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Abrogail Thrune, deliberately dressed not in her best, sits quietly in her personal library.

She is not standing at a high balcony overlooking her city, she is not screaming and weeping, she is not taking out her rage on her servants or on an interesting Good victim dragged up from her dungeons.  She will not give Them the satisfaction; she is not confused in the first place about the source of her unhappiness, nor could it be assuaged on a bystander; and Abrogail of House Thrune has never cried once after she finished her ordeal in Hell.

She is taking time to stop, to do little, to allow her mind to wander.  +6 WIS will tell you to do that occasionally, even if you absolutely don't have time.

She tried to read one of the better romance novels whose existence she'd ordained at the beginning of her reign; and then had to put the book aside, for there were tropes in it.

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Unable to find satisfaction in reading, forbidden other entertainments that wouldn't help her mood anyways, Abrogail Thrune's mind turns (as mortal minds do) to the past, to previous decisions that can't be undone, rehearsing the experience of disaster.

As though, could she but decide on the one perfect thing she could've done, the disaster would then unhappen, having been solved, herself having learned from it, passed the test, there would be no need anymore for it to still have happened.

The moment when she heard that a presumed-9th-circle scry had hammered through Project Lawful's protections to find Carissa.

Within the minute Abrogail was Mind-Blanked and Teleported far from Cheliax, waiting to hear whether Egorian had become part of a blank circle on a map...

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In retrospect, the decisions that led to that point were probably mistaken.

Any life choice that leads to you later fleeing your country and waiting to hear if its capital city has been destroyed, was probably, in fact, a mistake.

But it is done, it cannot be undone, there is no obvious way to undo it, all the obvious ways out of the resulting trap seem to be trapped themselves.

And now, somehow, there doesn't seem to be anything to do - besides obvious straightforward unimportant things like rushing Cheliax's digestion of Nidal - while Abrogail sits on a comfortable library chair and waits for the week of doom.

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At the time, the logic seemed clear.  They certainly weren't trying to take hostages against Keltham, as Asmodeus had forbidden; you have to tell somebody about hostages, after all, and they weren't planning to tell that naive boy any such thing.

Aspexia had set her eyes on having a potential future heir to the Crown who might ravel 'corrigibility'; and, more importantly, transforming Keltham's story irrevocably into a dath ilani tragedy - making sure the story could not be a story of Keltham's triumph, ending well for him, especially by dath ilan's standards.

Abrogail had wondered, yes, about a potential heir to the throne with the blood of dath ilan.  But more than that, Abrogail had been thinking of Keltham's unwitting prophecy born of tropes, that if Keltham came into conflict with Abrogail over Carissa, the only possible resolutions were Abrogail's ruin or that she become Keltham's woman.

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The mechanics of the plot had been straightforward enough, at least by Abrogail Thrune's standards.

Keltham had been prompted to ask another of his women to guise herself as his Carissa, so that he might learn to fight her and hurt her unrestrained.

Keltham had picked Meritxell, as predicted.

Keltham had needed no further prompting, after that, to ask Meritxell to guise herself as others besides Carissa; nor, a short time after, to ask Meritxell to appear as the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, Abrogail Thrune.

Meritxell by then had already practiced pretending to be Abrogail Thrune during sex, and Abrogail Thrune had watched her and learned to pretend to be Meritxell pretending to be Abrogail Thrune.

When the time had come to slip in the real Abrogail Thrune in the place of the fake - on their second encounter, daring not the first, in case that was too obvious - Keltham hadn't noticed any discrepancy, according to Abrogail's read of his thoughts, then.

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And all of that, in retrospect, had been a terrible mistake.

Abrogail should not have had Meritxell pose as herself, should have had Meritxell refuse any requests to pose as Abrogail citing fear of lese-majeste.  She should have just had Keltham's seed stolen for her from Meritxell's mouth, as Keltham himself had suggested by way of his own wary thoughts.  

Keltham, looking back over that course of events, remembering Meritxell assuming Abrogail's form, is liable to suspect that Abrogail is with his child.

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Keltham might not suspect the dozens of other women impregnated by way of his seed stolen from out of Meritxell's mouth beneath cover of Invisibility.  Or Keltham might suspect that too, not from evidence, but from it being an obvious thought to him.  Or from remembering, once his Intelligence was raised high enough, that he'd had that thought himself in "Isidre's" presence.

Some of those impregnated women had been Baronesses of Cheliax and priestesses of Asmodeus, who would raise any child to be destined for Hell.

Some had been peasants, so that Keltham's children by them would grow up in Chelish destitution.

And some of those anonymous peasant women had been seized namelessly and returned namelessly, under threat if they broke silence, origins and destinations going unrecorded by any part of the Crown.

It wasn't a hostage-taking, in contravention of Asmodeus's orders; they weren't expecting to need hostages, then.  Rather, by those tactics they had essayed to make Keltham's story be irrevocably a dath ilani tragedy, beyond even Cheliax's power to undo and give a happy ending, for any threat.

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They... had not been thinking, then, about how Keltham might still have a potential response to that ploy.

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Abrogail Thrune had realized her error shortly after Keltham, departing, had said, "I will tell Osirion to draw a circle on a map of Cheliax and then I'll destroy everything inside that circle.  That's not a threat.  It's my policy on cleaning up my own messes."


(It was also the first time she'd felt any flash of desire for Keltham as a man, but that is a completely separate issue and Abrogail Thrune is not thinking about it right now and is also pretending that it didn't happen.)

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She should have thought of it.  Abrogail had overheard Keltham's thoughts about Civilization's great weapons.  She'd heard the report of him asking a fake paladin about ways to obliterate Awaiting-Consumption or injure Urgathoa.

It was just - not a thought that squared up easily with the naive teenage boy giving away so many key secrets to Cheliax, who boasted of having never told a single lie in Golarion -

One just... doesn't usually think, of that, as something that a regretful teenage father would do.  Especially one you've started identifying, in the back of your mind, as a naive Goodling.

'Oh, I'll just destroy that entire country before my children can be ensouled.  Problem solved!'  It's not something a Good person would do, or an Evil person either.

Or maybe Keltham will only destroy Egorian, to get at Abrogail, if Keltham thinks it's only her that's pregnant.

Which... still would be not good for Cheliax's ambitions.

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Keltham has spoken much of Law and of multi-agent optimality, conflicts averted and doing Something Else Which Is Not That; it's an obvious thought even to Abrogail Thrune, who is not of Abadar, that it might be possible for two Lawful beings to negotiate Something Else from this situation.

Even if it were not Keltham, Abrogail would want to avoid the annihilation of Cheliax by any means necessary, up to and including both sides talking to each other.

But -


- but Keltham may not know, Abrogail does not know whether Keltham knows, that Abrogail is with his child.  Maybe he hasn't thought of it, even with an Intelligence boost; he's an alien.  Does Cheliax try to open negotiations over it, he will know -

If Cheliax offers ransom against Keltham choosing to destroy all Cheliax, Keltham will know that Cheliax thinks he has cause to do that; it will tip him off if he doesn't already know, and also weaken Cheliax's negotiating position, that they were admitting from the start that Keltham's default course was to destroy Cheliax and that Keltham must be paid off to do anything else -

Maybe Keltham wouldn't do that, on his own, wouldn't slay a whole country for a reason like that, and if so, by offering to negotiate, Cheliax might end up paying some terrible ransom that Keltham wouldn't otherwise have demanded at all -

Maybe Keltham would only kill Abrogail, and not slay all Egorian or all Cheliax, if he thought it was only Abrogail with his child; Abrogail would be resurrected but the child would be gone, if it were not yet ensouled.  Cheliax has been listening, listening hard, to see if Keltham has been trying to hire any assassins, for if so Abrogail will just let him succeed, let him appear to win, lose the child inside her rather than lose Egorian -

Abrogail thought about ordering her own assassination, a real one, not faked at all.  Only Abrogail has read too many transcripts about Conspiracy-theoretic reasoning; Keltham may reason through to what they want him to believe, maybe think the real assassination was fake -


And Keltham, for his part, if he knows, will not want them to know that he knows.  If Keltham is planning to destroy Egorian or Cheliax, he will not want Cheliax to know that, prepare for that, before he strikes.

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Gods can settle negotiations like that, Aspexia has told her.  Gods can simply make pacts not to use knowledge that they are told as part of negotiations.  Gods can commit to doing whatever they would have done if they had not known.

But for Cheliax to offer Keltham even a pact like that - for Keltham to offer her a pact like that - would also tell each other everything.  The reason why that pact would be required, would be too obvious.

And absent a pact like that, Keltham does not know if he can trust Asmodeans, she does not know if she can trust Keltham, if one appears before the other saying, "I came to you to negotiate trusting that you won't use the information from my offering to open negotiations"...

Really you can't trust Asmodeans about that, if there's no prior compact.  Abrogail Thrune wishes in this moment that Asmodeans had a reputation for being trustworthy about that; but, in fact, they're not.

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And if Keltham really doesn't do anything - if he hasn't figured it out - to all appearances, until quite recently, he wasn't paying much attention to Cheliax at all -

Then soon Abrogail's child will be ensouled.  Shortly after, other children all across Cheliax.

And then, probably, once informed of that fact, if it's allowed to become true, Keltham really won't consider it his nonthreatening action to destroy Cheliax if it makes any trouble.  Not if that'd send so many children of his tragically to the Boneyard.

They didn't mean to take hostages, definitely didn't intend to contravene Asmodeus's orders by taking hostages deliberately; they had their own reasons for wanting Keltham's children in Cheliax.  Why, they've had those reasons from the beginning, Keltham himself observed them immediately upon his arrival; dath ilan has good 'genes' useful for the 'heritage-optimization' program that Cheliax is even now in the process of planning.

They didn't mean to take hostages; but Cheliax will have them, very soon.  And Keltham should know that it wasn't a threat that created them.

Cheliax hasn't set a definite date on war with Osirion, not least because Osirion's intelligence has been so impossibly good.  But once enough of Keltham's children start detecting as ensouled - it will be Cheliax's best course of action, then, to crush the Scientific Revolution before it can start to seriously compete.


...or, of course, Keltham could be waiting until the last minute to destroy Egorian or Cheliax, hoping he'll find an alternative before his hand is forced to that; and not wishing to let Cheliax know what awaits them, even by offering to open negotiations.

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So, in terms of greater events, it seems that all Abrogail can do is sit and tensely wait for her child to quicken with soul, or maybe for Cheliax to be destroyed without warning.


It's probably a trope, that tension; being put in a position where all you can do is wait for the week, if not an exact known hour, of doom.

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(It's actually a much narrower trope than that!  Keltham even explained it in an offhand remark-lecture at dinner, one time, discoursing upon dath ilani fiction, all of whose tropes seemed so alien and inapplicable that the Chelish Conspiracy paid it little mind.

Keltham said to his Chelish hosts, that night, that in dath ilani fiction, authors often had to resort to visibly contrived means, to prevent the incredibly Lawful characters from simply negotiating a move to their multi-agent optimal boundary.

In dath ilani fiction, when some bizarre setup causes the characters to somehow not be able to solve all their conflicts just by talking to each other, you're not supposed to question any improbabilities leading up to the setup.  You can question if the setup itself has a loophole, obviously, that a sensible character ought to find; but if events weird and unlikely led into that arrangement, literary convention says not to question that.

After all, if you can't somehow impose exotic conditions averting the theorems about agents coordinating on multi-agent-optimal outcomes, you don't have a novel, do you?  You have a short story ending in an anticlimax.  Something has to happen that wouldn't happen in real life; in real life, after all, sensible people put arbitrarily huge efforts into making sure that nobody ever ends up fighting instead of negotiating.

But Abrogail Thrune is not seeing it as strange in the right dimensions, the pass to which she's come; she hasn't remembered Keltham's key words from that offhand lecture.  To Abrogail Thrune, "a conflict that has some weird exotic reason it can't be solved by everyone talking honestly at each other" is nothing new at all, not even a visible trope.)

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She really, really fucking hates tropes, by the way.  Abrogail thought she despised them before, but she was mistaken; now she hates them with the sort of searing fury and despite that Aspexia Rugatonn holds for Chaotic Good in general and Chaotic Good oracular curses in particular.

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The fact that Abrogail has thought of all this may now mean that it won't happen, because that would be boring to Them, the tropes, whatever may be watching her from the Dark Tapestry or beyond it.

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The clocks tick forward; Keltham destroys all Cheliax without warning; or, his children become ensouled, and Cheliax informs him of it and in the same moment assaults Osirion.  Those are the obvious possible outcomes, the ones that Abrogail would think to hold in a sane world.

The alternative is that Keltham will simply... do something else.

He is become something else himself, now, some other manner of opponent.

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Abrogail Thrune's mind turns again to the past, rehearsing the experience of disaster.

The moment when she heard that a presumed-9th-circle scry had hammered through Project Lawful's protections to find Carissa.

That was maybe the last moment in which Abrogail could have thought faster.

Why would Keltham do that?  Why use a scry instead of Discern Location?  Why give them warning?

She was still thinking, in the back of her mind, of that naive young boy who did not know he had any enemies, who she'd said might in decades become a rival for Abrogail Thrune's throne, who'd seemed to her like somebody who might someday eventually rival her - when he hadn't augmented his abilitystats at all.

It had made a dire sense, then, when the report had made its way to where Abrogail had fled, that they might only be doing as Keltham wanted.  It had made sense, when Carissa Sevar had given her reason for wanting to go to Dis as being less predictable.

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She - doesn't understand, even now, how Keltham could do that, set that all up - as it's clear he did, the scry-alarm was timed for when Carissa wouldn't have hung spells yet for that day, to give her a chance to hang the Silent Image she'd need later, in Hell - how did he know about the Carissa who'd erased herself, that this was her plan, that her loyalties would predictably turn once she was under the Nondetection to evade scry - how did the two coordinate when that Carissa had only ten minutes, how did she signal Keltham - Abrogail refuses to believe that Keltham figured out that course of events without any signal, Intelligence 24 can't do that - or does Keltham now have his own fragment of unshattered prophecy - or is there some trope out of dath ilan transparent to him, by which Keltham read through the whole situation -

- realistically, it's probably tropes, the same way Keltham always made his impossible predictions, out of knowledge nobody else could have, and how do you fight something like that?

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It was supposed to be Carissa Sevar, fighting that.

Abrogail Thrune's mind turns again to the past, she has no disciplines out of dath ilan to warn against repeating her thoughts.  Most times Abrogail Thrune is more oriented to the future than this, holds herself to a higher standard of freshness in her thinking; but then, most times Abrogail Thrune is not feeling this trapped.

Abrogail Thrune's mind turns again to the past.

The moment when word came back that Carissa Sevar could not be reached by Sending, that she could not be scried.  Abrogail had thought at first that they'd only played into some further step of Keltham's plan - that Carissa had been intercepted in Hell, once she was outside of a Mage's Private Sanctum -

The moment when Aspexia informed her that she'd heard the report of Commander Hadrian, whose soul had gone to his owner.

The moment when Aspexia informed her that Carissa Sevar had bid the devils of Avernus to slaughter her companions, looted and taken the bodies.

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Abrogail knew.  Even as the first bad news began to arrive, Abrogail knew what she had done wrong.

"I decided when I threw this celebration that if I was tempting tropes by daring to celebrate anything, then so be it; and if by inviting you I was calling their attentions directly on us all, so be it; and that if, by my telling you that you might have me after or be had by me, I was tempting some romantic complication to occur in our lives immediately after, so fucking be it.  I'll not live the rest of my life cowering from all fun, for fear of plot complications, for fear of humorous or tragic comeuppance if I'm ever seen by the story to be enjoying myself or celebrating anything."

The Most High has already castigated her, thoroughly, for this misdecision.

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In retrospect it's clear enough what Abrogail should have seen.  Keltham upon first hearing of Abrogail Thrune in any detail, did call her "more trope than flesh" within his thoughts.  Like Ione, like Pilar, like Asmodia, like Carissa, Abrogail Thrune was Chosen of a god and Blessed by Him, when Asmodeus did execute His compact with her.  Abrogail Thrune has contested with Keltham, she has lain with Keltham, she is pregnant with his child, she is a generally interesting person; she is, always has been, one of the trope-girls.

Abrogail Thrune is whatever the equivalent is of a 'viewpoint character' in this, and her thoughts laid plain to see for whatever watches from beyond the Dark Tapestry.  All her conceits of making herself mistress of the tropes behind the scenes, no doubt, have been displayed from start to end for whatever 'audience' watches from beyond; her carefully unspoken plan was never hidden from Them; They were watching her when she laid with Keltham and not from Keltham's character perspective either.

Those things Beyond have written a lovely tragedy of her and Carissa Sevar; and all the grandeur of her and Carissa's celebration together over Nidal, their dance, that they laid with each other satisfyingly with a mutual victim, all of it was raising up Abrogail Thrune higher before her fall, luring her into grand hopes, pleasure, attachment so that she could be more satisfyingly betrayed and hurt when everything was taken away.

And in light of this, Aspexia Rugatonn will now be managing her information, making sure that when a plan must succeed, Abrogail Thrune does not know of it.  Aspexia Rugatonn has commanded her to gloat over nothing, triumph over nothing, never feel satisfied about how anything is going for her, speak no hopes aloud, never feel hope if she can help it, if that felt hope might be an invitation to the tropes to crush it.

She is trapped within a vast machine greater than herself, which, if it offers her anything to become attached to, is perhaps offering that to her only to take it away in some poignant future moment.

She appears to be inside that kind of story.

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(It does not particularly occur to Abrogail that she is, at this moment, only experiencing some fraction of what she was complicit in inflicting on Keltham.  She is not that sort of person.)

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(Well, in some ways she might be worse off than Keltham.  Keltham has read a hundred books about protagonists who realize they're in stories and then have to do something interesting about the fact.  None of them shut down mentally about it.)

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Abrogail Thrune feels, now, as wretched, as unhappy, as powerless, as ruined, as at any other point in her reign.  As wretched as when she called her halt in Hell with six circles of sorcery to become eight circles, having hoped for seven to become nine, and proved too weak for that.

She does not weep, for she's never once wept since that time; and she will not give the tropes the satisfaction.

She does not think about Carissa, except as her opponent.

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(Aspexia Rugatonn hasn't told Abrogail Thrune about Carissa Sevar's last claim to still be serving Asmodeus in a complicated way, any more than Aspexia has told Pilar.  If Aspexia has understood tropes at all, you're not supposed to give people hope about that sort of thing, it can't come true if they're already hoping for it.)

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She absolutely does not miss Carissa.  Abrogail Thrune was never Carissa's friend or even her ally.


They're in a romance novel, now, and romance-novel characters who think thoughts that pathetic don't come to good ends.

Carissa Sevar was her finest creation, and Abrogail Thrune was proud of her and took pleasure in corrupting her further, and that was their relationship, period.

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She cannot abide this, she cannot sit in her library and wait for the hour of doom.

...she'll go make sure that all of her guards are those who've read Carissa's mind, whom Carissa now has a contractual right to buy from Hell with approval of Church and Crown.  When Carissa glossed that as "exercisable only with your approval and Aspexia's" did she realize what she was glossing?  Almost certainly not, at the time.

Carissa could try to connive those guards into slaying Abrogail, and take the throne, and buy their souls up from Hell afterwards with her own self's approval, once she was herself the Crown.  So long as she was planning to betray Keltham too and become a Power of Hell at the end, so long as the Church would approve of her reign...

Abrogail is willing to play that game.  She'll grant Carissa the opening move in it.  Yes, it's folly, but -

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Abrogail doesn't miss Carissa.  She wants Carissa to come back and finish their game, because it advantages Cheliax and Asmodeus if the plot turns in a way where Carissa plays at all no can't think that either any hopes she thinks won't come to pass without complication -

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...is she actually at risk of going mad, like this?

She shouldn't be.  She'll think like this for a few days and get used to it and her thoughts will shake out.

She's been to Hell and back.

She can handle this much adversity.

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Osirion


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The head of the Risen Guard is displeased to have the Dome housing a fifth-circle wizard wearing an artifact headband straight from Hell that cannot be removed from her person and functions even in an antimagic field. He is further displeased that she is unwilling to swear that her purposes are not opposed to Osirion's or even that she won't assassinate the pharaoh. 


Normally any two of these hesitations would be sufficient for the head of the Risen Guard to simply refuse to let a person in, but they can't exactly turn this one away. Even if she's probably here as part of an infernal ploy of some kind to win Keltham to Cheliax's side in the impending war. Even if there's a bizarre cult that the council just banned in all of Osirion, claiming that she and Keltham and some other Chelish person will ascend together.


(That's not the claim it got banned for. It got banned for claiming - falsely, as far as anyone can tell and as far as the Church of Asmodeus says - that Carissa Sevar's followers will find mercy and healing in Hell. Osirion is not particularly sympathetic to any falsehoods about afterlives but falsely telling people Hell isn't very bad is well over the line.)


Carissa Sevar is bound (in a modesty-respecting fashion, with three cloaks draped over her in case anyone would find the ropes sensuous, so she resembles a very beautiful head poking out of a burrito), and gagged, and her guards are deaf, and she's in an antimagic field, and the handcuffs she's wearing were Polymorphed into a solid stone block with an eight circle spell that is, importantly, permanent rather than instantaneous, which means that if she's somehow gets out of the antimagic field the spell will cease to be suppressed and they'll sever both her hands. 


Furthermore they have used the spell Touch of Idiocy to temporarily reduce her Intelligence to 9, which will kick in if she leaves the antimagic field so she can't cast spells. 


The head of the Risen Guard has warned the pharaoh that he doesn't actually consider this adequate security. Artifact headbands out of Hell can ignore antimagic fields, and the headband has some spells built in; the only ones he can see are Banishment and a used True Seeing, but artifact headbands are also known to not always reliably report their capabilities. If she has Major Image and Gaseous Form and Greater Restoration in there, all their precautions are for naught. And if Hell planned this, Hell planned for Osirion's obvious precautions. 

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" - okay, I know Keltham said not to do him favors, but I'm very worried about pushing him over the edge if we mistreat his woman by dath ilani standards, so be careful."

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"Those are indeed the considerations I'm balancing, though I'm much more worried about what Sevar's trying to do than about the immediate effects of having her - what's your thinking -"

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"...probability we lose the war with Cheliax is up, probability of the world getting destroyed is down. I assume the thinking there is that if Keltham gets corrupted and starts working for the forces of Hell then he isn't letting Rovagug out in a fit of teenage righteousness, which I must say I don't find reassuring."

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"I find it slightly reassuring. Is there - any form of interference you predict makes things go better."

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"Calling Derrina, which we'd in any event committed to doing once we got Sevar. That's it, at least until Keltham gets here."

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Derrina will get that Sending and reply back that she'll be there in a minute.

Then she'll pull out her magic items and start cheating until everything hostile around her is dead, which doesn't take long at all once Derrina starts cheating.

She'll Prestidigitate all the gore off of herself, in case anybody present cares about that sort of thing, and then Teleport to the reception area right outside the Black Dome.

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She's expected. She can come on in at once. 

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"I see they fear you appropriately," is Derrina's first remark upon seeing the Carissa-burrito, as she goes about removing the gag.

