites in Absalom.

Fair enough.

In that case she'll just do some tourism. Just, you know, because she always wanted to visit Absalom.

Most of the magic shops and bookstores are closed at this time of night, but there's plenty of taverns and brothels still running.

Though you could probably find an open magic shop or bookstore if you looked hard enough?  The fraction of the population with Rings of Sustenance may be higher here than any other city in the world, even Quantium.

Well, she'll wander around; if she runs into one, she'll go in, but if not, that's fine. It's the people, really, who are irreplaceable, not the city. The people fleeing, or awaiting their doom with terror - do you really think it's meaningless, Keltham, that if you tell them I'll consume their souls they spend all their life's savings to pack themselves onto a boat and get out of my reach -

...they mostly don't believe the soul thing, for what it's worth?  And people aren't spending all their life's savings on it either, if they're at that income level?

People who can readily afford a ship out of Absalom are bidding up places on ships heading out; because an unregistered foreign vampire was deported yesterday, and an assassin-priest of Achaekek was unmasked and killed by adventurers while they were all on a ship approaching Absalom.  This has, by perfectly reasonable logic, turned into the conclusion that Urgathoa doesn't want competition from a new soul-eating god, so She is sending hither all the greater undead who do Her homage, to lurk about the Starstone Temple and prevent Carissa Sevar from entering while she's still mortal; and that Achaekek views Carissa Sevar as a threat who might destroy It in open battle if she is not stopped before then.

Nobody really believes that either, to be clear.  But they believe that other people believe it and are going to riot and burn down Absalom.

...here's a bookshop that's still open, if she's still interested in that.

Sure. What are Absalom bookshops not hastily hijacked by the Conspiracy like.

...do they sell strident denunciations of Abrogail Thrune.

...not exactly?  They've got a salaciously denunciatory erotic novel about the degenerate activities that Abrogail Thrune supposedly gets up to with Carissa Sevar, which, given timescales, almost certainly has to be a pre-existing book reprinted with a couple of key names changed.  Unless the author Tuk Chingle can just write that fast but this seems unlikely.

There's a lot of books denouncing Cheliax and some of those probably have an Abrogail Thrune chapter or two.

...she wants the Abrogail Thrune/Carissa Sevar erotica. And some history books, why not. And some magic books, why not. 

The bookshop proprietor will bag these purchases and remark that she might not want to be seen publicly reading a book with 'Sevar' visible about its title; that might draw negative attention either from hidden liches who take her for a Sevarite, or from Sevarites who are offended, it's said that both sides have practically honeycombed Absalom by now.  Oh, but she should definitely buy the book, the author (quick glance) Tuk is reputed to have excellent connections among Chelish expatriates to Absalom, and to have quite inside knowledge about that famous relationship.

The city's honeycombed with Sevarists, hmmm? She actually vaguely wants to meet one, see how credible they seem about the apocalypse. She doesn't at all want to encounter the Urgathoans, though.

Well, they're not visible Sevarists!  Any of those would've been eaten by vampires by now!  It's more that practically anybody you meet on the street could be a hidden agent of Carissa Sevar.

The apocalypse seems to her pretty credible?  She keeps tabs on those because it's important for serving her readers; there've been at least ten apocalyptic foretellings since she opened the shop, and this one definitely seems to be in the top three credibility-wise.  The Oracle of Nethys herself is said to have denied knowledge about it!  Officially!

Wouldn't that make it less credible?

No, because none of the other foretellings got to the point where the Oracle of Nethys said anything at all!  Admittedly the Oracle of Nethys wasn't around then.  But Nefreti Clepati could've denied knowledge about the last foretold disasters, and she didn't.