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"I sort of think none of us are afraid enough.

...this is no concern of yours, but it's time-sensitive: one of the bodies in my Bag of Holding is an ally, and I want him Raised and then possibly petrified. I can pay for it; I can do it myself, if they give me a Limited Wish scroll, and it might be better for it to be done by a Lawful Evil caster. It's time-sensitive because he's in Hell and they might refuse resurrection if they conclude I betrayed them."

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"Keltham has been very insistent that nobody help him unless they're Lawful Evil, though of late he's made great exceptions and not explained.  Are you abiding by anything like that rule?"

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"I think Keltham abhors the thought of trading with someone for power he'll use to their detriment. I'm Chelish. If you deal with me, you'll get what I offered and maybe also enable me to conquer the world, I don't know. I make no promises there."

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Then Derrina will excuse herself a moment, and go convey to their hosts Carissa Sevar's urgent request to pay for, and cast from, a Limited Wish scroll, or have Raise Dead cast by some other Lawful Evil caster, in order to resurrect an ally in Hell before Hell concludes that Sevar betrayed them.  Along with Sevar's caveat that she's not making any promises about whether anything she trades for will enable her to conquer the world.  And Derrina's personal note that really Lawful Evil people will not usually be careful to warn you what promises they're not making.

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Well, they might if they're trying to convince everyone they've defected and can be trusted. 

 

Osirion has Lawful Evil wizards and some priests of Abadar, though not many of them; usually, they are young and intend to fix it before they grow old. The request, on short notice, will run about 10,000gp, results not guaranteed, and they'll arrest Sevar's ally once they raise him.

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Well, she'll take that back to Sevar, then.

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Why are they even CHECKING with her she SAID she wanted it done, "yes, I'll pay them. They can take spellsilver out of my bag if they want it up front."

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...Derrina can predict that the Abadarans are going to insist on having Sevar approve again the amount of spellsilver they want at current wildly-fluctuating Osirion prices, and she can predict that Sevar's going to approve it, and she'll trudge through all those motions while they fetch a Lawful Evil caster and get him set up.  Which of the three bodies in Sevar's bag are they supposed to Raise, and does she want anything in particular done with the other two?

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"Curly hair, square jaw, missing most of his torso. I don't want to raise the other two, they're not mine."

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Derrina leaves again, returns again.

"It's underway, and they shall give us notice when it succeeds or fails."

"Hello, Carissa Sevar.  How have you been."

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" - well, thank you. I hit fifth circle and sold my soul and renounced Irori and I think I have a plan to fix Hell."

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"I'd usually congratulate you on having renounced Irori, but I did not, in fact, miss all those other parts."

"Say more?"

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"I sold my soul to Dispater for fifteen Wishes, this artifact headband, permanent Tongues and Arcane Sight, and the souls of everyone on Project Lawful and options on most of Chelish Security, and compacted with Asmodeus for all the souls that enter Hell calling my name to be mine, once I've done a lot of conquest for Him, so long as I am judged by Him to not have fallen into His despite, which may or may not be at all compatible with anything else I'm planning to do but, hey, it's an option. 

I think - I think I shouldn't speak to you of more of my plans, without your word you won't use it against me, or against Keltham."

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"I think I'm jealous of your talent.  You were only a cleric of Irori four months, and already you've renounced Him and gotten into more trouble than I have during my entire life."

"If I'm permitted to repeat the news you've spoken so far, it's going to move some prediction markets, as they say around here.  Do you want me to see if they'll let the Prince Merenre enter here - he is the master of those markets, if you knew that not - so that you can see his face as he tries to update all his probability estimates based on that new information?"

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" - that sounds entertaining but I'd sooner give Keltham the chance to tell me if he's got some really compelling reason why the compact with Asmodeus should remain secret, before Osirion -

 

 

- oh, gods, it's the markets, isn't it - can they communicate with Abadar that way, the way Asmodeus can see corrigible people - is that how they've been spying on us - I don't expect you to know the answer to that -"

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"Well, I can avoid repeating what you've said so far, then."

"I've decided.  I do offer you my word that I shall not use anything I learn from you here, against you, or against Keltham, without your further consent given explicitly, freely, and deliberately.  Our hosts have already told me that nobody else is listening.  In part because they did not want to risk what you might say to anyone not deaf; but they also, I think, suspect you of needing somebody to talk to."

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"It's kind of possible that I need someone to talk to! Or rather, I think you can, with enough Wisdom, do that thing to yourself anyway without actually having someone to talk to, but talking to someone will be faster, and I think we don't have all the time in the world -

- anyway. 

I think Keltham's going to try to kill Asmodeus, and I think Asmodeus is going to let Rovagug out to eat Golarion. Because He's the god of pride, and He hates losing, and He - sucks, actually, he's horrible, I genuinely cannot comprehend that I heard that prophecy about how He'd end the world if he didn't like it enough and still thought He could possibly be worth serving -


- anyway - He'd rather end the world than be defeated by the worthless little worms that someone gave free will. 


Of course if Otolmens knew how this would go she'd squish Keltham. Not just Her.  Achaekek eats people who are on a trajectory to threaten the gods, maybe he can't get into the Dome. Or He could but He'd have to, like, chisel his way in, which seems kind of beneath His dignity. I - thought about warning Otolmens, when I realized, but -

- but I couldn't just - give up, on all the space that there is here for something to be better, and I couldn't give up on Keltham, condemn him to be - deleted - and Cheliax would conquer the world, if Otolmens just took Keltham out, and I don't think Cheliax should do that actually -

And I think that the Good gods - well, Cayden Cailean, though I'm confused about why it'd just be Him, and suspect it isn't - I think that they're trying to see if there's - a way for Keltham and Asmodeus to negotiate something that Asmodeus prefers to destroying the world. All the interventions on the Project - they weren't aimed at Keltham, his trajectory wasn't very changeable. There was nothing we could realistically have shown Keltham such that, when he learned about Hell, he wasn't like 'wow I'm going to kill the guy in charge of that'. They were aimed at, well, me, and at Pilar. 

It's the most Asmodean thing in the world, in a way, to kill your boss because you want His job. I think Good's angling for some kind of defeat of Asmodeus which - which is Asmodean enough, if that makes any sense at all, that he prefers it to unleashing Rovagug. It's what I was trying for, from a different angle. My compact - there are some conditions on that, it's going to be hard to use, but - it's what I was trying to do, follow the rules and do the thing Asmodeus respects and also make Hell less stupidly horrible - although I'm not sure Good objects to the same things about it I do -"

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"So... from Keltham's perspective, those Lawful Evil are already condemned to Hell, to which nonexistence is preferable, and he thinks that they would, if they knew, approve of his plan to risk all existence in order to slay Asmodeus and - make himself the new ruler of Hell?  Make you ruler of Hell?  So he's trading with them, but not those of other alignments who'd get the risk without the benefit?  I admit, none of this is really squaring with my sense of who Keltham is, or who you are either."

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"- it hadn't even occurred to me that Keltham might think nonexistence was preferable to Hell, though you're right, it's totally the kind of horrible ilani thing he might think. - I figured out enough of something that was coherent, didn't leave me with as many confusions as I feel right now, and that's when I set my course for the soul-sale, but I deleted my memories and I haven't rederived it all yet. I should be able to once I have some time to think."

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"I expect that Keltham will be on his way here within two rounds after he hears that Osirion holds you.  If you want time to think before then, you should kick me out, or tell our hosts to tell Keltham to take his time."

"Do you want to avoid me telling you other things that you wouldn't have known when you made your plans and then deleted your memory?"

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"No, please do tell me, I'm pretty sure I can pass the Keeper-test now where you can say what guess you'd have made in advance so you're not going to make it harder for to rederive what I was thinking, and I'm desperate to know what's going on."

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"I don't know, and our hosts, not the kinds to dissemble, do speak of their own confusion and concern.  Keltham arrived, apparently in something of a distraught state, given to excuse himself for sudden fits of weeping.  He was strongly advised to rest, and recover; he did neither of those things, visiting the Sothis marketplace and asking women what they thought should become of Osirion's customs, he sponsored one such for magic lessons at the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye.  He has often visited Ione Sala there in privacy."

"According to our hosts, Keltham said he feared that the story enfolding him would rhyme, from his being betrayed in the story's first part, to his betraying others in the second part; and therefore Keltham wished to trade only with Lawful Evil partners who would keep their compacts, but not trust him otherwise, whom the story could not force him to betray.  He expressed much concern about whether any persons including gods were still reading his mind.  He asked a number of pointed questions about how Abadar related to mortals.  He put on a Splendour headband and requested a Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom, and soon after lost, or severed, his connection with Abadar, greatly to the distress of our hosts.  From there, Keltham mostly stopped saying anything about his thoughts or reasons, but pursued the same policies he'd expressed earlier."

"Those are some of the points I'd expect to be relatively less known; I'm skipping over things that I'd expect Cheliax to have already told you, like Keltham recently changing his course to forge a supply contract with the Kelesh Empire."

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"- working with the church of Iomedae? Nethys? Cayden?"

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"He visited Ione Sala often in Nethys's temple.  Aside from that, I do not, myself, know of any contact between him and the churches of Iomedae or Cayden Cailean."

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"Cheliax hadn't heard about that either but I hoped he was successfully hiding it from them. If he's not working with them -

- well, if Good's plan is for Keltham to defeat Asmodeus in some way that leaves Asmodeus willing to not destroy the universe, and Keltham's not allied with them, what's he doing that even Good wouldn't get on board with? Iomedae'd kill Asmodeus if She could even if it risked the world, wouldn't She?"

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"I think you'd have to ask a priest of Iomedae that.  But I imagine, if I were Iomedae, I'd probably think to Myself, 'But maybe there's a way to kill Asmodeus without risking the world' and then I'd try for that.  Now, I am not Iomedae, but She did become a god even if by cheating at it, and had some respectable accomplishments before then; She can't be that un-Irorian."

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" - huh. Possibly Iomedae is substantially less horrible than I always assumed. - do you know why Keltham did a show of scrying me, a couple hours ago?"

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"I had not even known that he attempted to scry you.  Nor do our hosts know, I suspect, if that is a thing that should be made known to them."

"If that event is what brought you to Osirion, an obvious thought is that Keltham did it, in fact, in order to bring you here... I am curious about how that happened, if you have no more urgent tasks about you than satisfying my curiosity."

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"Pulled me to a safe house, where I wasn't being mindread so I rederived my plan - I am pretty sure when I came up with it in the first place I was confident in my ability to rederive it once not being mindread, and not sooner - at which point I realized that the world might be at stake and I needed to get to Keltham before he did something really stupid, so I talked them into going to Hell where I could kill them and come here. I don't think the previous version of me that came up with the plan was in contact with Keltham, though of course if we both have good enough predictions of each other we don't need contact - that's what I want, to be that good, but I don't think I am yet, and if Keltham is then it's weird he wasn't here waiting for me."

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"It's not impossible that Keltham meant you to have some time to think to yourself, before asking you to meet with him again, after this much time, and after so much has passed between you."

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"I wanted to - make sure he was better off for having met me. I am pretty sure it's why I wanted to buy the Project girls and why I wanted to have 30 Wishes. I think he's going to make some kind of horrible mistake, if he tries to do this alone, and if he has any reason to listen to me I can talk him down from it. And we can overthrow Asmodeus in some nice reasonable way that isn't going to have catastrophic consequences. What's even the point of being smart if you just have to surrender even more of what you care about than when you were weak."

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"I am not sure that better off for having met you is something you can accomplish with just fifteen Wishes.  Keltham was in rather a distressed state, I am told, when first he came from Cheliax to Osirion.  I am told that he mentioned possibly wanting an Atonement to Neutral Evil so he had 'a way out of this reality' at any time, and apparently took some convincing that Axis would also let him end himself if he wished."

"If that was not already a pose on his part, then you really messed up that young man, Carissa Sevar.  Even if under threat of Hell, it was still by your own hand.  I know you've renounced Irori, but I'll say nonetheless that His Way includes the Way of cleaning up your own messes."

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" - he -"

 

 


She's so confused about why Keltham, even with his theory that people just go somewhere else, would think that other place will probably be nicer; most possible ways a place could be are much much worse than being a valued and much-competed-over asset in Golarion.

There's no point in arguing that with Derrina, and it's not really an argument anyway, just a quiet note of confusion amidst many. 

 

 

"Obviously if Keltham wants to stop existing I'm going to fix that!"

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"I don't think he currently does, for what it's worth, or he'd already be gone.  He is doing many things, not all of which I know or Osirion knows, buying scrolls and magic items and trying to hire Lawful Evil wizards.  If Keltham wanted himself dead he'd be dead, now that he sees himself as having repaid his debt to Abadar.  Whatever he's trying to do now, it is something greater than his own suicide."

"- I am somewhat reasoning off a vision I had of you and him, from Irori.  My vision of Keltham was of a boy out of his natural place, trying to use everything that fact made him.  That was months ago, but still."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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

"Also, why would Nethys do that."

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"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 -"

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" - 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."

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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 -

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"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."

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

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"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."

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

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"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."

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"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 -"

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"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."

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"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."

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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.

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Well.

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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 -

 

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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. 

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

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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.

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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.

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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."

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" - get everything you can out of her with Dominate Person, then, and send her on, unless I guess we strongly expect that to go badly, in which case I'm inclined to just send Keltham 'we strongly expect that to go badly, look'."

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"We strongly expect that ... she'll either seduce him back to Asmodeanism, seduce him to her own heretical Asmodean cult which is even more dangerous than Asmodeanism because it makes people not fear Hell and still go there and be just as badly off, she's defected and will help him with his plans which are good for us, or she's defected and will help him with his plans that are bad for us. One of those."

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" - tell her to take the headband off, Dominate her, and then bring her in here. I want to meet her."

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Carissa is pretty sure that her core realization, in those mysterious ten minutes, was just that she couldn't get what she wanted by serving Asmodeus. But that's not actually sufficient for her to have decided to sell her soul; it's an extreme step, to put it mildly, and cuts off many possible paths of getting what she wanted. She might've done it just to bring rapprochement with Keltham, or just because - because she should go to Hell, if she did that to other people just because it would've been inconvenient not to -

 

 

The door opens, again, and one of the Risen Guard steps through, again. "Keltham has requested that you be sent on to him."

       "I request that also."

"Keltham is not allied with Osirion at this time, and Osirion's own security interests don't encourage us to pass on to a potentially-hostile foreign power a Chelish agent."

       "I work for Keltham, not for Cheliax."

"Are you amenable to a brief interrogation about the state of Chelish preparations for war with Osirion, as a condition of your swift release to Keltham."

        "If I say no what happens."

"We argue with Keltham at more length, presumably, about whether we are entitled to insist."

         "Doesn't seem very Abadaran."

"In a world that was full of Abadaran agents, our country would not be under imminent threat of destruction, and our predictable policies towards Chelish defectors would be set with more consideration for encouraging defections because Cheliax wouldn't just lie about our policies anyway."

        "You haven't even offered to pay me for everything I know about Chelish war preparations."

"We'll pay you fairly for what we learn."

         Oh. For some reason that wasn't what she expected to hear. "And if I know nothing of value to you?"

"It'll almost certainly still move the markets and we'll pay you off that. I can get you a fixed minimum payment, if you want."

         She doesn't actually, at this point, want anything money can buy. "Are you also doing this to Olegario?"

"Yes."

         "Did you ask if he was amenable?"

"...we told him you said to cooperate, which he's been doing."

        That's obvious. She's juggling too many balls, trying to move forward too fast on too many fronts of possible-inference... she doesn't know the answer to the question Osirion presumably desperately wants answered, why hasn't Cheliax attacked yet, will her defection change that... "Fine."

"Take the crown off."

        "No."

"If you keep it on we'll keep you cursed so you can barely think. If you take it off we'll give you a 4/4 that we've vetted for not having extra abilities built in you could use to assassinate the pharaoh."

        "I'm worried you'll refuse to give it back."

"I swear to you that I intend to personally follow you around holding it, it won't leave your line of sight except when you prostrate yourself before the pharaoh, and I'll give it back to you, unaltered, when we send you on to Keltham. I expect the chances it'll be taken are very small. If we wanted to steal it we'd have just killed you briefly."

        "You can't kill me briefly and be sure of holding onto me, Dispater might not send a Chelish defector back. - I want a guarantee from the pharaoh that He'll do everything in His power to ensure I get it back."

"I'll relay that."

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Yes, of course.

 

He does not commit this to writing until He's spent a solid minute reflecting carefully on what kinds of things this might call on Him to do and deciding He's all right with them. Abadar's word is not given lightly. 

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Carissa takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and takes the headband off. 

 

 

Then they Dominate Person her, and it's hard to be too terribly invested in the goings-on after that. 

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Put the headband on, the thought comes to her, and she obediently puts the headband on, and her mind is sharper and clearer. 

 

Then they snap the Dominate Person and it's like pitching forwards into an ice-cold river, everything suddenly pressing back in around her - the stakes, the fate of the world, Keltham - she can remember the last half-hour, but like a dream where everything came with a conviction it was justified and made perfect sense that didn't bottom out in anything -

 

 

She's in a lovely Osirian - bathing-room? It has mosaic tiles and pretty silk fabric hangings and a mirror and a pretty woman her own age, who is watching her concernedly. 

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"Water?"

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" - uh, sure?"

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"Lemon slice? No lemon slice?"

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" - in the water? Why would I want it to have a lemon slice?"

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"I'm gonna call that 'no lemon slice'." She hands her the water. "- I think some people like it because it's fancier - no peasants drinking their water with lemon slices! - and some like the taste. Do you want something to eat?"

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"I have a Ring of Sustenance, and I want Keltham. I agreed to this nonsense so that you'd send me to him faster. Now we're done. Right? So you'll send me to him?"

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"Yes, definitely. You can make that happen faster by getting dressed -" she holds up some clothes. 

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....she looks down. She's no longer in just her nightgown; she's in her nightgown draped in some ornate Osirian ceremonial thing. Right. So she could meet the pharaoh. She remembers putting it on. 

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"I'm to help you get dressed, and reoriented, and in a little while they'll let us know your ride is here to pick you up.

I don't actually get to decide when your ride is here, because it'd be harder for me to help you get reoriented if I were in the way of something you need, but I am reporting, 'yes, she drank some water' and 'yes, she seems to understand what's going on'.

If you think it'd help you get reoriented if I stopped reporting anything, I'll do that."

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She can get dressed her own self, and is doing that. "We're in a palace! Obviously you're reporting to someone! If you told me you weren't I wouldn't believe you. ....is your job cheering people up after your government interrogates them?"

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"....no? We're not Good. My job is helping girls who've gotten hurt, or had sex they didn't want, or who just arrived here as a gift, or who needed to be personally interrogated by the pharaoh while under a Dominate Person or something, bounce back fast. So they don't get steadily more fucked up in random directions and then eventually explode at someone."

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"...someone knows how to do that?"

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"Fucking Osirion knows how to do that?"

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"Something - you've been looking for?"

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"I'm fine but I would've appreciated it if this could happen to people I, uh, wrecked accidentally. What are the operative ingredients."

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" - to be clear, I am not sure that the same approaches would work on having been tortured by your bosses because you are in Cheliax."

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"I don't really see how having been raped by an Osirian royal who owns you is any different."

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"- that's fair. I think the thing I mean to say is that things are very specific. Some things that look very bad from the outside don't hurt too much, and some things that look like nothing, next to other things you've been through, can be too much. I know lots of specific things that happen to girls in this palace. I don't know much about Cheliax. I can tell you the things I know, but they might not work for you."

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Carissa has obtained a dress and is scrubbing blood off her hands in one of the fancy mosaic basins. "Yeah, I'm not going to try offering lemon water."

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"It's not about the lemon water, it's about - little decisions, that you get to make, that go the way you expect. Do you want this, or that? And you get the one you want. Consistently. It helps people reorient. It has to be something that couldn't possibly be a test or a game or have a right answer. If you weren't in a hurry I'd do it with the clothes, too. Do you want the blue dress, or the pink? Do you want to lace it up, or do you want me to do it? Do you want me to do your hair?"

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"...I think if you hurt someone enough that comes across as a game no matter what the question is."

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"Well, if you hurt someone then you certainly shouldn't be their recovery person! That should be someone who doesn't have power over them, who they feel safe around, who doesn't report to you, and who is going to be willing to stand up to you and tell you to lay off if you're about to damage them further. I don't have the authority to tell your ride to Keltham that you're ready to go, but I do have the authority to say that you aren't, yet, if it seemed like actually going to Keltham was a terrible idea that was going to damage everyone involved and maybe lead to an Inner Sea war."

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"My not going to Keltham is a terrible idea that might spark an Inner Sea war."

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"You don't have to convince me, I'm not going to stand in your way. But if you were curled up in a ball crying then I'd tell your ride I wasn't releasing you yet. Not because I want an Inner Sea war, mind, I really really don't, but because people who have hurt themselves into weird twisted pretzels that can go up in flames at the first spark start more Inner Sea wars than people who haven't."

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Carissa's hands are clean; she's dressed. She notices herself being slightly sad about this fact and decides it's fine to stay thirty more seconds. "What would you do for someone who was - betrayed, by someone they loved and trusted, and was really, really, really twisted into a pretzel about it?"

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"You can't follow a script, for that. You just have to let them steer, and be there, and listen, and hurt with them, and be angry with them, and be sad with them, and make sure they're not alone."

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"Right. 

Thanks. That was interesting. I don't suppose you want to come help do injured-people-repair in Keltham's secret lair."

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"What's the pay like."

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"You know, I should really be getting used to that by now. I will get back to you about the pay. Where's my ride." 

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"Outside the Dome, I think."

 

She opens the door.

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Then if someone will show her the way, Carissa will depart. At a bit of a run. 

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Indeed, he's not getting paid the nearly infinite amount required for him to go inside the Black Dome, and be unable to cast spells for the several minutes it might take him to figure that out.

He's just hanging around right outside the Black Dome until Sevar shows up.  Idly playing with some spellsilver, it having become much cheaper nowadays.  Seeing if he can figure out what it would take to put together an assembly line for +2 Intelligence headbands, as Sevar is reputed to have personally invented.  (Keltham says he mostly thinks she did, but doesn't know for sure because of the Conspiracy; it might've been somebody else, to impress him more, to make up for other demands on Sevar's time.)

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She steps out of the Black Dome in an Osirian-style beaded blue dress, an illusion making her look like a normal Osirian woman leaving the Dome for normal Osirian reasons, a +2 Splendour headband on her head. 

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Illusions.  Heh.

"Good afternoon.  I am Keltham's employee.  I am to Mind Blank you immediately, will you not resist?"

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The illusions aren't to fool him.

" - understood. I won't resist."

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He flicks an enormous powerful day-duration abjuration loose at her, which promptly settles in.

He didn't use a scroll or item; so this person must be at least an eighth-circle wizard, or maybe a priest with an unusual domain.

Incidentally, Carissa's Arcane Sight isn't seeing anything magical about him.

"Ri-Dul," he says.  "Eighth-circle necromancer.  Keltham says you are supposedly recently fourth-circle and supposedly quite good at Spellcraft for that; though he does not know, now, what was truth and what was lie, in that, save that Ione thought it probably true."

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Are they making small talk? Why are they making small talk. Is he professionally interested in whether she's actually good at magic or whether that was made up to impress Keltham? Carissa's - focus of thought, the set of people she's paying even the slightest bit of attention to - has been narrowing and narrowing, this morning, and now it's just Keltham, and it's hard to think of anything else. 

 

Her deeply unreasonable Splendour of course means she's answering despite this, with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I hit fourth shortly after meeting Keltham, and fifth this morning. I haven't met anyone better than me at Spellcraft, but Cheliax, you know, has a dearth of high-level wizards due to our defection problem." It was immediately obvious once she thought about it that that was what explained the differential between fourth and fifth-circle scarcity. 

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"Fifth, at your age?  My my.  Perhaps we shall have somewhat to discuss once we are settled in."

"Well, do you want to take in the sights of Sothis, make some purchases, with your newfound freedom, or shall I conduct you straightwise to Keltham's lair?  Keltham has not, in fact, extended any promises that you will be allowed to leave anytime soon after entering.  Its location is terribly secret, you see."

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" ...of course he's not going to let me leave. No reasonable nation-state at this stage of this game, having gotten hold of me, would let me leave, and I'm pretty sure Osirion's only doing it because they can't afford to piss him off when he's their defense against Cheliax, and because I told them very tearfully that I was scared Keltham was going to scare Asmodeus into destroying the world. I don't have shopping to do. I'm not free. Let's please go."

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"I do expect Keltham would let you fly free if you asked now, being still that sort of person.  Though without me to Mind Blank you, you'd obviously be kidnapped shortly after..."

"Well, let's be along then.  Prepare for Teleport."  He pokes her shoulder.

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It's sort of good to hear that Keltham's still that sort of person. It's also sort of disappointing, like on some level she didn't want to have ownership of this choice, she wanted it to be inevitable. 

 

She does not resist the Teleport.

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They're now inside an indoors room, possibly an underground chamber judging by how one wall is rock.  There's a Mage's Sanctum enchantment, permanencied, about the whole area, and the border of a Forbiddance in front of her, with a very solid-looking and magical door ahead of that.  It looks remarkably like the Chelish safehouse/prison, really.

There's a tiefling woman here, of scarred face, dressed as a rich man's maid might be.

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"Password, sweet stone sunlight.  It's a Neutral Good Forbiddance so don't forget that, it'll fry you like sausage."

"This young lady is Tarnish."

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Clothes more than expensive enough to fix the scars, if she - or if Keltham - wanted that. 

"Pleasure to meet you, Tarnish."

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"The pleasure is all yours, I'm sure, and it will pass swiftly.  I'm not an admirer of Cheliax's work on Keltham."  A harsh melodic voice, like this woman had been a singer before her throat took an arrow to the knee.  "I can take you to Keltham, do you wish; or bring you refreshments, or take you to your new bedroom to rest; or give you a tour of the premises, which are not large."

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"...Keltham didn't express a preference?"

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"Keltham is always very careful to determine others' wants and needs before expressing his own.  He'd no more just tell someone what to do than he'd smile or flirt or risk hurting somebody or get angry or have sex."

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"Tarnish is not in love with Keltham, to be clear, or even fond of him, she just wants to hurt you.  I'd have warned you about that if I'd thought ahead, but I didn't think of it because of my overwhelming distaste for everything about Keltham's personal life."

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Wow, this sure sounds like one functional research organization, Carissa does not say. 

"If you want to hurt me conventional methods work fine, confusing me about what Keltham wants does not. I need to talk to him, but if he's not interruptible or has no desire to see me I"ll go to my room."

 

She is absolutely not going to have feelings about Keltham from something someone said to her specifically to hurt her.

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"I am not permitted to hurt people by conventional methods, only with my words.  Keltham is interruptible; I'll take you to him."

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Character Name:  Keltham           Alignment:  True Neutral             Character Level:  2+1
Deity:  Keltham                              Homeland:  dath ilan
Class:  Wizard 2 / Alchemist (chemist) 1                                            School:  Universalist
Languages:  Baseline (native), Taldane, Osirian

STR:  9          CON:  19 (13)     DEX:  10
INT:  22 (18)   WIS:   16            CHA:  18 (14)

Magic items equipped:  Headband of Mental Prowess (+4 INT / +4 CHA), Gloves of Use Magical Device +5, Belt of Mighty Constitution (+6 CON), Tiny Sword of Glibness, Ring of Sustenance, Glasses of Arcane Sight, various others

Feats:
- Being a computer programmer who's played a lot of mathy video games
- Skill Focus: Use Magical Device

Traits:
- Dath ilani chemistry training
- Dath ilani mathematical training 
- Pragmatic activator
- Signature Spell (Prestidigitation)

Skills:
- Spellcraft: 3 ranks (+3 class skill, +6 Intelligence bonus, +2 theoretical magician, +2 magical aptitude)
- Use Magical Device: 3 ranks (+3 class skill, +3 skill focus, +2 magical aptitude, +6 int (pragmatic activator), +5 from gloves)
- Bluff: 3 ranks (+4 charisma)
- various Knowledge

 


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That person's first action, on hearing that Carissa is on her way, will be to swap out his +4/+0/+4 headband for a +0/+0/+6 headband.  That should be maximal attainable previous-Kelthamness, and the less different he seems, the less it will hurt her, probably.  He doesn't want to hurt Carissa without a reason.

Tarnish will probably have said something cutting enough, or the Osirians warned Carissa enough of their own perspective, that Carissa will not be entirely unprepared; she should arrive warned, in a context where she'd hear the words warily rather than them hitting with all the force of reality straight out.

(He couldn't ask Ri-Dul to say anything here.  Ri-Dul made it a condition of his employment that Keltham's personal life drama would be causally screened off from him to the maximum feasible degree.  Which, valid.)

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That person looks much the same, outwardly.  His face is maybe slightly thinner.

To arcane sight... he's got a headband of +6 Splendour, gloves enhancing some skill, a +6 Constitution-enhancing belt, a ring of sustenance, glasses of... probably Arcane Sight, and various other filled slots.

He is currently doing something with a flat metal plate inscribed with a complicated spellsilver pattern, spellsilver wires above that, and what looks like a scaffold or... something with a lot of moving magical parts that could not possibly be a spell, item, or anything functional at all.

He looks up at her when she enters the room.

"You look different," he states.

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- she kneels. It feels less complicated that way. And if she'd do it for Abrogail and for Dispater and (without conscious decision, Dominated) for the pharaoh of Osirion, well, it feels strange to just stand there for Keltham. 

 

"You look different too. - I got it done in Dis. Not for you, I actually thought at the time you'd probably have mixed feelings about it, but I thought it'd help with my cult and my cult might be important."

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"Let's not talk about your cult.  Presumably it's an intervention by the god of tavern rumors, which means I try to think about it as little as possible."

"Carissa, I - am not able to just resume our relationship where it left off.  If that's what kneeling to me is meant to, ask, offer."

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"No, I, uh, figured that. I'm here to try to make sure the world doesn't get destroyed, and to help you find something better."

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"That sounds like it should be a private conversation and probably a long one.  Can we continue this in time-dilated demiplane?"

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Ooooohh, time-dilated demiplane. She wonders how long it's been for him and then cuts that line of thought off as unproductive. More than a 2x multiplier is hard to get. Probably it hasn't been more than double what it's been for her. 

"Yes, of course."

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"It's new, and temporary, so don't cast from any overpowered scrolls if you've got those with you.  There'll be a 9th-circle of Sarenrae there when we arrive, finishing up the portal.  Don't talk until I've had a chance to put up a Rope Trick for privacy."   He picks up the complicated spellsilver wires and spell-diagram-like plate, sweeps it into a Bag of Holding, takes a scroll from the Bag of Holding, and a tuning fork.

He conducts her the short walk back outside the Forbiddance, then casts Plane Shift (5th-circle divine form) from scroll; slowly, carefully, but without obvious difficulty.

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Carissa's feelings are alternating between declaring loudly that they're VERY COMPLICATED and apparently not being there at all. 

Why won't anyone just light her on fire until she's no longer harmed them. She bets if she went back to Cheliax they would obligingly light her on fire. 

She takes Keltham's hand for the Plane Shift, and says nothing.

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Welcome to this personal temporary time-dilated demiplane!  The sky here is bright and white, like somebody took the Sun and sky and blended the colors back together.  There's grass beneath her feet, and dirt below the grass.  It's small, for a demiplane, maybe as wide across as three houses in each direction.  There's a pool of clear water that looks plenty wide enough to swim in, a house-distance away.  Walls of mist demarcate the plane's edges.

A clean desk rests next to four bookcases all of whose shelves are full of mess; there's a whiteboard, currently clean; a cabinet, one of whose drawers visibly (to arcane sight) contains a few pounds of spellsilver.  An adventurer's high-quality portable personal bedroom rig (calling it a 'tent' doesn't do it justice) stands beside.

Magic here behaves slightly oddly; if you stare around with Arcane Sight for a while, you can figure out that divination is impeded here.  A Mage's Private Sanctum overlays the whole area, but not a permanent one.

Also here is a very impressive-looking Grand High Priestess of Sarenrae, but she's busy casting the incredibly slow magic of Create Greater Demiplane.

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So Sarenrae's in on it too? Or no, Keltham said he was trying not to think about Cayden's plans, so that means he doesn't consider himself to be working directly with Cayden -

 

She can see the outlines of the two pieces she's missing, the two pieces that'd make everything else fit together, maybe just one piece but definitely not more than two. One is what outcome Cayden Cailean and Nethys are angling for and why only they are working towards it. The other is why Cheliax hasn't attacked Osirion yet and - she's pretty sure this has the same answer - why Keltham changed course to work with the Church of Sarenrae and the Padishah Empire when she sold her soul.

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He pulls out another scroll and casts again, putting up a Rope Trick, and climbs up into the space thus created, offering a hand up to Carissa if/when she follows.

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She didn't even know you could do that though now that she thinks about it there's no rule you have to be on the Material to cast a Rope Trick. 

 

She climbs in.

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"I suppose in a sense we are beginning again where we left off, inside a Rope Trick."

"There are - too many things to say - I suppose I'll just say one of them.  Why did you return my option premium and sell your soul?"

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"...I don't know for sure because I erased my memories of the decision but I think it was to get Asmodia and Peranza out of being eternally tortured, purchase the souls of everyone else on Project Lawful so I could protect them too, get fifteen Wishes and an artifact headband so I could make progress on ensuring you'd be better off for knowing me and on coming up with a plan to save the world, and maaaaybe to compact with Asmodeus in a way that'll make it easier to overthrow Him or maybe that part was all Cayden's plan not mine."

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"What happened to Asmodia and Peranza?  Priority question, were they being temporarily tortured for long enough that this would possibly damage anybody who wasn't you or Pilar?"

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"Well at the time I thought they were but I purchased them having never been tortured and having been completely fine all along so, in fact, they were at no point tortured and were fine all along. Peranza was executed for betraying the Project. Asmodia we think killed herself."

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"I did not know you could do that, in fact.  Did not know that was an option.  Thank you.  That is - I hadn't believed, before, that they were dead and being tortured, but - thank you, I am a lot less - feeling what I was feeling - about the soul-sale thing."

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"I, uh, would speak to this with more confidence if I'd rederived all my thinking, which I haven't yet, but it - wasn't about not being yours, I wanted that, it was about - people who'd trusted you, trusted Civilization - that's - what Peranza did, she decided she was with Civilization - warned Iomedae about the Project - and I only had, the one thing, to buy them with, and I am not really worried about my eternity because we need to overthrow Asmodeus anyway and we can't exactly need to overthrow Asmodeus harder. 

Right?"

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"Oh, if Peranza and Asmodia had been, effectively destroyed, it would, in fact, be possible for Asmodeus to be in more trouble than He currently is."

"What, according to you, do you think is going on, right now?"

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"I have two big glaring holes in my understanding of what's going on and I suspect I know enough to figure them out but I haven't had time. - I don't think when I'm being mindread. It's very convenient. Uh. I think that you're going to try to overthrow Asmodeus and by default He'll release Rovagug and the planet will probably get destroyed. I think that Nethys knows this and tipped off Cayden Cailean and maybe other gods, for some reason, and that they've been angling for conditions to exist under which you and Asmodeus can compromise and not fight, and those conditions might involve me and maybe also Pilar ascending. I have a compact with Asmodeus and a cult which might be useful for ascending and I think I could do it in ten years, maybe five if we have this fancy time-dilated demiplane full time. Pilar's trying to eat Cayden Cailean.

The glaring holes are: why are only Nethys and Cayden in on this and not all of Good and most of Neutral, and why have Cheliax and Osirion neither made war nor peace, what are they waiting for. - I can explain, if you want, what those glaring holes are entangled with, how I got to them as the most important missing pieces -"

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"Meritxell used Alter Self and Disguise Self to shift to a number of pretty women, for me.  Merrin, some other dath ilani celebrities, Ranthal, who I drew with Silent Image.  Also some women in Golarion whose looks I liked, but didn't want to complicate my life by trying to date, right then.  Jacint Subirachs, Willa Shilira, Abrogail Thrune."

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...sure, figures. She remembers thinking at the time it was impressive Meritxell had the nerve to impersonate Abrogail, even Carissa would've asked Abrogail before doing that and Meritxell's not exactly someone who can just write the Queen for permission - 

 

 

 

 

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Oh. 

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Who gains by having Keltham have sex with someone Alter Selfed to look like Abrogail or a bunch of other people? What do they gain?

 

 

The idiots - Abrogail, it must've been Abrogail, no one else would've conceived of and done it without Carissa's approval - decided to get themselves some Keltham-descended children secretly. To - use as leverage against him? No, they must've known that wouldn't work - why, then, why make the case where they lose so much worse than it needed to be -

" - you could probably get Cheliax to hand them all over, if you point out your alternative is blowing the country up."

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"I'm mostly guessing it's just Abrogail, but if they know I know, they hide her outside the country and then I have no further reason to blow up the country.  Or Egorian, I wouldn't glass all of Cheliax if glassing Egorian was enough."

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"...do you want me to kill her?"

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"I would not have guessed that was something you could do."

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"I mean, it wouldn't be trivial, but I bet I can. She wouldn't even have to stay dead, that's the really hard part of assassinating someone."

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"The more concerning possibility is that it's not just the one kid."

"I am figuring that they probably did not extract semen directly from my epididymis, or steal it after Meritxell performed oral sex, and use that to impregnate a lot of other women until I had 144 kids.  If that modality worked for them, it would have been foolish of Abrogail to risk disguising herself as Meritxell disguised as Abrogail, which was a huge tip-off.  Even though I had that thought while I was with Isidre, in the Palace, with a lot of eighth-circle casters potentially around.  But I have it flagged as an instance of - trying to guess the Conspiracy's competence level, at a consistent level, and I've had bad results from that in the past."

"You know anything relevant to the possibility-set of no offspring awaiting ensoulment, one offspring by Abrogail, multiple offspring, many offspring?"

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" - Isidre was just Abrogail in disguise. Otherwise I don't know anything. They didn't tell me - I'd have told them not to -"

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"Wow, that must have been hilarious for everybody who wasn't me."

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"And the Isidre impersonator in the room when you met Abrogail, I think they executed her afterwards. And Abrogail herself, who had to smile at you while you criticized her to her face and then gracefully lose to you about me, I think she didn't like that much. ...and me, I took a punishment in the middle of all that for thinking insubordinate things about Abrogail and was a little out of it. ...Aspexia was having fun, I guess."

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"Oh, so the etiquette lessons would've been Aspexia.  I wondered about that, afterwards."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but your Conspiracy was kind of shit and I'm ashamed that it worked on me literally at all."

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"Cheliax wasn't, actually, good at lying to people who were allowed to think about what was true. Probably because it doesn't have any."

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"I'll have to think about it again once I'm boosting Intelligence and Wisdom, but preliminarily I'd say that takes probability of multiple kids from 40% to 30% and the probability of lots of kids from 8% to 20%."

"I don't... actually want, to glass Cheliax, or kill anyone at all, really, but I don't see a way out of this before the given time deadlines that doesn't involve killing a lot of people.  I'm sort of, sad about that.  Haven't actually killed anybody on purpose, up until now, despite all the people dying and going to Hell around me, whose names I never knew."

"What's your alternative?"

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"....the time deadline is a problem. I don't see how I can do my plan before the time deadline. If we had - a bit more time - 

I have fifteen Wishes granted by a devil out of Hell. I figured we'd - make ourselves smarter, see more options. I have broad outlines for kinds of things it'd be useful to do, like, close the Worldwound, I bet that's possible if you're smart enough and have approximately unlimited resources and it's the kind of thing that gets people believing you're on a path to ascension but it's not going to happen fast enough, I also bet we can get Dispater to help us but we'd have to read over that confidentiality agreement incredibly carefully and I don't see how to do it in such little time - 

How low would the probability have to be, that you have kids in Cheliax, for you to not want to destroy Cheliax, and if we conquered Cheliax and it was better would that fix it?"

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"If Cheliax is playing the game that way, they could put kids outside Cheliax so that I couldn't solve the problem by destroying Cheliax... from the standpoint of dath ilani storytelling, a plot development like that - isn't, trying to signal you to destroy a larger area of landmass on one planet, it's saying - you have to fix everything, no way out but fixing everything."

"I'm hearing that your current self, as opposed to the self who sent you here on a memory gambit, doesn't have a plan for beating the deadline."

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"I definitely think we should fix everything but I do not see a way to fix everything in the next month. Or do you mean - it's all right for the kids to exist, so long as they'll grow up in a better world?"

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"Probably the intended reading."

"You mentioned a compact with Asmodeus and seemed to think you could get Dispater on our side, what's that whole part about?"

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"Do you, Carissa Sevar, conquer territories or hearts in Hell's name, be you fairly judged by Hell's Prince to be the most prime mover in such conquests, such unsold and unclericed souls from those lands and peoples as enter into Hell calling your name, in death as they called it in life and did you and Hell more service than disservice, shall pass into your custody or the custody of those in Hell you name your slaves or allies;

and when you have conquered three-quarters of Avistan all such souls out of Avistan shall be yours as well; when three-quarters of Golarion is yours, all such souls out of Golarion; when three-quarters of this plane is yours, all such souls out of this plane; when three-quarters of Pharasma's Creation is yours, all such souls out of Creation; while Hell's dominions of those lands and peoples last; and all this be annulled should you fail finally after death in being acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power, or should the yield in strength and wealth from those souls granted you be less than He accounts as ordinary from His subservient Powers of Hell; or should the Prince of Hell fairly judge you to have entered His despite in death or life," she says, once again, from memory. 

"...so the obvious avenues to cheat are to, uh, in some meaningful respect conquer most of Creation, which I am not entirely pessimistic about but which would need time, and to get someone else named Hell's Prince - probably Dispater - who'll evaluate me more favorably, but even before I do that, if I conquer anywhere, people who go to Hell because of me and calling my name are mine, and safe, unless I look like I'll never become a power in Hell, and according to Aspexia Rugatonn I have a lot of cultists. 

I hadn't had much time to think of a plan but the fragments of one that I had were that I'd enhance us both as far as possible, ask for your help figuring out how to close the Worldwound, which is - the sort of thing that someone on the path to ascension would do, it'll make my cult take me much more seriously, declare it my territory and those who go there my possessions, and then reach out to Dispater with a contract for confidential negotiations, where He can't use anything learned from the negotiations to hurt me. My impression of Dispater is that He enjoys indulging me, if it's not obviously stupid, if it grants Him pride and respect in Hell, and I've already had as much benefit as I can from that in my current position but if I did something epic and impressive, He'd be willing to indulge me again. 

If the Worldwound doesn't work I could instead seize Cheliax, which proves my Asmodean bona fides all right and which I feel less averse to now that I know this entire situation is Abrogail's fault more than I already thought it was. That doesn't count towards my conquests but it does count towards how cool Dispater thinks I am. And if neither of those work I could probably start actually conquering other countries, except if I do that I have responsibilities to everyone in them so we'd have to be really sure of subsequent steps of the plan.

Anyway, once I had a impressive track record as rising Power-of-Hell, I'd bring a confidential negotiation, tell Dispater I intend to overthrow Asmodeus, and see what He says. He's not bound to obey Asmodeus and He runs Dis - not well enough, but closer to not being stupidly wasteful, He'd be willing to run it in an acceptable way, He wouldn't destroy the world about the rules changing. And He's, you know, a devil, He respects strength and He respects trying to rise to your place. I think He'd help me if there were something compelling in it for Him. I think at INT 29 I can compact with Him safely.

I am assuming here that you have some fraction of a plan to kill Asmodeus already, because none of what you're doing makes any sense if you don't. But I am assuming that it's a bad plan that runs unacceptable-to-me risks and we might need to think of a better one. In particular, I'm worried you just - don't mind - that Asmodeus might release Rovagug - uh, it's reassuring, you saying you don't want to kill people, I'd gotten scared that you'd just decided to - be ilani and clean up this whole messy little bit of reality -

- but, uh, I'm not helping with a plan where Asmodeus might release Rovagug. I want to fix the world, not be worse than any Evil ever to scour it."

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He sits silently for a while.

"What - counts as conquest, can I tell Golarion that every country in the world needs to acknowledge you as Empress or be destroyed, and pay you, I don't know, 1% of tax revenue, and then you can collect all the Golarion souls going to Hell and then - I have not been able to find out, what it would take to get to other planets, other planes - does this plan basically work?"

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" - Iiiiii think that plan might work but I have moral reservations about it!!! I realize that's rich, coming from me!"

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"I, too, have reservations.  Mostly that this does not fix enough.  Also that it sounds like the sort of thing where more than a quarter of Golarion might be stupid about it, or countries would ban your cult just to be, cruel, so people couldn't call your name in life, there's the question of who you could name your slaves and allies in Hell that would - treat people remotely acceptably - whether you can become acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power without torturing people."

"I'll put on my Intelligence headband instead of my Splendour, augment Wisdom, and think about it, I suppose.  Probability this was memory-gambit Carissa's plan?  I see tropes in fewer places than I once did, but am still somewhat alert for them.  On tropes, memory-gambit Carissa's plan will be the one that actually works, whatever it was, because we don't know it, and all of us are dancing to her tune."

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"....10%? I don't think everything turns on my compact with Asmodeus. Like you said, it's not enough. We have to overthrow Him, not just let me steal everybody. But I do think that everything might turn on whether Asmodeus, when you do whatever you're doing and it would be helpful now to know what that is, thinks there's any interesting Asmodeanism in the world from there or not, and my compact might matter for that. Also it might make some marginal gods be against destroying the world. 

 

I do think memory-gambit Carissa had figured out something I haven't yet rederived, something that made her - even more desperate than I feel right now - and maybe this conversation is a waste of time until I rederive it, which I do think I can when I review all my notes and think."

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"Yes, well, on the trope theory, you can't do that, or won't do it successfully even though you think you have, or if you derive it then it will no longer be possible for it to work, unless it's reasonably the case that the viewpoint could've shifted off us before that happens..."

"I do not think I am actually smart enough to think through the important parts of this, even with new crystallized mental skills, without swapping to my Intelligence headband and using an Owl's Wisdom."

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"I don't think I believe versions of the trope theory where you can't think thoughts if Something is paying attention. I think if the other Carissa deleted her thoughts it was for more concrete reasons surrounding people who were definitely paying attention, such as Dispater, and Cheliax. - headband seems like a good idea."

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"That Keltham is - colder."

"If we're going to talk about - us, at all, we should do it, before then.  The reason I'm running +6 Splendour and no Intelligence or Wisdom is because - that's about as much as is left, of the Keltham you knew, for him to exist again and speak to you."

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- nod. 

 

"I don't - know what to say. What I did to you was awful. I loved you, and I used that to hurt you, and I wouldn't forgive me, if I was you. I do want you to forgive me. I think when I made the plan to buy the souls back, to get the Wishes, one of the things I was hoping was that you could forgive me, if I could fix it, but even if not for the babies, I couldn't really have fixed it. I could say that they'd have sent me to Hell to be tortured eternally, if I'd done anything different, that I was being mind-read near constantly, that Abrogail would tease me about things she'd read in the transcripts she was having made of my thoughts, that I was only half-there, only half-thinking, my entire life until the moment in my bedroom where I realized that probably no one was reading my mind -

- but I don't know. I want to have higher standards than that, I guess. It wasn't literally an unsolvable problem.

I don't need you to forgive me. I don't need you to be angry with me, or not be angry with me, or forgive me, or not forgive me, or hurt me, or not hurt me. I just need us to save the world. Whatever - whatever you need from me, to do that, to make sure that this stupid stupid awful thing doesn't cost everyone everything - you have it, of me, forever, if necessary. And I'm sorry."

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"The Keltham you knew, the one who could have forgiven you in any meaningful sense, is effectively true-dead.  Though I suppose, from your own moral perspective, you wouldn't see it that way.  To you, being conscious, existing, having qualia, is everything, no matter what the form of that existence.  Never mind memories, emotions, purposes, relationships between people, what they care about, who they care about, what they aspire to, who they believe they are in their models of themselves.  A lemure in Hell that doesn't remember its name or anything of its life isn't just as good to you as the original person, I suppose, but you'd say it's - 90% of the way from Abaddon to Nirvana, on the Nirvana side of the utility interval?"

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" - I don't know very much about lemures. A four year old who doesn't remember anything of being three isn't effectively true-dead."

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"It's funny.  I thought I'd - accidentally killed off anger, inside myself, but - there is absolutely something in me that wants to hurt you, right now, not in a cuddleroom way.  It wants you to know how Keltham felt just before he gave up and augmented himself, not because he wanted to stop existing as himself, he wanted to go on existing, but the children in Hell mattered more to him than that, because he wasn't that selfish, in the end.  And the part of me that, doesn't hate you, but wants you to hurt, wants you to understand how much, what happened to him, is something that dath ilani are not, in fact, trained to put themselves back together about, after that, without assistance.  Survive, sure, go on functioning, sure, but not put themselves back together, that was supposed to involve a therapist who knows things that not every dath ilani gets taught as a child.  You, Cheliax, Golarion, hurt Keltham to the point where he didn't want to be in the world anymore, and that was why he could, for the sake of the children in Hell, make the choice that would cause him to effectively stop existing as himself, which, I guess, is something that Carissa Sevar can never understand or experience real sadness about, because to her, Keltham is still Keltham even if he's a lemure."

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It is completely true that while she isn't sure about a lemure, Keltham is still Keltham when he puts an intelligence headband on and she does not actually feel sadness or guilt about Keltham putting an intelligence headband on. About the fact he was in pain, yes, about the fact that it felt to him like giving up and he was willing to do it anyway, yes, about the fact he put an intelligence headband on, no, because that's in fact not death and not even a bit of death, any more than learning new math is death. 

 

She is not going to say that. It doesn't seem helpful. 

 

She's also not really sure this is on her? Would Keltham not have done it if she'd defected with him to Iomedae on day one? 

 

She is not going to say that either. 

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"Keltham, you know that - if Rovagug ate the world, people would die true deaths, and - even if your appearing-elsewhere thing is right, there are lots of Hells out there, 'I'll do whatever I want with people' is a less complicated way for a mind to be than sharing all of human values, most places are probably bad - if we fuck this up you'll be sending children to hells. Young ones. Pharasma doesn't judge eight-year-olds Evil."

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"Save it for colder Keltham.  Possibly for when both of us are INT 29.  You'd need a lot of background, including a lot of material that I had to rederive myself from realizing that Civilization must have hidden it and why they did, to argue with me about the population statistics of Larger Reality."

"I understand, Carissa, that there are many, many senses here, in which what happened to me, was not entirely your fault.  There were, by your own lights, maybe also by mine, worse things that would happen to you, if you refused to play along with Cheliax.  You had options like walking out on Cheliax with me right there at the Worldwound, but you were twisted and warped by things smarter than yourself into not seeing those options, not thinking of them then or maybe even now you haven't thought of them.  There were gods messing with your life.  There were, with great probability, things above gods messing with your life at least a little.  You didn't choose this story, They did."

"It's possible that even if you'd gone to the nearest church of Iomedae right there at the Worldwound, that I would have just found out about the children in Hell, earlier, and been even less prepared for it.  That I'd have augmented my abilitystats the same way for the same reasons, and ended up doing the same kind of damage to my emotions and my, me.  Even if I was taking it slower.  Even if I hadn't been, then, in so much pain.  Even if I hadn't known, yet, the reasons why I shouldn't accept help, and somebody had tried to help me make it through.  Maybe the worst aspects of this all turn out the same for me, either way."

"The fact remains that you, no matter how forced into it, chose something, that dealt a kind of damage to me that is separate and additional from getting to Golarion and finding out that there were children in Hell, the damage of, daring to trust somebody, of telling yourself that you need to have courage, to fall in love, and finding that courage, and falling in love, and being betrayed in, if not literally the worst possible way, probably a worse way than anybody in the last hundred years of dath ilani history has ever been betrayed."

"It's probably nothing to Golarion.  It probably doesn't compare to a mother slowly watching her child die of sickness, knowing she'll never have the money to resurrect them, never be able to find them in the Boneyard.  It certainly doesn't compare to a single soul going to Hell."

"So you'll never, really, be able to understand the hurt that you dealt, or consider it as something very significant on the scales of your, utilityfunction, apart from what it meant to your emotions, which are just your emotions, and which probably hurt you a lot, but you did it anyways because of your utilityfunction, which isn't even something I can disagree with, I would not have wanted you going to Hell rather than betraying me."

"I am not, in the end, able, to tell you, that you, chose this wrongly, I just want, to say all these things to you, and make you feel hurt, because you chose it, and the only reason I'm doing that, when I can't tell you the algorithm you should've used to choose differently, is because, wanting you to hurt like that, is one of the last pieces and last wishes left of Keltham, along with a lot of best wishes for you that I am probably not going to act on."

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- all that and she is mostly, somehow, terrified about the part where even though he has pointedly not confirmed her Rovagug-worries he has been rederiving things about the population-statistics of Greater Reality. 

 

 

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Set that aside for a moment and listen to Keltham; you owe him that. 

 

(If he were, as he claimed, not Keltham, you wouldn't owe him anything.)

(Set that aside for a moment too.)

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"I don't think it was a small hurt, for whatever that's worth."

I do think that you're dangerously wrong about the entire concept of being a person - not the time for that, either. 

 

"And I don't think I weighed up the magnitude of the hurt to you against the other things I wanted, and decided it was worth it. I'd respect myself more, if I'd decided that. I just didn't let myself decide at all.


What - are your best wishes, even if you don't want to act on them anymore."

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"For you to live happily ever after with your Keltham, of course.  What else?  Excuse me."  The man in front of her reaches up and wipes Keltham's tears away from his eyes.

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"Wasn't obvious, see, because I've never met anyone who wasn't Chelish and Chelish people don't say things like that. But yeah, I don't think we're going to get that one. We'll have to settle for getting it for everyone else."

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"I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, which would make a mockery out of some of my own past life decisions but, even so, I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, the everyone-else.  And those are issues that you did not, last I knew of you, like to think about, or confront as possibilities, so chalk it up as one more thing to talk about when we're both INT 29."

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"Do you have a reason to think that - yeah. Okay. Once we're enhanced. 

 

 

If you're - not Keltham - 

 

 

 

- then why, from your perspective, would I want to work for you?"

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"Because the colder Keltham is doing something you want, or otherwise doing something you fear, of course."

"If we do this, Carissa, I say this, out of Keltham's last wishes and because I'm feeling strongly instead of being smart, if we do this, we should do this on a Lawful Evil basis, the same way I deal with Ri-Dul, where you get what you compact for.  I was betrayed by those I trusted in part one of this story, and it sure would rhyme if somebody trusted me and got betrayed by me, in part two, even if there were reasons and even if there'd be, no algorithm, that I should've used to make a different choice, of the choices that I actually saw."

"I should go, get my headband now, I have to be outside the Rope Trick to take it from my Bag of Holding.  I have, said that one thing, that Keltham wanted to say to you, and all the other things, that he wanted to say, like that he loved you, or that he wanted and hoped that you'd end up with a happy ending of your own even if it couldn't be with him, those are all obvious if you know the pattern and it hurts too much to say them anyways."

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" - okay.

 

 

I love you too."

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"You have knelt to, to me, for the, last, time, now, because that, hurts too much, to see -"

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The man taps her on the forehead.  "I give yourself back to you.  You own yourself.  Imaginary tag points to Carissa.  Excuse me."

He climbs down the Rope Trick, crying.

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(He's gone a bit longer than it would take to just remove a headband from a Bag of Holding.)

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Yeah, that figures. 

 

 

 

 

Maybe if she'd had a better plan, if she'd known about the babies, if she'd already actually fixed everything - if she wasn't mostly still scared of what he might do -

Maybe then it would've gone differently. 

But it didn't.

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Somebody climbs back up through the Rope Trick.  Looks just like Keltham, but he's wearing a +6 Intelligence headband and visibly has Owl's Wisdom running.

"All right," he says.  "Let's negotiate.  Are you willing to swear, before I reveal potentially dangerous knowledge to you, that you will not use any knowledge revealed here to you, to act against myself nor my plans, in the sense that whatever you learn from me should not cause you to take actions more damaging to my interests than you'd otherwise have taken?"

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She'd have hesitations about this except for how he can just turn her to stone if she's intending to act against his interests; with that, it's not a hard call. "Yes, I'll swear to that."

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He holds out a single earring, familiar to Arcane Sight, but larger and less spellsilver-efficient than her own version; a specialized geas.  "This earring compels you to keep bargains and promises you make with me after putting it on, unless I violate my side of the compact.  It prevents you from lying to me, but doesn't prevent concealing information.  It's cursed against voluntary removal, and the geas prevents you from trying to arrange to have it removed.  Once worn it hides itself and looks like an ordinary earring to regular Detect Magic.  I, for my part, swear to you that that's all this earring does."

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"Where'd you get that made?" She could make it in a month, probably, but she's actually wildly envious of any other item enchanter who could without having her previous work on the geas earrings to go off. ....well, they could've had more than a month, with the time-dilated demiplane.

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"Lawful Evil 7th-circle.  She wasn't starting from scratch, I was able to buy some cursed geas items with more unfortunate specializations and had her repurpose those."

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"I want to meet her. I'm putting on the earring but mostly only because you could make me."

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"She did not want to meet anyone else or have it known that she was dealing with me."

"You have the option of not putting on the earring and not getting to negotiate with me.  Most of what I want from you is voluntary activity that cannot optimally be forced from you by geas."

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"Yes, but this is still not an offer I'd take from someone who couldn't make me. Can you if you deal with her again at least show her something impressive I made and give her my contact information."

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"Yes, though I don't have any Sevar items about me besides your glibness pin."

"Once you've put on the earring, repeat your promise not to use knowledge that you learned from me to harm my interests, relative to what you would've done without that knowledge, as is a condition of this negotiation."

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She puts it on. She repeats the promise.

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"All right.  Diamonds turned out to be tetrahedral Element-6 crystals, for which I happened to know a straightforward, purely chemical synthesis method.  That synthesis is presently in progress in a temporary demiplane I set up to have the environmental conditions for synthesizing diamond, with a scattering of diamond dust within to act as seed crystals.  I expect the diamonds growing there to be large enough for Wishes in about a week.  It's not a large demiplane, though, so I'm not expecting to get more than a couple of million Wish diamonds that way."

"Ri-Dul does not know this important fact, nor does the priestess of Sarenrae below us, and it would be damaging to my interests for you to tell them, or, indeed, anyone I have not told you is cleared for it."

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 "- well in that case I think we're actually going to be completely fine. I'd be annoyed I sold my soul for something we can make by the million but actually I can't even be annoyed right now, it's impossible. - I want to know the chemical process for diamond synthesis but that's not even arguably a priority."

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"That's a week of realtime, two weeks of demiplane time, and those two weeks may matter considerably.  In particular, they matter for whether or not I have an incentive to destroy Egorian or all of Cheliax to prevent the ensoulment of my children, or as many of those children as possible, or if I'm able to advance other plans to a point where it's clear that Golarion and Cheliax will end up being an acceptable place for children."

"I'd like to buy your Wishes to enhance my Intelligence, Wisdom, and Splendour.  I want to rent your artifact headband for at least a month of realtime.  I will not offer you thousands of Wish diamonds in exchange, because I don't want them proliferating all over Golarion just yet.  I will offer that you may go on the trip to the City of Brass that I was previously planning to take with Ri-Dul, where, I've read, many Efreeti can readily cast Wish given a large enough diamond for it.  I'll send with the Wish diamonds and other payments for you to buy +5s to all six of your abilitystats in the City of Brass.  In the event that I cannot fulfill my side of the bargain in a timely fashion, because the diamond synthesis method failed to scale to Wish diamond size, I will endeavor to pay you back the reasonable value of fifteen Wishes and the headband rental whenever I can.  Unless I am dead and unresurrectable for any number of reasons, in which case you get an unremunerated bad outcome."

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"I am sure you realize that's a deal I'd happily make Keltham and would be a fucking moron to accept from Dispater."

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"How so?  Just because Dispater is generically adversarial and smarter than you?"

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"Because my side of it is 'give up my artifact headband which is crucial for figuring out what is actually going on here, and my fifteen Wishes which definitely work, now, to maybe get the benefit of the Wishes in two weeks and the headband back in four'. I guess I also get some strength and dexterity and constitution. I don't care about strength and dexterity and constitution, I'm a wizard. This is tempting because you think it might help you not need to destroy Cheliax, and tempting insofar as I want to help you with that at my expense - tempting because we have shared goals."

Carissa isn't going to argue with Keltham about how he experiences augmentation but she doesn't feel cold, just more alive, better at seeing things and saying them.

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"Yeah.  From your perspective, this deal is about harm reduction.  My having a greater chance of not destroying Cheliax.  Or, if I have to do that anyways, getting more time to work on the Wish wording for it, as may reduce the chance of a catastrophe there, being able to only glass Egorian and making sure that I don't accidentally crack the planet in the process.  I'd be Wishing about some dangerous stuff."

"The plan there, to be specific, would be to summon a horde of fiends, demons maybe, or daemons though I realize you'd rather I not, to attack Egorian, they Teleport their emergency response teams there and get in a bunch of their best people, bang, no more Egorian.  They'll have a True Rez scroll somewhere to bring back Rugatonn and she can bring back others but it'll take her time.  Hopefully that's enough to let somewhere non-evil come in and take over Cheliax.  I'd probably tip the Church of Iomedae to what I was planning, and give them diamonds.  My current plan is that everything in my harvest that I can't realistically use goes to the Church of Iomedae under seal, and they can use it for whatever, to clean up the mess, if anything permanent happens to me."

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"And the plan that might enable you to not have to do that?"

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"It's the plan that you get to try to talk me out of, though I expect that to go better if we're both INT 29.  Let's be very clear, I currently intend to do that part whether or not I have your fifteen Wishes.  What you buy is that I am less likely to glass Egorian or Cheliax first, because I am able to do it faster, and I do it using better-phrased Wishes."

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"I still want to know the plan before I agree to give you my headband and fifteen Wishes, because I want the headband on when I learn the plan and because I might not want to help you do it faster. For example if you are going to have Rovagug eat everybody, delaying you a day is more important than anything else I can readily think of."

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"Do you know something I don't about the probability of Rovagug successfully eating everybody if Asmodeus lets it out, as opposed to the other gods killing Asmodeus and then successfully forcing It back into a sealed vault and this time giving the key to Abadar or Iomedae like sane people?  I admit that Asmodeus releasing Rovagug was not something I'd previously expected as the result of my plan, it is a real problem, and I am currently thinking of what to do about that.  I do thank you for pointing it out, for I am still an alien to this world and to Asmodeanism even with lesser augmentation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- well, the prophecy is that Rovagug eats everything, so there's that, and also I think the other gods couldn't beat Rovagug and Asmodeus fighting together to destroy the world, they might all be able to beat Asmodeus if they teamed up and they might even without Asmodeus be able to beat Rovagug if they teamed up but they definitely wouldn't be expected to do both.

 

 

....I really kind of think you should, uh, hire Osirion's personality-damage-treatment girl, give me the diamonds, and let me handle this. I am not the best person for it but this is my world and I like getting smarter and I won't let something bad happen to your kids."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I really think this is a conversation we should have at mutual INT 29, that we are wasting time and causing emotional wear to ourselves by having it at INT 24 instead, and that it's ludicrous to claim you'd rather delay one more day on the world maybe ending than to give me one more day to work on Wish phrasings and maybe not end the world at all."

"That said, as a token of why I think there's complicated issues here that we'd obviously be better off discussing at INT 29:"

"Some books claim that only Asmodeus can let out Rovagug.  Other books say that any of the ancient gods who cooperated to seal Rovagug have the power to let it out.  Asmodeus would just be the proud god who'd rather go down with the multiverse than negotiate if Civilization got the upper hand on him, which is why the prophecy is about Asmodeus."

"Now suppose it were the case that releasing Rovagug would or would probably end with Rovagug being beaten back again.  There's an obvious reason why that information would be considered an infohazard and they would not tell you about it, namely, the threat of Rovagug held by multiple gods is a key element of the current divine negotiating equilibrium, that prevents reality from going under what any of the ancient gods consider to be the utility of the world ending.  From any of their perspectives, if the true probability of Rovagug ending the world became knowledge among themselves, they might lose that guarantee.  Nethys could know but not be allowed to tell anyone.  It's not something that could possibly happen with ideal agents, but there's Chaotic gods in this mix."

"I assign this claim a higher probability than I otherwise would, that there's information in play considered infohazardous to gods, because Iomedae cautioned me in a vision that Cayden Cailean was trying to hide information from Her even though She thought it unlikely that Cayden Cailean had betrayed Good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- how long am I waiting, if I agree to wait to discuss this until I'm INT 29."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A week of realtime, two weeks of demiplane time if you opt to stay in here.  If anything goes wrong with the diamond synthesis requiring a delay of more than an additional two days before your trip to the City of Brass, or if the trip to the City of Brass fails, we will obviously start talking immediately."

"Assuming, of course, that I don't just make it up to INT 29 and realize I'm an idiot.  I wouldn't want you to rely on that, but it sure is the sort of thing that happens to dath ilani in novels, and apparently in real life or whatever this is.  I realized I'd been all kinds of idiot after I got a Fox's Cunning and then again when I got the +6 version of the headband."

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"We start talking...while you have INT 29 and I have INT ...22?"

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"24.  I'd obviously lend you my +6 Intelligence headband, my +6 Wisdom headband, my +4/+0/+4 headband, and hand over all of my augmentation scrolls and items.  You'd need all that anyways even after you got Wished up to be at INT 29."

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"Do you swear that, in your understanding of my interests, it's in my interests to loan you the headband and give you the Wishes?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sell the Wishes.  But no.  That is - more complicated than I am willing to swear to, right now, though I am still dath ilani and I still do not lie.  I see - an argument - for how this is in your interests.  It seems probably stronger to me than the obvious argument the other way.  But you are an alien being who I never did understand, I think, and there are aspects of this that are genuinely complicated even by my standards.  I am trying to think inside the world where I am pretending Snack Service does not exist, which will be easier when I have more Wisdom, and I am very sure that is in your interests, that I get better at pretending Snack Service doesn't exist, but if you make a decision based on that, we're not pretending Snack Service doesn't exist, are we?  So you shouldn't take that into account at all.  I cannot give you an answer based on reality, or shouldn't, rather, because reality is not the basis on which we need to be making our decisions."

"So no.  I do not so swear.  I'm not, actually, a devil, but I am not a cleric of Abadar and this is not an Abadaran deal.  You decide for yourself if you're willing to take it."

Permalink Mark Unread

Maybe half a million people, in Egorian. Maybe less than that if the population figures are lies. They'll go to Hell, some of them calling her name, which doesn't matter because she doesn't get Cheliax yet. 

 

Would they want her to help Keltham with an awful horrible plan that he'd have just told her by now if he didn't think she'd violently oppose it? If it saved them? It's not Asmodean to care about that. It's probably some flavor of Good. It's not helpful, either, she has no idea of the answer. 

Would she? Little Carissa Sevar, a wizard student, would she want greater-Carissa-Sevar to have less power so that she could live and not go to Hell? If she really understood what Hell was?

 

No, if she really understood what Hell was she'd want it fixed. She'd want that more than she wanted anything else. 

 

So the only real question, then, is whether this makes that likelier. Whether Keltham, as he stands before her, is someone who she trusts more than she trusts herself, with Hell growing into something she can bear.

 

It's simple when you think about it like that. 


"No."

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"Your reasoning?"

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"The only thing to consider is the ultimate outcome and you said you don't think this affects that. I trust that my having resources will make the ultimate outcome better more than I trust that you having resources will make the ultimate outcome better.

 

I would probably consider giving them to Keltham on the grounds that I owe Keltham, but you're insisting you're not Keltham and we're not playing by those rules, and under the rules you chose, no."

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"No, I said that I'd try the same thing at some point either way.  If this affected only timing then all you'd care about is one more day before, say, on my old plan whose problem I now see, Asmodeus releases Rovagug and destroys the world with some probability.  In that case I could not have truthfully said that I thought I saw an argument for this being in your interests and that it seemed stronger than the converse argument.  I am - basically expecting that the story is telling me to proceed before my children are ensouled and Cheliax attacks Osirion, I am willing to go along with that plotline rather than fight it and risk the story applying additional incentives to me, and I expect that more high-Intelligence prep time on my side produces better outcomes from your own perspective, because, for example, I can spot more issues like the Rovagug one.  That's the obvious argument."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh, and I have more confidence that my being smarter and having more time to think produces better outcomes on that front than that you being smarter does, so I'd rather I be smarter for that extra time than you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suspect you're looking for a symmetry between us that doesn't actually exist."

"That said, I'm thinking that Stupider Me has made some mistakes in his handling of this situation, which I am now thinking about how to correct."

"Osirion tells me you have two Chelish corpses in your Bag of Holding, and paid for a third Chelish person to be raised and left him in Osirion's care.  This conversation has reached something of a temporary stalling point, I suspect, so I now ask what is the deal with that and if there's anything time-sensitive about it."

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"Had to kill my escort to get to you. Or - maybe I didn't have to, but I was worried you'd do something stupid and I'd already tried the move where I do something clever to protect everything you care about so you don't do anything stupid, and at some point the best move, when you're stuck, is just to get out. So I killed my escort. Olegario is mine, he's pledged his loyalty to me, but I can't actually protect him in Hell yet and I don't actually know how he'd take it if I told him I'm going to kill Asmodeus and take His job. So I had to kill him too, but I had him raised immediately. 

The other two are Hadrian, who is a perfectly unobjectionable Chelish seventh circle wizard, and Abarco, who I personally dislike though he's not objectively worse than anyone else. Cheliax will probably Raise them both, they need wizards right now, but I can't really think of a reason to save them the diamond."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Any reason we shouldn't drop them off in Egorian with a note from me saying that I didn't wantonly destroy their utility and I hope they'll take good care of mine?"

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"...not a strong one, if you want to do that?" Keltham would've been mad at Abarco for raping her Keltham, in fact, wasn't mad about that, when he heard about it, probably because he had a whole lot more to be mad about. 

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"They'll probably read through that I did it to confuse them, but probably isn't certainly, and if they're confused enough to start with, they might get more confused.  There's several things here that go better if they consider me relatively more open to negotiation, also.  Optimizing around Cheliax's response is much more important than causing them to use up two True Resurrection diamonds."

"Come to think, I should have them dropped off with a couple of Raise Dead diamonds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did tell the devils I was complicatedly serving Asmodeus's interests. I figured it was good if they weren't sure, whether I ended up serving Asmodeus's interests or not, though it looks like, in fact, I am."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plausibly helps, yeah.  Sort of sad where a lot of what it potentially helps with is taking them by surprise about destroying Egorian."

"You've had what sounds like an intense day.  Do you, in fact, possibly need some rest time before you could even give consent to complicated deals in a way that you'd feel had come from your real self, or for that matter, some alone time to fail to rederive your memory-gambit-self's plan?"

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From Carissa's perspective it feels like she's being entirely reasonable and the problem here is that Keltham-with-an-identity-crisis is being twisted-into-a-trauma-pretzel while having far more diamonds and riches than any insane traumatized teenager should possess. Which problem will not solve itself if she gets some time to rest and think. 

 

However, she is capable of noticing that probably from Keltham's perspective this is not what it feels like, and that she is going to have to be able to work with Keltham's perspective instead of just smugly refuting it in her own head if she is going to save the world, and also that sometimes when you can identify that from someone else's perspective the situation would look different this is not just a fact about how they're an idiot but is, sometimes, also a fact about the situation. 

And she did spend her entire life making incredibly costly mistakes and should probably not assume that she just stopped having that problem forever this morning. 

"That might be a good idea. I love you. I'm sorry this is so hard, and I will try to find a way that I can give you this without endangering the entire world."

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"All right.  Let's head out.  You're physically weaker, want to go down first so I can lend you a hand on the rope?"

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" - I was planning to just take the fall because it'll make me feel better, honestly."

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"I suppose it's good to see, on some level, that you have not changed.  I admit I'm also wondering whether INT 29 and WIS 27 would let me put myself back together again, better than this, and maybe be able to feel a sexually sadistic impulse again.  Yes, that's emotional blackmail, there's children in Hell and I'm willing to resort to emotional blackmail in the face of that."

"Brain suggested pushing you out of the Rope Trick, maybe as a joke even if it can't be romantic, other parts of my brain are fighting me about it.  Sorry.  Fall if you're falling."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's in fact almost certainly not children in Hell right now? It has happened, across all of history, but, you know, after five years tops they aren't children anymore. I could check, if that's decision-relevant somehow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think if I'm pretending Snack Service doesn't exist I'm pretending that information has positive value to me, if maybe not to you... how would you check?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...ask, while doing confidential negotiations with Dispater, which I really believe are an element of a successful plan? Hell's a Lawful place, it keeps records." She jumps.

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He climbs.

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The Grand High Priestess of Sarenrae has not yet completed the portal.

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The man stands with seeming infinite patience, waiting for a lull in the Sarenrite priestess's casting so she can eject them from the demiplane and back to the contingent point of the Material.

He offers Carissa a hand.  This obviously is only sensible in case of some minor mishap, so they don't end up separated.

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She squeezes his hand. "Do you want the note to Cheliax to be from me or from you. They're more scared of me, at this point."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't take this the wrong way, but what could you possibly have done to make them THAT scared?  If it seems wise to say outside the Rope Trick?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm mostly not proud of the parts of it that were my doing, and the parts that weren't were the doing of the entity you don't want to think about. But also it's just a fact about people, right? You're far away and might destroy them suddenly, and how do they even think about that, what would it even do to fear it? I'm dangerous by their rules. You might annihilate their whole civilization overnight for reasons that wouldn't make sense to them; I might take offense at their stupid face and call them in to my office to answer for it.

People don't - know how to be scared of something in proportion to how bad it'd be, not past their own life. Even I don't, and I'm not sure if it's a bad thing, because I don't know how I'd stand up, under the weight of what's at stake here, if I really felt it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that's basically what happened to Keltham.  You know how he thought, when he got here, that he was Chaotic?  Turns out, an unusually selfish dath ilani isn't actually as selfish as, say, a totally average person from Golarion."

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"My current theory of people is that they're - not really coherent, they're a bundle of conflicting impulses and the part of them trying to make sense of themselves just has to draw an outline around all the impulses that were recently activated and declare that's who they are. And you're - the desire to get rich and have lots of women and be admired and desired and do cool science and invent clever Prestidigitation tricks and be surrounded by people who really get you and really like you, and also the desire for there not to be kids in Hell, and whatever else, and in dath ilan one set of those got activated, drawn to your attention, and in Golarion...not so much.

 

And I'm - wanting to be safe, wanting to be strong, wanting to live forever, wanting to not be trapped and helpless, wanting to have lots of incredibly powerful magic items, wanting everyone else in the world to live forever, wanting to get to steer who I have sex with, and I'd probably be fucking Good, if I'd grown up somewhere where my own immortality was certain and safe, and Abaddon was the only thing that ever struck at something deep and core to who I am. I'd probably be one of those angels that guards the River of Souls. I don't wish I was, just, I think it's the same bundle, poked differently."

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"And there's probably something that you learn in dath ilan, if you're this much smarter than I was - or something that they'd obviously teach you, if they knew you'd have to half-ass Keeper disciplines for yourself, because your world suddenly needs that of you - whereby - all the people who actually do, go coherent enough to have sorta utility functions, don't just - all end up as the same person.  Who is, in Golarion, more or less dath ilani Iomedae.  I, alas, was not taught such an art; maybe at INT 29 I could rederive it, and it wouldn't be too late."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't immediately know how to convey it, and maybe I'm doing it wrong. But - when I have the headband, I notice more of what's in the bundle, I'm doing less - hiding parts of it because I can't reconcile them with the rest of me - and even if, I'm deciding to ignore a lot of parts, right now, because saving the world is the only thing that matters - when I decided to kill Olegario it hurt, and I could feel better than I could've if I was stupider how much it hurt, and why I was deciding to do it anyway - instead of choosing blindly -"

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"I'm aware of how much I'm hurting you.  It's not, actually, helping me be Keltham, because the thing that Keltham does, is stop hurting Carissa, and I am not doing that, because of all the other things I am now aware of."

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"...and that doesn't feel, to you, like - Keltham always was a lot of pieces, and one of them is to not hurt Carissa, who he loves, and another is to protect his kids, and another is to not let people go to Hell, and now some different pieces are the ones that pull the strongest, but - they're all you -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It'd be more persuasive if you didn't think the lemure was me."

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"I don't actually know much about lemures and absolutely have a pile of rationalizations about everything to do with Hell because it was going to happen to me and I was scared! But I think you're Keltham. You're Keltham in an astonishing amount of pain and mostly using - completely new rules for decisionmaking because your old ones worked out so badly, which, well, I can relate to, but you're not -

 

 

- look - 

 

When I'd erased my memories and went to Dispater, He asked me what might make my soul less valuable and I thought of Asmodia and Peranza, how I cared about them. And he asked if I'd take 15 less Wishes - I'd asked for 30 - for them to be safe. And I - wanted that - very badly - but I said no, because I was an Asmodean, and I figured I could feel what I felt but I could decide not to use it for making decisions. Thankfully He didn't let me fuck that up, and from my current perspective I was an idiot because Asmodia and Peranza were far more important than the Wishes we were just going to squabble over like a couple of children" while we waited for your diamonds to ripen, she doesn't finish the sentence because the Sarenrae cleric might be listening.

"But - it's Carissa all the way through, right, the same impulses, it's just a question of which ones I'm choosing to ignore because something else is more important. I wish I could say that was some fucking stranger I have no resemblance to, but it wasn't, it was just me, with a stupid goal."

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The Grand High Priestess of Sarenrae, having reached a lull in her casting, approaches.  "Erased your memory and sold your soul to Dispater for 15 Wishes, hm.  Young man, I congratulate you on having somehow found, somewhere in all of Golarion, a woman to court who is even higher in drama than you."

She kicks both of them out of her demiplane without giving them a chance to respond.

Permalink Mark Unread

Carissa is too Wise to get defensive about her life and her choices. 

 

 

....well. She's close. Maybe if she Wishes on five more Wisdom. Maybe if she does that and takes up meditation.

Permalink Mark Unread

They're in a different area, now, than the one they Plane Shifted out of, but it's also inside the permanent Mage's Sanctum and just outside a Forbiddance, now with a glowing red transparent curtain to show its presence for people without arcane vision, again with only a single door visible beyond the Forbiddance.  "Bitter black bananas," the man says, heading towards the door.  "I'm going to go ask a couple of harm-reduction questions of our resident oathbound Iomedaen, you're welcome to follow."

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" - I would actually love to talk to a priest of Iomedae, if there's one on site."

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"Wizard, and sure, once we get some things out of the way.  It's occurring to me that you might also need to do the thing where you finally get out of Cheliax and hit up a real library, which... is not incredibly easy to do directly, here.  But you could follow Ri-Dul by scry to Absalom, and tell him to buy books for you, I guess."

They'll pass through an underground hallway with four mysterious numbered doors, go around a bend marked by a curtain that looks yellow from their direction and demarcates a new Forbiddance with a different password "purple petulant petunias", more hallway, more doors.  The man knocks at one near the end, labeled 17.

Permalink Mark Unread

The woman who opens the door is perhaps fifty, with short pepper-grey hair and a bat familiar snuggled in the front pocket of her robes, apparently asleep. 

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"Two questions, I'll ask the lower priority first.  It's been purported to me that there's probably no children in Hell because early damnation is very rare.  I think I'm obliged to pursue learning whether that's true.  Include Boneyard kids.  Is that answer already known to you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know a little bit about it. The Church of Sarenrae probably knows more, really. 'no children in Hell' sounds wrong. It might be incredibly rare for children to be damned at trial  - probably is - but they can be Maledicted. I've heard of a case of people tracking down and Maledicting a paladin's family. There were children, there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This was - recent?"

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"About a decade back. But the youngest was two, so - still in Hell now, if that was specifically the question you wanted answered.

And I've heard of at least one cleric of Asmodeus who, if he's prepared Malediction and not used it, stops by an orphanage. So as not to waste the spell, right."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"Thank you. I should've thought of - the second, at least, being something someone'd do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is this an extant cleric of Asmodeus, or has somebody already taken care of him?  Also, Boneyard-child damnations?  That's half of Golarion's soul output."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, we killed him and trapped his soul in a rock at the bottom of the ocean. My understanding is that Boneyard kids lean Chaotic pretty hard, it's just pretty easy to be Chaotic Evil there and kind of hard to be Lawful Evil, what with how Hell doesn't, in fact, control the laws. But I assume they get the occasional one, there are a lot of kids in the Boneyard."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But those are the ones who, with tons of choices, are choosing Lawful Evil because it appeals to them, yes?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because Lawful Evil appeals to them? Yeah, presumably. Because Hell's going to work out for them? Fuck no. Even if you're Lawful Evil to your very core, Hell doesn't actually value that, and it won't actually work out for you in the end. Not for Abrogail Thrune, certainly not for some Boneyard kid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know that. I'm working on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, if you work on it, one thing I'd keep in mind is - if you kept every kid out of Hell, that'd be - a fraction of a percent. It'd be great work, absolutely the worthy work of a lifetime. The man who identified and killed that particular Asmodean cleric is one of the greatest men I've ever had the honor of knowing. 

But most people in Hell kind of suck, and, turns out, being on fire doesn't hurt any less if you kind of sucked, or if you were a grownup, or if you knew what was coming. It burns the same. It destroys you the same. I don't want there to be innocents in Hell. But if you got them all out, I'd have, you know, 99 percent plus of the issues with Hell that I have right now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't just mean I was working on the kids."

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"Extreme priority question, moderate urgency.  This deals in what are now, I guess, my previous plans, which Carissa Sevar has not yet been read in on, so don't mention info about that in front of her."

"In the version of the story where only Asmodeus has Rovagug's key, instead of all the gods who cooperated to seal Rovagug, there was a supposed prophecy about some threat that Asmodeus would let out Rovagug to consume, hoping Rovagug would consume the threat, instead Rovagug consumes everything."

"This obviously makes no sense as a predictable divine error, and it would make more sense if the prophecy was about Asmodeus facing a decision-theoretic threat such that Asmodeus's reply was 'die in a fire'.  Asmodeus, not the other gods, because Asmodeus has more pride than other gods and will burn down more branches of reality in which some other god would accept making a concession."

"Carissa, who knows a lot more about Asmodeanism than either of us, worries that if I corner Asmodeus he'll release Rovagug."

"I'm not authorizing you to reveal my prior plans to the general Church of Iomedae over this.  But if you have reason to believe that's not going to happen, given the plans I previously had, I need to know about it.  Presumably Iomedae already had plans for cornering or extinguishing Asmodeus without Rovagug getting released as a result.  Can you find out how that would work?  Is it evidently something that would apply only to Iomedae or not to me?  Is it something that would evidently apply to both Her plan and mine?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I expect Iomedae would, when She moved against Asmodeus, have a coalition of the gods that She was confident was sufficient to either prevent Asmodeus releasing Rovagug or beat Rovagug back when released. I don't think She has such a coalition right now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's... not really a great answer, from what I model to be your perspective.  Further details requested if you can get it by any means short of reading the Church in on my plans, you have basically unlimited budget but ask me for approval of anything above a hundred thousand gold pieces."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not a great answer! But if Iomedae has a secret plan I doubt She's even told Her church. I'll see what I can do all the same."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd say thank you, but, you know."

"Carissa, with me."

He heads off towards the next bend in the hallway.

Permalink Mark Unread

She ignores him. 

 


She's pretty sure that the part of her which wants to ignore Keltham is a stupid part but if you squish a part every time because it's stupid then you might not notice if it ever wasn't stupid.

Permalink Mark Unread

He turns back to look at her.

"Is there a reason you're not following?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I didn't feel like it."

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For a second the man smiles.  It looks to be involuntary.  He looks like Keltham, when he does that.

"TARNISH!"

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She's not going to resist punishment, or anything, but she's going to continue not moving.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Dare I hope that I'm here to hold her down while you hurt her?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would have been a relationship outcome far above my expectations.  No.  I need you in position to disable Carissa if she tries anything."


"Carissa.  There's a lot of entry processing we didn't do with you.  Most people here have sworn oaths not to oppose my plans, as a condition of being allowed to possibly reduce harm from them, with a few exceptions like Tarnish who consider themselves more aligned.  When I was - wearing a Splendour headband instead of Intelligence - and finally meeting you again - I did not - want to confront you over things that - might not have turned out to be necessary."

"But it is not actually something I will permit, that you use your Wishes on yourself, and keep your headband, and go around being INT 29 while I am INT 24.  You've already made an observation of vital importance to reducing the chance that I destroy the world, and I'd like you to make more of them, but the level of danger you represent without serious constraint is unacceptable."

"My 'best-alternative-to-negotiated-agreement' is statuing you at least until I am fully augmented with Wishes of my own.  Possibly until I've obtained at least a +6/+6 artifact headband of my own.  Do you want to offer me an alternative to that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It took me five minutes, not knowing your plans, to notice a way they were going to destroy the world. Your reaction to this is that you don't want me to be smarter, because then I'd be too good at preventing the destruction of the world?

I won't use the Wishes. I wasn't planning to until I'd at least rederived my original plan, and I'm not actually entirely sure we want them used for augmentation rather than some situation where a Hell-Wish is safer interpreted than a genie-Wish, if we're not going to be short on diamonds.

But I do want to register, Keltham, that I think you are making really terrible decisions, decisions that are in expectation going to kill millions of people, and that if what you discovered about yourself, deep down, was that you aren't that selfish, then you have to be unselfish enough to, if you notice a decision is going to in expectation kill millions of people, not make it. I don't know what unselfishness is for, if that's not it. If there's any real true shard of the Light anywhere in dath ilan, it'd be that they have fewer people who'd in expectation kill tens of millions of people as their first pass at solving a problem they could solve with, like, a conversation."

 

She turns back to the wizard's door, to knock on it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Go ahead."

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Knock knock.

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The woman opens the door again.

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"Iamhavingapanicattackandneedsomeonetoremindmetobreatheforthenexttwominutesareyouavailableandifnotdoyouhaveareferral"

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" - yeah, hey, it's okay, come on in. Sit down." She shoots a baffled glance over Carissa's head at the other occupants of the hallway.

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"Tarnish, follow her and make sure she doesn't, like, suddenly kill everybody and escape.  We have to assume at this point that tropewise she's now the story's protagonist and I'm the villain.  Be silent otherwise."

"Carmin, sorry.  I let myself get excited about meeting Carissa, I was - trying not to do the thing that obviously isn't going to end well, or rather, is going to end even worse, of suppressing too many emotions, not making any concessions to excitement - didn't ask her to swear any oaths in advance, and - just now told her that it was looking like I needed to turn her into a statue for a week, if she didn't want to offer any promises."

"Carissa, Carmin and Tarnish are cleared to know all I told you."

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"Breathe in," Carmin says calmly. "That wasn't really much of a breath - there you go. Breathe out.  Breathe in.  Out.

 

In. Out. 

 

In. Out.

 

Do you want to talk about this, or just breathing assistance?"

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"What I want is to go to Hell where people aren't so fucking awful!!!"

 

Saying that had not been in her plan. It just sort of happened. Also it got her behind on breathing and it takes her most of the rest of the two minutes just to catch back up.

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"People, uh, don't threaten each other, in Hell?" Carmin says quietly, once she's calmed.

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"Probably they do. Probably nowhere's safe. I - sorry. I said two minutes. I'll leave now."

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"I am skeptical that's a good idea and don't mind if you stay longer."

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"Abrogail Thrune tortured me to death once. By turning me into a statue. I - told Keltham - told him it was, it was what I'd always been most terrified of - uh, before Abrogail, not because of her, that's why she did it -"

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"- wow. It makes sense, then, that you panicked, when he brought up statues."

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"Didn't panic then. Said something. Don't know if it was enough. Panicked - after - when I was trying to think of what - to say - that could possibly be enough when - he wants to destroy the world, he wants to kill everyone, that's the fucking plan, that's what convinced me to sell my soul, it's not overthrowing Asmodeus, it's overthrowing Pharasma, and may the beasts of the Outer Dark consume us all, that'll just make this corner of reality prettier, to a dath ilani. I hate him. I don't understand how I ever -"

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"I don't want the universe to be consumed by the beasts of the Outer Dark. I think with these resources, we can do a lot better than that."

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"Only if Keltham wants to!!!! He could - he could just give all the diamonds to the Church of Iomedae and you'd- handle it from there, wouldn't you -"

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" -we would be able to do a ton from there. I don't know that we'd be able to do everything."

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"He's not going to do everything!!! He's going to destroy the world because he can't be bothered to fucking think for five fucking minutes because he's - selfish stupid cruel horrible - this is why you're not supposed to fall in love with people, it's because it makes you fucking delusional, why didn't anyone say that instead of 'oh it's unAsmodean', it makes you think that they might be worth saving - I should've just told Otolmens, right away, to crush him -"

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"I don't actually think that you should have done that, even by your own values."

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" - you don't?"

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"No. I think you made the right decision, to come here, even though it was terrifying, and will probably get even more terrifying, and might all end in ruin."

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"Why."

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"I'm not, actually, cleared to talk with you about Keltham's plans."

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"I don't think it gets easier from here, for you, but I do think we will win."

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"Destroying the universe isn't winning."

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"No, it isn't."

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The story's now clearly-designated villain heads over to room 3, walking at a normal pace.

He knocks on Sarcini's door.

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She opens it. 

 

 

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He steps inside and closes the door.

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"Carissa Sevar does not like the thought of me taking possibly any risks of destroying the universe and I told her that it was looking like my best-alternative-to-negotiated-agreement was turning her into a statue for a week and she had a panic attack and I thought she was over that she told me before she was over the statue thing and the story is making me a villain and I do not want to be a villain and I do not like being a villain especially to her this was not how I wanted to finally be the villain to her and force her to do something for real the way she wanted to be forced for real and our relationship is over I need a hug."

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- she hugs him. She's taller than him, with a build that's not entirely human; she says she's half-something, but what the something is changes every time.

"I am just absolutely bursting with advice but possibly this is not the time."

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"I think this is, in fact, a pretty good time to be reminded of - things my people would think were common sense -"

"I suspect it's a time."

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"Okay, number one, she's Chelish, if she ever said she doesn't have trauma, she was lying. That's on her, not on you, but so far as knowing what to expect goes, yeah, she has trauma, she's fucking built out of it. Cheliax is awful, yeah? That's why we have to end it. 

Number two, like sixty percent of relationship problems are, 'we had that conversation and got wildly different things out of it', so maybe have someone have her write down what she thinks her major takeaways were, just so you can compare and marvel at the mortal condition. I don't know how anyone reads their own past notes, or two different records of the same conversation, and doesn't want to dissolve the whole universe in a vat of acid. 

Number three, you also have trauma, dumbass! From her, specifically, lying to you and manipulating you! From her trying to get you to hurt her!"

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"None of that hurt at the time.  All the trauma was at the end and - therefore I am not hurt, which is completely logical, right -"

"Yes, I realize none of that made any sense, however, what you don't realize is, that's not the issue, the issue is that Carissa is completely unreasonable about ending the universe."

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"Everyone's completely unreasonable about ending the universe. That's the other forty percent of relationship problems that aren't miscommunications."

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"Is there a reason you're not just, telling me that I'm valid, which was sort of, why I was here?  A reason such as for example my not being valid."

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"Honey, I have no fucking idea what happened from your description. You told her you were going to statue her, she had a panic attack? Sounds to me like you're valid, and also she's valid, kinda? Probably if you tell people that you're going to statue them, then solidly eighty percent of the time they'll have a panic attack. You know I think you're if anything trying too hard at avoiding destroying the universe and that she's batshit insane about that."

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"Everyone in Civilization would try pretty hard to fix any universe, even this one, rather than destroying it, they'd just, have the maturity to accept destroying a universe if they had to, if the universe was one where a third of souls hurt forever or die if they're lucky, and Carissa Sevar is an alien whose views are sort of internally consistent at least but I don't understand why everybody who isn't Carissa Sevar is, is, this reality is like an insane parody of arguments against negative utilitarianism, is what it is, it's a giant straw reality because nobody who argues against negative utilitarianism would say that you shouldn't even destroy Pharasma's Creation and people here are in some kind of bizarre state of not thinking about Hell because they grew up with Hell always being there and it's like this whole, insanity, is trying to crush in on me like the Evil planes weigh on your spirit if you go there without protection and I need you to say the simple sane things first and put the complicated relationship advice later."

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"There are billions of people in Hell and they're suffering horribly and pointlessly.

You couldn't ask them, 'hey, want me to destroy the universe', because they'd assume it was some cruel trick that was going to hurt them worse.

Every day more people are born who'll end up in Hell.

No one has a plan that will solve this any time soon.

Even outside Hell most people have awful coerced painful lives where they're scared and suffering practically the entire time.

Having kids in this world is horribly immoral.

People only do it because they don't have a choice, or have never thought in their life about whether anyone should exist, or are making sure not to think about the Evil afterlives."

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"Okay, see, that still isn't what I was looking for because the people outside of Evil afterlives, if you ask them, will say not to kill them, whereas the people in Hell say to please kill them, I literally heard somebody say it when I cast Vision of Hell, and how am I the only one who thinks that yes you destroy the multiverse because the people in Hell explicitly want that very intensely and there are lots of them, however, I have at least now heard both sides being crazy instead of only one side being crazy so I still feel very alone but not like some kind of massive social group hallucination is trying to choke me with its ghostly bare hands."

"You may proceed to relationship advice."

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"Assign someone who is not you to keeping the chick out of trouble and punishing her if she acts up."

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"That's terrible advice.  The 'chick' has an artifact headband more powerful than mine and is very likely now this story's protagonist and if I try to casually leave her to my minions it will not end well."

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"- okay, point taken, but the thing you're doing is incredibly, incredibly doomed. You and her have a history where you hurt her 'cause it's hot. Now, you broke it off, and you're doing the exact same thing except it's for real, and both of you fall apart when it turns out that in real life, hurting people hurts them."

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"Cool.  My story has given me a deadline of basically a couple of weeks modulo time dilation, by the end of which I need to either finish up the main plot, turn Egorian into ash, or watch Cheliax attack Osirion, and I am guessing it's supposed to be finish-the-main-plot.  Carissa has Wishes I need to be more intelligent now and the headband I need to be more intelligent now and what she wants to do instead is become INT 29 herself right away which, as much as it is extremely Carissa, is not, I think, going to help, because in fact there are not ways to save the world and especially not quickly that don't involve being willing to destroy the multiverse if necessary, and Carissa has an extreme non-nuanced position on not destroying the multiverse where she can't point to a particular quantitative balance of people in bad afterlives versus people not in bad afterlives and instead is just nope nope nope.  Why is the protagonist allowed to be like this?  It's supposed to be the villain who has the non-nuanced position where they start out thinking there's no point in even talking to you about it!"

"I digress.  What, exactly, am I supposed to do instead of hurting her?"

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"Well, I'm not convinced about all this 'this is a story' stuff, and I kind of figure that if this is a story then it will in fact end and everyone'll stop existing regardless so we should only worry about not being in a story, but in a story, you are definitely supposed to talk to her and figure out the stupid miscommunication that is 60% of the problem.

In not a story - well, you can still talk to her. That sometimes works in real life. And if it doesn't, you can either decide you're not going to force her to give you the Wishes and headband, or that you are going to force her to give you the Wishes and headband whatever that requires doing to her, but you can only decide that if there's something you are capable of doing that makes her give you the Wishes and headband, yeah? And you gotta have it in mind before you start down that road."

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"Dominate Person would be the obvious thing to try for the headband."

"I could never go back to being a cleric of Abadar afterwards, but it'd be the obvious thing to try, if I wanted to just take her stuff."

"There is, I think, basically no amount of pain you can apply to Carissa that will make her hand Wishes to you.  She would, if she isn't ilani enough to be beyond threats now, yield them if you threatened to otherwise Plane Shift her to Abaddon, and I will Plane Shift myself to Abaddon before I threaten her with that."

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"Not that I don't relate to the impulse to Plane Shift to Abaddon now and then but I do not really recommend it, here. So it sounds like you don't, actually, have a good way to get her stuff by force, so you gotta try the 'talk to her' thing. ...you're talking like when you wear your personality headband, but you're not wearing it. Should you put it on?"

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"Oh, that's funny.  So the key to still having a personality at INT 24 is having my ex-girlfriend ANNOY ME ENOUGH that my EMOTIONS COME BACK."

"It would be more of a solution to anything if I WANTED TO HAVE EMOTIONS while needing to, on every single plan I've come up with so far, destroy at least one city, which, you know, you are really supposed to leave to the Keepers or at least the Law-Abiding Sociopaths, and not try to do while being a normal person with a normal personality."

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"Wellllll, you could destroy the cities and then have the ex-girlfriend annoy you back into having a personality, instead of doing it in the other order?"

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"Iiiiiii suspect she has some actual story purpose here which is not that, what with her being the protagonist and all."

"Carissa already, I'm pretty sure inadvertently, talked me into giving up on all my tries at finding complicated alternatives and just releasing Rovagug myself, because otherwise Asmodeus may release It anyways.  I suppose that makes you happy."

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"Well, I mean, depends whether He eats the world or not? But I gotta say, it's definitely a move in the right direction."

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"Out of context, given that we're on track to release Rovagug, I'm pretty sure It won't succeed at destroying Pharasma's Creation, maybe Golarion or at worst Golarion's Material plane but definitely not the whole multiverse.  Which I would ordinarily be trying very hard not to think about.  But, since it's you and your preference ordering is flipped at that end of things, I want to make sure you are still fundamentally okay with our agreement and your oath to me and you getting isekaied to wherever, if the result of all that work is just the multiverse being fixed up a bit and not Rovagug eating everything."

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"Does being fixed up a bit mean people have an easier time getting out if they wanna, and no more Hell."

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"If there's people spending years begging to permadie and not being able to, or people stuck in the Material being unhappy because they can't just kill themselves and get an acceptable deal on an afterlife afterwards, then, yes, this would represent a failure of my plans or a very deep error on my own part about what my utilityfunction is."

"I think we're - pretty aligned at what obviously constitutes an incredibly bad outcome, just, you don't exactly have a lot of training quantifying your desires, so I am checking that what you think is a somewhat-worse-than-nothingness outcome, and I think is a fairly okay outcome, is, acceptable to you.  If we get that, instead of this, and maybe Rovagug not being so much of a possibility after that, either."

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"Well, good enough I'm not gonna call it quits."

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"I'm really mad at him."

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"I'm getting that sense."

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"He said 'you own yourself'. Why did he say that, if he thinks I should give him everything of mine he happens to want and threatens to statue me the first time I don't go where I'm told?"

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"Well, the obvious guess is that he wants you to own yourself, and also wants you to help him and not be his enemy, and was hoping he wouldn't have to pick one or the other."

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"He doesn't have to pick one or the other!!! I came here to work with him! I could've just told Rugatonn, told Otolmens, apparently even Iomedae didn't know and I could've told Her - that part I didn't know. I figured She knew and was just okay with it because Good thinks it's fine to destroy people if they're devils and don't really count. Uh, that's a digression. I didn't do that. I figured - I owed it to Keltham, who I thought was a honorable person trying his best, to not have him annihilated, to not let - Asmodeus being willing to destroy the world - be an automatic win condition for Asmodeus - I figured that the world, the way it is, can't last forever anyway, if we can't fix Hell - I thought about it and it was the most terrifying decision of my life and I decided to try to help Keltham do something better! And I came here and said 'I have an apology gift for Keltham, I want to help him not have to destroy the world', and he goes 'I'm not Keltham, don't give me anything except in your own interests', and obviously it's in my own bloody interests to have Banished myself from his fucking demiplane and Gated to Hell, but this is my fault, and I'm trying to fix it, and I'm trying to -

 

- if there are gods, trying to thread this needle, trying to make sure that between the possibilities 'this gets crushed and everything stays the same' and 'everything gets annihilated', I want to be something they can use, I want to be a tool it's possible to employ to find that space, not just something that drags as sharply as possible in one direction or the other - I think, probably, more worlds get saved, if there's someone who is trying to figure out how we actually win here, and no one else is fucking stepping up."

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"Have you told him that?"

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"No because he wouldn't even admit to me what his plans were or give me any fucking time to rederive it himself!! He said he was going to give me time to think but then instead he threatened to statue me before I'd had it!!"

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"So?"

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" - what?"

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"You have something it might be valuable for him to know, he doesn't know it. But you could tell him it, and then he'd know it. Why do I care - why do you care - how things got this way? What are you trying to get out of deciding it's his fault he doesn't know it yet?"

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"It's - 

 

- I can't trust him to - to only say things he means in anything resembling the way I mean them, or to - give me any space to figure out things I can use to help him, or to appreciate anything I'm doing to try to be someone he can trust, or to not randomly decide to execute me, or to not randomly decide that dealing with me is too emotionally difficult and not worth reducing the probability of accidentally destroying the world - it means that he's internalized none of the stakes and I'm the only person I can trust to be acting like the stakes are real."

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"It seems like all that makes it more important, for him to know what you're thinking."

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"I don't want to talk to him anymore, if I say the wrong thing I'll wake up and he'll have glassed Egorian and is in the middle of unleashing Rovagug and annihilating billions and billions of people and he'll think I'm stupid and unreasonable for being horrified and I can't - come up with words, come up with thoughts, knowing any second might be the last chance anyone in the world has before he murders us all for being uglier than dath ilan -"

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"Sometimes the best thing to do probably won't work. The - core skill - of working in this world where Asmodeus is a power, where the Worldwound is a thing, is doing the best thing, even though it probably won't work and definitely won't leave the world in an acceptable state afterwards. Just, figuring out something that could matter that you can actually do and doing it even if you're still almost definitely going to fail. 

I don't actually know that you need to master this skill, though, because it sounds to me like you have five Wishes that he wants, and if you can't buy the stuff you need to have a functional working relationship with your ex from him for five Wishes then this magic item price deflation is really getting out of control."

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"Is this, uh, Good-speak for, 'you're being pathetic'."

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"Mostly 'you're being pathetic' isn't something I find myself ever wanting to communicate. But 'you have the resource to accomplish your goals and are directing your energy at figuring out why it didn't happen to you already' comes up a fair bit."

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"I think that's just being pathetic. Or, well, a flavor of it."

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"It makes sense that you would have a complicated relationship with Asmodeanism, but from my perspective, there's no baby in that bathwater, and you should just toss it all."

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They're completely fucking off-script.

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I find it literally impossible for Myself to mourn this fact, what with being a Chaotic Good goddess of revolution.  I'm surprised You are capable of it.

Nethys did warn Us that the divergences would amplify the further We got into the playthrough.

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Milani, as much as I'd ordinarily celebrate mortals saying 'fuck you' to the complicated machinations of destiny which a bunch of meddling gods had wrought around them, it seems like NOT THE BEST TIME.  Have you never memorized a script and acted in a play, where other actors relied on you to follow your lines?  Never listened to instructions from a swordmaster showing you exactly how to guide your weapon?

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...no?  Very few of my instructors were competent, and none of those very few ever asked me to exactly imitate instructions I didn't understand.

Carissa Sevar has raveled more of the situation around herself, earlier than expected.  Keltham is pulling himself together faster.  We have carefully played through all of the flag events in Nethys's walkthrough, hit nearly all of them, and now Carissa and Keltham are both doing better than in the possibilities Nethys has seen before; which is why they are, from our perspective, going off-script.

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Well, yes, that's very wonderful, except for the part where at this point I'm not seeing how Keltham gets the Wishes and the headband from Carissa, in a way that obeys the decision-theoretic constraints, if Keltham has already refused to allow Carissa to make the mistake of trying to repay him for the hurt she considered herself to have dealt him, and Carissa has already figured out that Keltham is targeting Pharasma rather than Asmodeus.

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Yes, they're off the script, off the trodden roads, and making their own path through the untracked wilderness.

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MILANI.  We have OTHER CONCERNS than how many Chaotic Goodness points We are scoring, here.

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Cayden, it's not that I can't see Your point, it's that I can't, actually, value things the way You're valuing them.

...which, yes, is why You and not I were put on-point for a lot of these interventions.

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I suppose You're going to tell me that We may, at this rate, finally be on track for Nethys's hypothesized Good Ending?

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Of course not.  There's far too many plot points We're obviously not hitting.  Asmodia is in the Gardens and We don't even know how Broom was supposed to be relevant.

Cayden, I'm not saying We're not in enormous trouble, here.  It's just a kind of trouble that I can't help but approve of.

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Why is My life like this.

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We wouldn't necessarily see it ourselves, if they were going to solve matters for themselves by virtue of being Lawful.  And they are, in fact, both relatively Lawful for mortals.

So now we watch, and hope for the best out of the chaos that inevitably results when mortals try to be Lawful at each other.

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There's a difference between getting drunk and breaking some rules, and getting so drunk that you stop thinking it's a good idea to follow the well-trodden forest path back home while you're in that state.

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If you say so, Cayden.  As for Myself, once I was clearly not on the path anymore, I think I'd enjoy seeing a bit of the forest, so long as I was there.

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...fair enough, Milani.  I'll try to enjoy it despite the TERROR.

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When Keltham comes out of Sarcini's room Carissa will be sitting on the floor, making a headband as stress relief.

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The man who emerges from Sarcini's room has changed to a +4/+0/+4 headband and is not currently under Owl's Wisdom.

He hears out a quick report from Tarnish (who has a nearly halfling-like ability to lean against a wall and promptly have everyone else in the room forget she exists).

He continues on to Carissa, the casual headband-maker.


"Ri-Dul wants to talk Spellcraft with you, at some point," he says to her, on seeing this.  "He is, on his view of himself, one of those eighth-circles who properly perfects their Spellcraft, instead of just having absorbed a lot of magic by being in a lot of fights."

"Of course, Ri-Dul would immediately terminate his employment, and possibly break his oath and try to kill me, if you told him you believed I was going to destroy the world.  Which... gets us back to the problem where I got excited and didn't have you, make any promises, before you got here."

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"I have figured out the conditions I need to be willing to work here, if you want to talk about that now."

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"Sure.  Let's negotiate.  It's seeming to me like there's a good chance that I've already shattered what I was supposed to do, here, which was just, not warn you, and accept the Wishes and headband as your apology, because there were so many many things so vastly more important than, how I'd have felt about that, and at minimum I'm going to lose Egorian, now -"

"What conditions."

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"One, we're not trading like Asmodeans. The way Asmodeans trade is stupid. The way Asmodeans trade with their prisoners is to hurt them, or threaten them, or use Modify Memory to erase all our interactions up to this point and try again and again until you get me to give up the Wishes and headband. The way Asmodean prisoners trade is to, as I said earlier, at the first opportunity open my Gate to Hell and report everything about this situation to Dispater and destroy you. I didn't do my end of that. I'll explain why in a second. You're not going to do your end of that.

We will trade with each other like mortals with different goals who are, being mortal and hating each other and being in a ton of pain, very likely to end up assuming our goals are more different than they actually are, and who are actively correcting for that by trying really hard to mind the interests of the other and pass up on chances to destroy each other to our benefit even though they're wildly more appealing than continuing to try. I don't know if there's a god of that. I do think if that's not what we're aiming at then we're completely fucked. 

 

Two.

You want to destroy the universe if you can't get it remade to your satisfaction. I, obviously, think that's incredibly horrible of you; I distrust everything I learned from you, and from dath ilan, because I feel very fundamentally that if this is the product of those values then I don't want them inside me and don't want them shaping me. But I didn't, when I first realized that was what you wanted, report you and get you squished; I sold my soul to protect the Project girls and come here with - thirty Wishes, I tried for, thirty Wishes and two headbands. I understand my reasons, now. 

 

There's maybe a hundred billion people? So I should be willing to risk a one in a hundred billion chance of destroying the universe for anything for which I'd be willing to go to Axis, grab a person out of the incredible joyous brilliant meaningful life they've spent the last ten thousand years building, and feed them to daemons while they begged me for mercy. It would take a lot to get me to do that. But - I'd do it to fix Hell. 

Don't ask me how many people I'd grab from Axis and feed to daemons to fix Hell. I don't know but it's not many, not anywhere near enough to close the gap between us. But I'm not trying to close the gap between us; I'm not trying to ally with you. I am trying to use you to fix Hell and fix Abaddon and fix the current state of affairs where Asmodeus, and maybe other gods, are holding in reserve an option to destroy the world. I am, I think, feeding some people to daemons, in expectation, when I use you for that. I hate that. I hate you, for being someone I can only use by feeding people to daemons. But I don't have the option of using someone else. 

Also I'm really scared at this point that even if they squish you, the universe doesn't have another thousand years in it, in a configuration this unstable. We've got to fix it into something that no one has the power to destroy and that very few value-systems that are floating around all over the place would want to destroy. We've got to build our own Civilization. 

 

And - and there are people praying to me.

I think, if there were two universes, and in one of them I fed them to daemons by accident, trying to answer their prayers, and in the other one they came to me in Hell and were safe and found mercy - and I told them that the price of that mercy was that in the other universe I'd fed them to daemons, trying my best - I think a lot of them would forgive me, I think a lot of them would be glad -

If there were ten universes -

- the numbers don't cohere yet. Probably the numbers will cohere when I'm smarter. But that's where I'm at, that's why I haven't killed myself or Banished myself or Gated out or done a Sending to Ri-Dul, because, when my numbers don't cohere, and when I don't get another chance, and I have to just go with my best guess about what I can do here and I lose options every minute, I think I'm supposed to try to fix things, not to try to kick the can down the road until someone who agrees with you succeeds.

And I'm willing to commit to that, I'm willing to promise you that I'll stay here trying to use you to fix the world instead of trying to warn someone you're going to crush it. But I want you to promise me that you'll let me do that, that I'll have the freedom and autonomy to pursue the ideas I come up with for alternatives to destroying the world, that I'll be able to do whatever makes sense for ensuring Asmodeus would rather live in the world we're demanding than destroy it, and Pharasma would rather live in the world we're demanding than destroy it, and that I'll be allowed to make myself smarter, and that I'll be allowed to potentially compact with Dispater and potentially compact with Cheliax and potentially call in Pilar and do the other things I might need to do.

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"Three. If you don't own me, you don't give me orders."

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"Four. If you don't own me, you don't take my stuff."

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"Five. If the universe might have a lifespan measured in weeks I will spend exactly zero seconds of them as a statue."

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"Six - and, uh, this one Carmin thought was stupid, she was helping me work these out and explain them and make sure they covered what I actually needed, she thinks that it's not really reasonable for me to ask for this, but. 

I think you're Keltham, and I want to call you Keltham, and not get told you're not Keltham, and I think I do have obligations to you, because I hurt you, and I can try to fulfill those obligations to you, by solving as many as I can of the problems I caused, and getting you the things you need to be okay, and not betraying you even though I have at various points been really tempted, and you don't have to agree with me about any of that but don't tell me not to see it that way."

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"We are in a situation that is decision-theoretically complicated.  That's the part you're not seeing.  Carissa, I was raised to understand things that are, from a Golarion perspective, insane and twisty and complicated and stupid and turning on arcane points of math, and from a dath ilani perspective, twisty in a simple funny way, like a, not-professional story that an average person wrote for fun and their friends to read, a story where all of the points are obvious in retrospect as soon as you actually think of them, and then, if you're a dath ilani character in that story, you have to try very hard not to think about those points, because the information has negative value to you in a way that threatens to destroy all possibility of an ending better than destroying the multiverse.  We can't be equal partners in this, and the reason for that isn't that you don't know decision theory, you have the capability to reach INT 29 from where you stand and then you would understand the ass out of the decision theory, you would see the whole thing immediately, maybe without even my explaining it, from that level, and once you saw it - you would be - forced, by being the sort of entity you are, down a path that -"

"This isn't, the actual problem, but an analogy, would be if you were a sort of entity that responded to threats, and so, as soon as you started having any power, here, Asmodeus would laugh and command you to go do as He said or He'd destroy every paving stone in Hell to spite you, along with Abrogail and Pilar and every soul that ever prayed to you.  Except I cannot, even, tell you for certain that it is like that, that I am trying in a way to protect you from yourself.  Because you are an alien and maybe, the way you think, it's actually valid that Keltham is something you should just turn in to Asmodeus to be squashed." 

"So I am trying to - thread a very narrow needle - a narrow storyline that I wish I hadn't seen, and that I'm worried I've now ruined by telling you, when we met, that I no longer considered myself to be Keltham - nor wanted to be him again, because it's too painful to, to destroy a city, when you have feelings, about that -"

"Carissa.  I need those Wishes, and the headband, and once I have those things, I think, I'll be back on track.  And there are things that I can honestly trade to you for those, and things I cannot honestly trade to you for those.  I can trade making sure that in a week of realtime you get Wished up on all six stats yourself, and giving you all the headbands and enhancement spells I won't need.  I can trade you telling you the real story, as soon as I do have the headband and Wishes, and offering you the access to try to do harm reduction on what you see as the harm from my plans.  I can trade you that you never have to take my orders to do anything positive, just, promise not to do a lot of things."

"But the one thing I cannot do is give you anything like the power to, call a halt, shut things down, or try to fix the multiverse on your own authority, because we are in a situation where - from my perspective, possibly even from yours though I don't know - you are the wrong shape of entity."

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"This isn't a demand but if you shut up about dath ilan it'll require less self-control from me to talk to you like a civilized person. 

I think 'try to do harm reduction on the harm from your plans' is the thing I'm asking for. I just want - really broad latitude to do it. Not just talking to you, if it reduces the harm from your plans to me to go close the Worldwound or compact with Dispater or return to Cheliax then I want it agreed I'll get to do that. But I'm not asking for anything that doesn't fall under that. If you can give me that, then we're set."

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"You cannot - give anything to me, in order to protect yourself from yourself, or we are back in the land of metaphorical Asmodeus annihilating every paving stone in Hell just to spite you personally.  We should assume, for these purposes, that we are actually on different sides, and you are not with Iomedae's side in this, let alone mine.  As may very well be the case."

"Given that - why would you make that compact?"

"Or - what is the compact?  I don't understand."

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"Speaking loosely and not committing specifically to these phrasings, you give me a couple hundred of your fucking Wish diamonds and tell me all of your plans, immediately and clearly and in detail with no more fucking around or being deliberately misleading, so that I can figure out how to do harm reduction. I give you these fifteen Wishes, and we can time-share the crown, and I swear not to try to oppose you, or recruit people who will, or blah blah blah I forfeit the ability to steer this by trying to get you deleted from reality instead of by trying to have you implement the best possible version of your plan in the most receptive possible world.

I explained why I'm making this compact, it's because my alternative is trying to recruit some force to squish you and I don't actually believe that squishing you produces a world that lasts the next million years let alone forever. Also, I think you're a wreck and not thinking very clearly and might benefit even by your own lights from an additional pair of eyes on your plans. And maybe this actually isn't what you want to do, and if it's not, I want to be in a position to notice. 

So between trying to squish you and trying to reduce the harm done by your destroy-the-multiverse plans, I'm picking the latter. I know we're not on the same side.

But I was never on the same side as Asmodeus, and I served Him for twenty-five years. I am pretty well prepared to do harm reduction for alien forces fundamentally opposed to mortal flourishing."

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He leans back against the wall and puts his hands over his eyes.

"You are kind," he says.

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"Thanks. Got it from you. Do we have the outlines of a deal?"

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"We do."

"I propose that we - go time-dilated, if the portal is up, now, or plane shift if it's not, you promise not to banish yourself or kill yourself or do anything to torpedo my plans while we do that, interpreted, kindly, and then we work out terms, and - possibly we should use your Wishes immediately, depending on what kind of deadline you think we're on, about Hell getting word that you left - and to be clear, I would not be putting on your headband immediately after that, I'd be, trying gentler boosts first, and that time making sure I had maxed Splendour while I did that."

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"I swear I won't banish myself or kill myself or torpedo your plans for the next subjective hour while we work out details. Time dilation and Wish use immediately sounds good, I take it I need to move fast to find a way for you to not destroy Cheliax and I'm rather fond of the place."

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"I think just Egorian, on the default trajectory if there's no deal, but that unleashes a lot of chaos onto the world, just like a Chelish invasion of Osirion would."

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"I think there's an opening here for me to assassinate Abrogail, Raise her, and then immediately present her with a contract in which she agrees not to invade Osirion, but details might depend on the rest of your plan. How best to handle Cheliax depends a lot on what we're angling for in the final negotiations. 

 

That scaffold-board you were making, is that meant to be an assistive device for casting from specific scrolls like my series of boosts to headband-making is for Spellcraft?"

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"No, it's meant to be a structure with a visible substructure that behaves isomorphically to magical physics including the parts of magic that aren't usually visible, for purposes of pinning down magical physics, doing de novo spell design, and, ideally, it will help with Wish phrasings."

"- to be clear that is not particularly close to working, yet."

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"Thaaaaaaat is so cool that it's an immense tragedy you're trying to use it for something horrible and I will not help you with it at all." 

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Tarnish taps her lips, having been told to shut up some time ago.

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"I'll try out allowing you to speak, once."

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"He was much less of a wreck and thinking much more clearly when he wasn't around you," she says to Carissa.  "I think that what Keltham's actually trying to do is more aesthetic, but I'd consider it both beautiful and deserved if you distracted him enough with your constant sniping, which he permitted, that he accidentally destroyed the multiverse."

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She'll just ignore the person who she's been specifically told is trying to hurt her. "The way Cheliax is going to learn I betrayed them is by raising Hadrian and Abarco, but that's a True Rez right now and they may instead have gone to Hell to question the devils. I went to the one fortress in Avernus I know of, and the Most High knows exactly which it is. If that's so, they know already that I ambiguously betrayed them, though I don't know how rapidly that'll be conveyed in Hell, nor do I know how much doubt they'll be in. With Glibness up I can maybe bluff a pit fiend about who I'm working for, even if they've heard otherwise, or we can depart if they seem suspicious and that tips the calculus about whether it's worth it."

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"Wow, you can bluff a pit fiend with Glibness up?  That makes an entire one person in this conversation who could bluff a pit fiend with Glibness up.  I expect I will put Glibness up and use it to try to be completely quiet and expressionless throughout the whole thing."

"But we're wasting dilated time, let's head out of the Forbiddance and get this done."

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Then she'll follow him out of the Forbiddance, and take his hand for the Plane Shift.

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(The Grand High Priestess will at some point interrupt their negotiations, within the Rope Trick, to say that the portal is up; they need to take down that Rope Trick and put up another one right by the portal, so Tira can cast a Forbiddance covering the demiplane except the portal.  After which Tira can finally head back to Kelesh.)

 

 

 

 

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Carissa is actually deeply curious about Sarenrae, now, but it seems like not the time and also like Keltham's minions might be something of a hostile crowd. 

 

(She has no idea why! She's the one who is trying to prevent everyone being murdered, of the people in this room!)

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The portal is finally up!  Everybody wants to go see the temporary demiplane, even if they're not in a time-dilated rush!  Some unusual-looking people will soon become visible wandering around outside the Rope Trick.

 

 

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Carissa Sevar is paying a very tiny bit of attention to things outside her negotiation with Keltham, monitoring for threats, because she was at the Worldwound for two tours and some habits don't die easily. However she has more or less concluded at this point that Keltham's staff are not the kind of people she can work with, except possibly impressing Ri-Dul enough he'll let her copy all his fifth-circle spells. Mostly she is focused on getting this contract agreed-to with Keltham so she can be briefed on the plan and get to work preventing it being a catastrophe.

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They'll work it out, in time.

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Great. Pleasure doing business with you.

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Does she want, like, a ten-minute break, maybe, before he dumps the real story on her.

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"I'm sure I haven't given you an overwhelmingly encouraging impression of my emotional resilience but if you don't statue me, stroke my hair, or announce you're Maledicting my family to Abaddon I actually don't have feelings I can't conceal perfectly."

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"I have entirely failed to understand what that had to do with anything whatsoever, but it sounded like you wanted me to go ahead?"

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"Yes. Go ahead."

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"All right.  I don't expect you're going to like this no matter how I frame it, but I'm going to try framing it anyways."

"First.  On my model of reality, the souls who get consumed in Abaddon end up somewhere else, and we will eventually debate how nice or terrible that place probably is, and the souls in Hell and the Abyss and possibly the Maelstrom are more of a problem.  On your view, the problem is the souls from Awaiting-Consumption being raised like cattle and being consumed in Abaddon, and those mortals who sort Neutral Evil and are terrified enough of Hell and the Abyss that they choose Abaddon, which, on the best statistics I've been able to find for Golarion, is around five percent of the non-Boneyard-baby population.  I haven't, yet, been able to find out whether fifteen percent of Boneyard babies are choosing Abaddon, for example, which would bring the Golarion's real average up to ten percent of all souls born being destroyed there; I hadn't put a priority on knowing, before now, because it didn't matter much to me.  You are able to command my resources if you want to find out from Sarenrae's Church what the actual figure is."

"I don't know what the statistics are for the larger multiverse but it would not surprise me if, Pharasma being Pharasma, it's around one-ninth sorted to Abaddon and then, maybe, half of those not going to Hell or the Abyss."

"Your stance that you would only accept a very tiny risk of destroying the multiverse, in order to save souls in Hell, may perhaps be valid given your view of things.  That you should not, in general, accept a tiny risk of destroying the multiverse in order to fix it, does not strike me as equally valid.  You want to minimize that risk but you should in fact be willing to go to some extreme lengths to fix Abaddon."

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" - agree. Fixing Abaddon seems like it should not in fact involve incurring much particular risk of the destruction of the multiverse. I expect that with unlimited Wishes and twenty years as Golarion counts them I could, in fact, just conquer it, and Hell wouldn't object, and Good wouldn't object, and even Pharasma wouldn't object because She hates Abaddon too."

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"I'm not sure how you'd do that, exactly, but whatever it is, I expect it works only if you're the only one with unlimited Wish diamonds.  Which, once the Scientific Revolution gets going, is maybe not going to be true a single year from now, let alone twenty years."

"Also unlimited Wish diamonds is not at all the same thing as unlimited Wishes, especially right away, because you need casters for them.  The City of Brass will start to notice if Golarion begins buying thousands of Wishes per day from efreeti."

"What I expect, mostly, is that the gods notice and shut it down.  Unlimited diamonds is a disruption to a status quo that the gods don't ultimately object to.  It would never have been allowed to happen in the first place, if prophecy were not broken here."

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"That sounds about right but They do let important changes to the world happen once in a while and I'd just have to get Abaddon in before They shut it down.

...I do see why you'd be deeply unsatisfied with trying to build Civilization in a world that works that way."

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"Calistria.  Asmodeus.  Sarenrae.  Dahak.  Erastil.  Gozreh.  Abadar.  Desna.  Etcetera."

"All of those gods - I think, it is my over-50%-probability-estimate - either have the power to release Rovagug if Pharasma's Creation starts to have less value to them than nothingness, or have executed a logically binding compact with Pharasma, such that Pharasma's Creation, from their standpoint, is never allowed to fall below the utility of nothingness."

"To at least those gods, the world will always fundamentally look, in a certain sense, okay.  Not as good as it could possibly be, maybe, but okay.  Noticeably better than okay; they would not be receiving a fair share of the gains from sealing Rovagug, or keeping it sealed, if reality, to them, was barely better than nothingness.  I doubt that Sarenrae particularly likes that Hell exists, but while Nirvana exists and is full of redemption and healing, Sarenrae, who is goddess of those domains, thinks that on the whole, the multiverse contains a whole lot of the stuff that She likes."

"No guarantee like that exists for mortals, for slaves sold in Absalom, for miserable people who wish they could suicide to Axis but know they'd go to Hell, for people who suicide out of misery and end up in Hell or the Abyss, the millions of mortals raised like cattle in Awaiting-Consumption and consumed in Abaddon."

"They don't get a seat at the gods' negotiating table.  Why should they?  They have no power.  They are not dangerous.  Why should the gods concede anything to them?  They can do as they want with mortals and the mortals just have to take it."

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"Lots of the gods are ascended mortals."

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"None of the important ones.  None of the ones who get to say, sorry, the world doesn't get to be like that.  Abadar and Asmodeus are, I think, I get the impression, spread across all of the planets and all of the Material planes, Iomedae is just here and maybe a dozen or so other planets.  Asmodeus is allowed to export huge numbers of textbooks into Cheliax and buy souls by the hundreds.  The older gods are allowed to intervene substantially more per planet than all of the younger gods on that planet, or at least, that's how it seems to be in Golarion.  I would guess that's because the older gods set the intervention budgets and see little reason to give the younger gods more than scraps."

"There's also the incredibly suspicious fact that nobody else seems to have managed to do exactly what Irori did, despite an awful lot of Irorians trying, with a greater knowledge base developed over time about how to advance along that pathway and much better institutional support than Irori had."

"I mean, I say it's suspicious, but in fact the very obvious and essentially known explanation is Achaekek.  Which I flag as maybe hiding other traps, but still, there's an obvious explanation if you take the obviousness at face value."

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"Nethys is powerful. Aroden was powerful. Iomedae does all right for Herself, I think, for as new as She is. Cayden Cailean apparently is powerful enough for whatever His current batshit plan is, and He's pouring more effort into that than I've ever witnessed or heard of Asmodeus spending on anything."

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"Nethys is suspected, and not just by me, of being a special case."

"Aroden seems to have somehow ended up dead, you'll note."

"And neither Cayden Cailean nor any other ascended mortal have ever done anything like what seems to be happening now, as best as my full-time historical researcher can determine.  I suspect that Cayden Cailean, and possibly also Nethys, are putting Themselves into a position where, if I don't pull this off, they are caught and executed by the ancient gods for intervening beyond their allowed budget."

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Seems like maybe they should put all that effort behind someone who doesn't want to unleash Rovagug, Carissa refrains from saying. 

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"Every ancient god who really got to shape the multiverse, Gozreh, Erastil, Calistria, Asmodeus, all of them got there by having the ability and willingness to destroy Pharasma's Creation, or risk its destruction with some noticeable probability, unless that Creation looked noticeably better than nothingness to them."

"I expect you're not particularly fond of that fact, but on my model - my epistemic model, Carissa, not as a question of values - on my model of how Pharasma's Creation works, that is fundamentally a requirement to be seated at the grownup bargaining table and have opinions that matter about things like Abaddon."

"Especially if you want to have opinions about how Abaddon works across an unknown number of inhabited planets across however many planes, and not just opinions about how the Golarion-adjacent parts of Abaddon work.  Which is, I suspect, the most that a Wish-based assault would be able to buy you before that got shut down."

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"It seems to me like it also ought to work to be willing to kill other gods unless those bits of Creation under their attention looked noticeably better than they'd be unsupervised."

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"It's not enough to have the willingness and ability to kill gods, you also need the ability to not get killed by them.  'Anybody can kill anybody but they probably shouldn't', goes the saying, and what it means is, the existence of an asymmetrical offense with no defense, doesn't mean you get to have a lot of power yourself, because other people also have that power."

"There's also the point that I don't, in fact, have any particularly workable schemes for destroying Asmodeus particularly and not the entire ninth layer of Hell plus whatever I had to do to get through the first eight layers.  I mean, maybe it would be a better scheme to just assassinate all the Evil deities except three, one from each afterlife, who we'd bargained with, but I don't know how I could do that."

"I do suspect I could destroy the entire multiverse, given some work.  I never did give Project Lawful any knowledge I considered actually dangerous in the presence of magic, but there's a fair amount of it and I just need one of the top three obvious methods to work."

"Incidentally, one of the several ways in which I realized I'd been stupid once I put on a +6 Intelligence headband is that having a Scientific Revolution around Golarion is really not at all a stable situation and we are heading into some major divine intervention quite shortly once They actually realize how much of a problem it is if anybody figures out real physics.  I expect that the gods themselves don't know, except for Pharasma and maybe Otolmens."

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"And you don't want to destroy the entire multiverse per se but you think that the fact that you could  - if you're right, if the gods couldn't just easily shut you down - means you get to make demands. But if everyone goes 'haha, no', then you will, actually, destroy the multiverse."

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"Well, yes.  I'd rather fix the universe than destroy it, and would rather destroy it than let it stay unfixed.  There's a lot of people in Evil afterlives who feel very strongly that they'd prefer to stop existing, one of whom explicitly screamed that out loud in the Vision of Hell that I cast.  Given how strongly they feel about it, I think their vote wins.  I also feel, with increasing passion after spending some time around two sides that strike me as equally and oppositely crazy, that a sensible and nuanced position on this issue consists of having some fraction of people being eternally tortured above which you'd prefer a multiverse disexist rather than exist if those were your only two options, and not just being, like, 'destroying the multiverse is good' or 'destroying the multiverse is bad'."

"You, Carissa Sevar, can 'threaten' to destroy the multiverse," he uses the Baseline word, not the Taldane, where the technical meaning is unambiguous, "but of course the only reason you'd do that would be if you expected them to give you what you wanted in response to the 'threat'.  And of course the ancient gods would ignore your threat, even if you modified yourself in a way where you would do it and exhibited the fact to them.  If they were the sort of beings that gave into threats, they would, in that case, be better off being inert lumps rather than gods, because if they were inert lumps nobody would go around trying to destroy large amounts of their utility in counterfactual branches in order to force actions out them; and it is a Law-fragment of coherent agents that they do better for themselves than inert lumps."

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"The overwhelming majority of people don't want to be destroyed. The ones who do probably think they'll stop existing and might well feel differently if they thought as you do they'd just show up somewhere else."

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"I don't consider the set of all people outside Evil afterlives to be an 'overwhelming majority'.  And I think any time spent debating the population statistics of Greater Reality will be spent much more effectively if I, we, have INT 29 first, to the point where I'm just kicking that to my future self."

"I suppose the smart-aleck reply would be that I know of two worlds, dath ilan and Golarion.  By the same visual / combinatoric reasoning used to figure out the Law of Succession, dropping a new billiard anywhere 'nicer than dath ilan, between dath ilan and Golarion, worse than Golarion' is 2/3 probable to land somewhere nicer than Golarion.  That's not actually even faintly valid, it just, I don't know, illustrates that there could be an argument about it."

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"Most people in the Abyss don't want to die and if they do it's not hard. The problem had by most people in Abaddon is that they do die. And Hell is - what, ten percent? And I don't think most people in Hell want to die. Devils certainly don't. People like me don't. As far as I know practically no one in Good or Neutral afterlives wants to die."

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"Cheliax may not have been totally honest with you about a number of things, Carissa.  My understanding is that most of the sentient beings in Hell want to die, or would probably want to die if they could still think coherently about that.  Devils get shaped not to want to die but they don't, particularly, as I understand it, want to live."

"Most of the petitioners who go to the Abyss do end up permadying, as I understand it, over time.  Which would include a very large fraction of Boneyard babies - actually I should have mentioned that earlier, I'm just, not thinking at my clearest, right now.  I'm not used to thinking of the Abyss as a problem exactly because most petitioners who go there do end up permadying and I currently model that they get less twisted and damaged first.  Golarion people also habitually talk about Hell as the problem."

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"....most people talk about the Abyss as the problem, actually, at the Worldwound, where I've spent most of my adult life. I know it's a problem, it's just not really a problem you can solve short of conquering it, or I guess letting demons immigrate and they make terrible immigrants. 

 

Even if I take at face value your 'understanding' that most beings in Hell want to die, that'd be 10%. If I were going to pick a ratio of people wanting to live to people wanting to die before you destroy the world, the strongest ratio you could possibly convince me of would be 1:1. Maybe it's worth dragging one person away from ten thousand years so far and infinite years to come of joy and fulfillment and hope and happiness in Axis or Heaven or Nirvana and feeding them to daemons to end one person in Hell who wants to die. It is not worth doing that to nine. 

 

 

My own intuition is kind of that it's worth doing it to none? It's tragic but acceptable to kill the person in Hell who wants to die, I guess, if you can't change the circumstances that made them want to die. Which we can if we overthrow Asmodeus. But the fact this person wants to die doesn't make it right to kill some other person with a wonderful eternity around them and ahead of them."

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"Yes, I expected you'd say that.  It's not, actually, a very widespread intution, as best as I've been able to determine from some hired quick surveys.  That I landed on somebody at the Worldwound with that worldview is not, I think, very much more probable than Pilar Pineda being in that particular class of wizard students in Ostenso."

"That you might, in any sense, be on board with this, was based on the prospect of fewer people exiting this reality from Abaddon and the Abyss, if all goes well.  Not on anybody being rescued from their current or prospective eternal torment in Hell."

"Though, of course, you cannot in any sense try to use me as a tool to that end, and have any significant impact about it, because then Pharasma ignores your 'threat-by-proxy' and looks past me and says 'Sure, let's die in a fire together, Carissa Sevar.'"

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"I do want people rescued from eternal torment in Hell! It is what I have been focused on since almost the moment I met you, my hope was that if people were better Asmodeans then less pain would be necessary, and once I realized that Hell isn't fucking using the necessary amount of pain I arranged to become a Power in Hell that could fix that! I am very serious about solving eternal torment in Hell, I just think it's a solvable problem without threatening to destroy everywhere else! For one thing you could just threaten to destroy Hell! - I also disprefer that very strongly, to be clear, but it's about 90% less bad!"

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"I actually kind of have a problem with Pharasma's treatment of mortals, not just Asmodeus's, and I think current mortals are mistaken if they're okay with the division of gains that Pharasma imposes.  You know, the one where Pharasma doesn't actually give two shits about mortals or try to divide gains with them at all, because She thinks they're tiny helpless things that lack the power to endanger Her however She treats them.  This entire multiverse can never be a place where mortals get a fair share while Pharasma is permitted to go around acting like this."

"This, incidentally, is the point in my explanation where Tarnish pledged total unconditional obedience to me so long as, when I negotiated with Pharasma, I told Her that Tarnish specifically said 'fuck You'.  This, I understand, is not your own outlook, but it's one I find incredibly understandable myself.  Like.  Pharasma just can't be allowed to get away with this shit.  You know?"

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"If Pharasma hadn't created this universe, I wouldn't exist, and so I regard myself as in Her debt, as do, probably, many of the 90% of people who are not in Hell even if I take all your claims at face value about the 10% in Hell. I'm not even sure She's splitting the gains from trade particularly unfairly! She's not especially getting anything from my existing! I'm getting a ton from it!"

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"Yeah, we've got multiple differences here.  Not just about the relative importance of the people in Hell, but also, like - if 90% of the people in the room get a nice large share of the gains and are happy, and 10% of the people say they're not happy, this is, like - not an okay situation because 90% of the people are okay with it.  There's the question of whether Pharasma built the equivalent of a, slum, inside Greater Reality, or if this place is relatively nice, a thought I find absolutely horrifying which of course doesn't make it false.  There's a lot of further complications about what we would, in dath ilan, call 'average utilitarianism' versus 'total utilitarianism' where basically everybody in dath ilan is an average utilitarian for Reasons and you are trying to be a 'total utilitarian' who thinks it's helping to add more realityfluid to the slum, even if that drags down the average quality of life across Greater Reality and everybody who can possibly exist already exists somewhere."

"We are not going to solve any of that before it would be a good idea to use those Wishes."

"I am not going to persuade you to be upset with Pharasma, and you are not going to persuade me to be grateful to Her, definitely not in the next hour but probably period, is my guess."

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"That seems likely. Okay. 

 

 

- I do find your plan upsetting, but I had already been moving my expectations downwards and downwards off how much you were avoiding telling me it, and it's about in the middle of how upsetting I was, by this point, expecting it to be."

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"We're now past the first of three things I expect to upset you."

"Second is the part where I don't see any equally reliable way of getting to the Starstone, and surviving what I expect to be Achaekek's subsequent attack, without denotating two major explosions over Absalom that I expect to kill everybody there.  Possibly I can negotiate with Pharasma to bring them all back, possibly not, but if all goes well, I expect that nobody there goes to - the bad parts of Hell, Abaddon, the Abyss, because I'll be able to clean that up afterwards."

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"- the prophecy."

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"Prophecy?"

"WAIT is this a Snack Service thing, or a Cayden Cailean tavern rumor, because if so I need to not know about any of that.  I'd have mentioned that earlier but I was - dropping things mentally."

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"That is not how I encountered it but that seems like a likelier-than-not explanation of its origin. I am observing that this is a fairly crippling handicap in planning and I hope someone in your organization is allowed to think about Cayden Cailean."

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"You are.  Once you understand the basic structure whereby anything that looks to me like it's making my path easier, enabling me to do something I could not do otherwise, risks Pharasma looking past me and seeing Cayden Cailean and saying, 'Let's die together in a fire, Cayden.'"

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"Great. Fantastic. In that case never mind about the prophecy, I've encountered no direct evidence He had anything to do with it but I'd still bet on it. You don't currently have a better plan than killing everyone in Absalom; we might think of one once we're smarter, or we might not. 

 

 

 

Do you want me to do it?"

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"Shouldn't reasonably make any difference.  Probably does in real life.  Sure."

"I'm - not seeing any realistic way to do this without becoming the god in question, myself, because nobody else is going to be able to improvise multiverse-destruction traps fast enough.  I see this as largely equivalent to suicide.  Even more suicide than I've done already.  Sparing me that - is something else I'd ask you to look into."

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"I suppose it can't be me because of the thing where I won't improvise any multiverse-destruction traps at all because that might destroy the multiverse."

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"I mean, it could be be you if we've got some way for you to execute a self-modification that causes you to do the same things I'd have done, but there's three major problems."

"One is that from Pharasma's perspective I could be modifying you to do things I only mistakenly think I'd have done, making you my own threat-by-proxy."

"The second problem is if even at INT 29 I can't, in one month of accelerated time, actually cause you to know everything I do about physics.  Or can't do that without taking enough time that we can't successfully work out good-enough Wish phrasings for the large explosions this plan requires."

"The third problem is that I don't know how to modify you in a way that's guaranteed to persist through you becoming a god, especially if you ascend as the Goddess of Nobody Permadying."

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" - they can if they want to - Asmodia wanted to, and I offered it to her - I just - don't think they'd want to, if Hell was run more competently. But of people who want to have forever really, truly getting forever -

- I don't know, it sounds Neutral or Good and I probably need to be Lawful Evil to take Asmodeus's job. Maybe I could give it to Dispater who is sufficiently obliged to me but that just seems like it has a lot of ways it could go wrong."

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"I did get this far in my reasoning myself, as an obvious possibility, and people who know actual rather than Chelish theology were pretty sure a Lawful Evil goddess's domains could include 'nobody permadying'.  It's kind of a loose whole system, really."

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He was thinking of her, some very stupid part of her thinks. 

 

"...I'll keep that in mind. 

 

Are you at all worried that Pharasma's going to look beyond you at whatever dropped you on Golarion and made sure you met me and Pilar and whoever else is an important element of this plan ...and say let's die in a fire together?"

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"I... don't meant to sound flippant, about our enormous values difference, but... if that's the punchline of the story, when Pharasma tries to look past me at my Senders, I'll be pretty unamused with Whatever sent me here.  But I won't regret having put in a hard day's work to destroy Pharasma's Creation."

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"Murdering billions and billions of happy people with wonderful lives when we could've fixed Hell anyway."

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"How?  Maybe this is the part of the story where the whole plot shifts, it's not likely but you shouldn't assume it's impossible."

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" - what I originally thought you were working on, killing Asmodeus and taking His job."

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"Yeah, uh... how."

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"I just flatly do not believe it is a harder problem than destroying the entire multiverse, though I admit in the very distracted two hours I've had to consider it I haven't solved it yet."

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"Destroying only a part of something is often much more complicated than destroying all of it, and in real life, complicated plans usually do not work."

"But - you can look.  Out of context, of course, it would fuck over everyone in the multiverse, if you found a solution like that, and convinced me that it was better than destroying Creation, with a solution that didn't also fix the Abyss or the Maelstrom.  But that's all the more reason why you ought to try, and I ought to let you."

"We're not here to make 'threats', after all, and it's very important that we do not look to gods like we were doing that.  Which, non-Keeper mortals being what they are, means I have to never at any point start thinking like it's all okay because I can get a fixed multiverse from Pharasma because She prefers that to destruction.  I'm telling you to do this, not because it's better than the outcome I expect out of context, but because maybe you'd find something better than the total destruction that I must constantly think as if I will get."

"...I hope that fancy headband is enough that you're tracking all this, because, if you aren't, you might want to step back from things before you accidentally destroy the multiverse.  On my end, of course, I've read like a dozen novels where somebody has to deal with weird decision theory twisting up all their reasoning into a pretzel, because, like, novels with straightforward decision theory are boring."

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That's obnoxious but it's also Keltham, her Keltham, recognizable and clear, and her heart is doing something funny in her chest.

 

"It's a very fancy headband," she says flatly. "I follow you."

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"Right.  Well, third part you're not going to like, and I want to emphasize that I do take this seriously and am not just - playing relationship gotcha, at you - is that you have, unfortunately from your standpoint, and I'm sure unintentionally, convinced me that Asmodeus is likely to be more of an issue about this than Pharasma.  That even if Pharasma nods along, Asmodeus will say, sorry, I have My pride, even if that wasn't technically a threat, we can die in a fire anyways."

"I was trying to think of distractions for all the gods, while I ascend, that would actually command all Their attention sufficiently well away from me, even if They noticed Achaekek being destroyed, which They probably would."

"My new plan, which I fully expect you to try to talk me out of, is to give up and go with my obvious original plan of releasing Rovagug as the distraction, so that all the gods including Asmodeus will fight It together, instead of the gods having to fight Rovagug with Asmodeus on Its side when Asmodeus releases It later."

"I think that's all of the major things you're likely to be upset about."

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"Rovagug will eat Golarion. Even if they stop it. They won't stop it in time."

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"Possibly, yeah.  I realize you have family and friends here and that this is, from your standpoint, not okay even if we try to get a few particular people into Axis or Nirvana or wherever."

"I will obviously see about My exploding Rovagug if the fight is ongoing after I finish ascending and rigging the multiverse for destruction, if It's a kind of thing where exploding It can help.  Though, also obviously, I would demand that Pharasma have signed a compact with Me first."

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"I don't think She can!!! I don't think that's the kind of thing She is! She is - from limited angles possible to get to change things, like, it did happen somehow that people going to Abaddon get a choice, there's not zero flexibility possible, I wouldn't think it was insane to go for 'Malediction is banned now', and I even have a shadow of a hope that if we set everything up right we can get Her to say Asmodeus is not the legitimate authority over Hell. But that only works because Hell cares who Pharasma says is in charge there. Most things you could say to Her She actually can't do and probably can't even comprehend you saying them!!"

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"I... am not at all sure that is how anything works inside Pharasma's Creation, and one of my concerns is that She is vastly underplaying the degree to which She can potentially intervene in events, such that She can fiat-nope all My attempts to rig the multiverse to go pflomp."

"But if Pharasma is intrinsically noninterventionist, I'd be fine compacting with a sufficient supermajority of the other gods to get things done.  I mean, I do not see any way around the conclusion that Urgathoa dies or gets put in a box, for example, and then We're going to have to take and defend a lot of the Abyss's surface, the parts contiguous with Material planes and mortal planets.  We either need much better conditions in the Boneyard or we need a lot more clerics around to stop half the kids born from dying before they're sortable, preferably both.  There needs to be a first-circle divine spell for reversible contraception and enough clerics for that.  I'd imagine that Pharasma has a lot more cleric-juice than any other god, maybe more than the rest of them put together, and could do all that if She had to... but if not, well, I can negotiate with the other gods too, if Pharasma will let Me fix things and stay out of My way."

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"That She can just stop you destroying the multiverse seems quite likely! If you try to bite off too much you might well get nothing at all, instead of getting just - Hell fixed and the Worldwound closed, and we can take Abaddon in the next century, if we get that -"

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The man's voice grows sharp, then.

"One.  Pharasma's apparent level of power, nonintervention, and incomprehension is constrained by numerous apparent observations including that She has clerics and that She could benefit from the cooperation of other gods in defeating Rovagug and coordinated with them about it.  I am concerned that Pharasma may not be what She appears.  What She appears as looks manageable."

"Two.  I do not, when thinking at this scale, care about the Worldwound, an issue of one planet.  I in fact don't care about the Worldwound emotionally either because I didn't grow up here."

"Three.  It should be obvious that I don't care about the Worldwound and that it simply wasn't a valid consideration at scale.  Your failure of perspective-taking on that reflects a general type of reasoning error where, if you commit it with respect to Pharasma and decision theory instead of myself and utility functions, you will potentially get everybody in the multiverse killed unnecessarily.  If I think you're not able to reason at a grownup level better than you just did, I will say under truthspell that I consider you a danger to the survival of the multiverse and invoke the relevant clauses of our compact until I can get you enough intelligence augmentation that it's worth trying again."

"I did not damage myself just by being a teenager who got traumatized by Cheliax and you.  I also damaged myself by needing to constantly strain myself to think in the right patterns so as not to unnecessarily destroy the multiverse, and the one time I made an exception to that, I did something with you that I worry went off-plot and will lead to Pharasma destroying the multiverse, because you knew too much and the wrong things when you decided to bargain with me."

"Do not bother comparing this to whatever you suffered from having the Queen reading your thought transcripts.  You were not trying to do something this difficult or precise and, I expect, could not do any thinking this precise while being the Carissa of Cheliax."

"I'd forgive you for having no practice, but Pharasma will not and therefore I am shutting down my capacity for forgiveness."

"This is me caring about the survival of the people of the multiverse.  Thinking carefully.  Not making mistakes like the one you just did because I got emotional and wanted the argument to go a particular way.  I am not going to suggest that you don't care, because you do, but that you care means nothing if there is no pipe going from the caring bucket to the precise thinking bucket."

"I don't own you and can't give you orders, so I cannot order you to grow the ass up, but I can state as a nonthreat that I will act as I must to preserve the multiverse if I see you endangering it with generalized sloppy reasoning of that level.  That may be fine for surviving in Cheliax under constant threat of Hell but does not cut it for being a mortal trying to participate in godnegotiations."

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"The reason that I think we need the Worldwound closed in addition to Hell handled - and I'm optimistic we can close the Worldwound ourselves without relying on it as an outcome of god-negotiations, but I do think that negotiations which don't ensure it if it hasn't already happened leave us much farther from a good outcome - is that it's the non-Rovagug avenue by which entities interested in destroying Golarion, the planet, could do so in a way that's vastly cheaper to do than to prevent, and possibly unpreventable if the gods are all exhausted from fighting Rovagug. 

The reason I think that is an important consideration is that I think building Civilization with industrial knowledge and cheaper spellsilver, on Golarion, is basically a necessary step for the universe being on an improving trajectory from here. The gods are very unlikely to be able to do it, no matter what agreements exist among them; the best it seems remotely likely we'll be able to get from them is an agreement not to stop us from doing it. A lot of the things that make peoples' lives good and interesting and valuable aren't actually things that can be granted by divine miracle anyway. And this is not going to be the last threat to the multiverse, and we can't plan on solving every single situation with someone trying to personally ascend and threaten to destroy the universe, I doubt we make it through three more crises that way. 

So - Civilization. I could be wrong that Golarion is by far the strongest contender for where to do it, but I don't think I am. We know a lot more about where to start building a Civilization of humans than a civilization of anything else. Golarion has a bunch of ascended formerly human gods; from what you said earlier, it sounds like they're pretty sharply local. I should expect once I ascend I'll be at least somewhat local, at least for the first few thousand years, as will Pilar if she ascends, as will anyone else we ascend if we kill Achaekek and it turns out to be the case that with Him dead there's a substantial waiting store of suitable people for it. Losing Golarion makes things much much worse on the scale of the next couple thousand years, and I think likely means something bad happens to Creation before we can dig ourselves out of that trough and get back to where we'd have been if we didn't lose Golarion.

That is, of course, also an objection to the Rovagug plan, but I actually am immediately coming up with enough ideas there to be tentatively optimistic. I think if we play our cards just right, we make Asmodeus commit Himself fully to destroying Rovagug in time to save Golarion. 

I think it's interesting that, when I said I thought the Worldwound was important, you instantly assumed I couldn't comprehend the stakes and had just decided reasonlessly to worry about a minor problem on a planet you intended to have eaten anyway, instead of, you know, asking me 'under what assumptions does the Worldwound matter'? I think you did that because you have never fundamentally respected me, never fundamentally respected anyone on this planet, believe that you alone are capable of reason.

Your failure of perspective-taking on that reflects a general type of reasoning error where, if you commit it with respect to Pharasma and decision theory instead of myself and utility functions, you will definitely get everybody in the multiverse killed unnecessarily. I didn't promise not to give you orders, so, grow the fuck up."

 

 

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"Perhaps.  You're entirely right that I don't consider any other mortal on this planet capable of thinking at around the same level of coherence as me.  If you've learned how to do it after a few hours of being allowed to actually think with a headband more impressive than mine, I'll be surprised but appreciative."

"Unless you know something I don't about the Worldwound, it's not a real issue even for Golarion.  I expect the reason the gods haven't shut it down already is that either none of the ancient gods care, or that it's Golarion's own personal Rovagug equilibrium where Cheliax and Mendev needing to cooperate on that, or expend a lot of resources on that, is considered advantageous by a weighted majority of the ancient gods compared to what mortals here would get up to otherwise."

"Golarion is valuable to general Civilization, so far as I can tell, only because it's somewhere prophecy is broken and the gods can't intervene.  Aside from that, and if enemy gods are prevented by negotiation from shutting things down, I'm not seeing how it sets Me back by a thousand years to lose it."

"It's possible that you were reasoning clearly in attaching importance to your personal home planet of Golarion and even its little Worldwound.  I'm not convinced either of the object-level thesis or that you're demonstrating meta-level clear reasoning, and if you want to prosecute that further I should swap to +6 Intelligence and augment Wisdom.  My latest attempt at having a personality while doing all this just fell apart anyways."

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"If there are a bunch of ascended formerly-human gods on some other planets, that'd change my thinking about how much Golarion matters in the next thousand years. I expect there aren't; what I've heard about the Starstone makes me believe it's unique within Creation. If Iomedae, Cayden, Irori and Norgorber are by far most able to intervene on Golarion for some reason that won't apply to me and Pilar and anyone else who ascends if we kill Achaekek and blow away the Starstone protections, that'd also change my thinking. I don't understand precisely why you think the Worldwound would be easy for the gods to fix, but I have no specific opinion on that either way and it's not decisive in my reasoning: even if it's easy for them to fix, it would also be easy for one of them to use to destroy the world while everyone's exhausted from the godwar you propose provoking.

I am not very invested in arguing either specific question, which I am uncertain about and which I might better put to those history researchers you mentioned and/or to Dispater, but if arguing the object-level point while you wear a fancier headband would help convince you that there exist people in this world who can reason more clearly than you then that seems well worth the time."

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"Information about other solar systems seems nearly impossible to come by, including by trying to buy it from Abadar; I've tried.  Irori's nephew supposedly ascended by writing a perfect book, which if it's true or metaphorically near-true suggests either that Achaekek only prevents duplicated ascensions, or that ascensions use up some conserved resource of local divinity specialization.  There are other members of the Vudrani pantheon who come with similar stories of mortal ascension and which are equally, let's say, subject to potential doubt.  If we take those stories at face value then they predate the shattering of prophecy, and are probably a sort of event that's allowed by ancient gods.  However we are not going to settle object-level issues on this level quickly, and there's an unknown curve of increasing danger before we use your Wishes in Hell."

"I am largely expecting you to end up reasoning more clearly than myself.  From a standpoint of dath ilani tropes - which, to be clear, haven't always worked for analysis - this story would obviously be shifting to have you as the protagonist.  Along with a contrived reason why you've got to work by poking me along highly constrained directions, and can't simply go off and solve everything yourself using your own solutions.  I am an average punk kid from another plane, and you are the incredibly driven person that I noncoincidentally landed on at the Worldwound.  I'm effectively certain the abilitystats here don't capture all underlying capabilities of thinkoomph, but the Intelligence abilitystat still counts for an awful lot.  It's not just possible but probable that, driven as you are, you can spend a week of subjective time having higher boosted Intelligence than anybody in dath ilan and rederive more effective thinking skills than anything they were able to teach me at INT 18.  I wouldn't bet on you against a higher-rank Keeper but I'd bet on INT 29 Carissa against INT 29 Keltham in the limit and maybe even a week later."

"That I do not, right now, have confidence in being able to navigate the Pharasma-looking-through-me aspects of that - or for that matter, confidence in not just having you talk me out of destroying the multiverse because you can talk me into anything - is why I'm not okay with you boosting to INT 29 before I do."

"Right now, however, you've been free to actually think for a matter of a few hours, busy ones.  You still thought initially that most people in Hell didn't want to stop existing.  Your entire cache of theology comes from Cheliax and needs to be invalidated.  I have been thinking about this for a month and you have not been.  All of your reflexive cognitive cache about whether Carissa knows more or less than Keltham about Golarion, comes from having spent three months keeping me trapped in a false reality while having 4 higher Intelligence than I did.  And you definitely don't have a Keltham-comparable understanding of decision theory, and we may be playing in sudden-death mode about one wrong thought at any point destroying the multiverse."

"I could swap to Intelligence and we could argue this.  No, actually, I think I swap to Wisdom and spell-buff Intelligence."

"Or we could wrap up this part and boost my stats, before using your Wishes in Hell gets too much further along a curve of increasing danger whose slope is unknown to us."

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"I agree that you know a lot more than me about the world and I - appreciate hearing - that you don't think I'm going to be lastingly stupider than you. I did, actually, infer you were quite likely right, when I realized that you were assuming Golarion's not particularly remarkable, because it's a question you'd have had more time to look into than me. I just resented - you know what, never mind, this isn't about us. Let's go do the Wishes. Fair warning, I'm expecting that one plausible good strategy for me from here involves, in fact, attempting to conquer the world, so that when you unleash Rovagug Asmodeus is willing to expend far more than He otherwise would to stop It, so I'm going to be playing to that, for the pit fiends."

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"I'm going to do Greater Spell Immunity: Trap the Soul, Malediction, to be determined.  Protection from Evil, cloak of Spell Resistance, swap to Splendour headband, invoke your Glibness, and then not say or do anything.  If we don't think that's enough to avoid my giving things away, then I've got a scroll of Dominate Person you could use on me -"

"Actually we should maybe head out of the Rope Trick and over to the whiteboard area to plan this out.  People with access to the demiplane Forbiddance are people with full clearance, or they're supposed to be."

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"I bargained for safe passage, you should be fine, but that all sounds good. ...do you happen to know your present alignment."

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"I got re-Atoned to True Neutral a few days ago, don't know if it's still holding.  I've got a scroll of Early Judgment I could use to check.  Why?"

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"It'll get back to Cheliax. If you were Lawful Evil they'd be more likely to believe I was playing a long game where I'm still on their side. Also, you seem pretty Lawful Evil" what with the plans to in expectation murder tens of billions of people to improve your negotiating position "so I thought I'd check. It's fine; I don't even know if I'll end up doing this plan."

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"I'm not risking Lawful anything, in case I do something Evil and die at the same time.  We could hit up Absalom's temple to Norgorber, and see if they can do a quick Atonement to Neutral Evil before we go."

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"Don't think that helps. Also can you just....do that? Atone to wherever you want? I thought you had to, uh, repent. Maillol figured an Atonement wouldn't go through for him."

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"I'm currently in a mental state where I can regret virtually any of my life choices by putting in twelve seconds of work."

"If it doesn't work, I'd have learned something about myself, Pharasma's sorting system, or Atonement spells, I guess."

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"Okay. In that case I guess let's put protective spells up and go. - do you have Planar Adaptation? Hell's going to bother you."

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"So I've heard.  I was otherwise getting ready for a trip to the Plane of Elemental Fire, so I've definitely got the scrolls, but they were relatively hard to get - how much bothering are we talking about, is this a grit-my-teeth situation or 'you're already kinda psychologically damaged and shouldn't risk it' situation?"

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"Well it'll, uh, help with any problem you might be having where you're considering not blowing up the universe."

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"I'll use the Planar Resistance once I'm there if Mind Blank isn't enough.  This is definitely not a time to do anything that could look remotely like strategic self-modification."

"- I say again, should we actually head over to the whiteboard."

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"Yeah, all right." 

 

She jumps out of the Rope Trick, again.

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"Holy shit.  That's Carissa Sevar?  All right, if that's what Mister Doomlord considers to be 'well above average pretty but not exceptional' then I can see why he's not sleeping with any of the women here."

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"To be fair to Mister Doomlord, I got prettier after we broke up."

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"Oh, like, started using makeup and dressing sexy again once you weren't in an established relationship?  I guess that would entirely account for the discrepancy."

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"Green glowing glitter," she says, and crosses the Forbiddance. Wonders idly if her earring would stop her from saying it wrong and letting the Forbiddance fry her. Probably. "Is there a list of spells and their cost to the Project in millions-of-expected-murders-passed-up somewhere I can reference for decisionmaking?"

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"Does that mean you're joining the anti-doom faction here?  It's my considered opinion that you've made the right choice, we've got the cooler slumber parties."

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"Green glowing glitter," he says as he climbs down.  "We use gold pieces for accounting around here, I'll see about getting you a price list."

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"You know, I thought I'd never in my life see anything as doomed as Project Lawful but a project to utterly soul-annihilate everyone on it, everyone they care about, and everyone else in the universe, populated mostly by people who are against this but under oaths to try to do harm reduction, surpasses it."

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"I KNOW RIGHT?  And since Mister Doomlord is the only thing those two projects have in common, it follows that all of the doominess is completely his fault.  Wow, seeing what he gets up to entirely on his own must be a very exonerating experience for you."

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"- no. He is quite conceivably the most horrible person ever to walk the face of this world, but I made him, and I'm not less guilty where he's more monstrous."

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"See, that is a general sort of life attitude that I associate more with the pro-doom faction.  You may need to watch out there."

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"I swear to you, I would suffer an eternity as a paving stone in Hell before I assented for a single person who wanted to live to permanently die."

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"Hm.  'Intense Lady'?  Doesn't have the same ring as Mister Doomlord.  I'll have to think more about what to call you."

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She'll just look through the resources on offer and make sure they're prepared for their trip to Hell, then.

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They include at least the results of sending somebody with an unreasonable (though not literally unlimited) budget through Absalom, Quantium, Isfahel, and probably some other places, with instructions to buy at least one of whatever low-level scrolls they didn't have already; or any higher-level scrolls that might be useful to a Project that might need to: enforce oaths, go to the Elemental Plane of Fire, hold somebody prisoner and prevent them from escaping, avoid detection, prevent mind control, undo mind control, provide an unstoppable means of committing suicide, avert known methods for trapping souls, or render somebody difficult to torture.

A lot of people here look like they'd want to talk to Carissa Sevar if not for the part where she's clearly quite busy right now.

Somebody wearing Nethys's holy symbol is observing to Keltham that Mind Blank probably stops even a pit fiend from reading your alignment.

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She's going to shut down all lines of thought about what Keltham's told these people about her, which she's very curious about and which doesn't matter, and pick out some spells for surviving Hell.

 

"I'm ready when you are."

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As many as several people in this crowd seem to be of the opinion that Carissa Sevar and Mister Doomlord should consider catching their breath for a few minutes and possibly have a refreshing drink or tasty snack before they literally go to Hell.

Some strategies of harm reduction are more straightforward than others.

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....sure. Fine. Does anyone want to make conversation while she has a snack.

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"How did you get that headband?"

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"Sold my soul for it."

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"....why?"

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"Had a soul, wanted a headband."

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Did she ACTUALLY invent the +2 and +4 headband assembly lines while also running the Conspiracy while also making geas earrings while also being Keltham's second on science research while also being Keltham's girlfriend?

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"Well, he didn't know we had Rings of Sustenance, and he had a lot of girlfriends. But yes."

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"Can I read your soul contract? There's not a lot of attested non-standard Infernal contracts out there."

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"...sure. Why not."

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What's IONE SALA like?  She knows Ione Sala, right?  Is she as cool as all the stories say?

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"Honestly she was kind of a bitter, traumatized teenage girl."

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Besides the thing with using spellsilver from six feet away, what's the coolest feat of Spellcraft she's ever pulled off in her own opinion?

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This interaction is profoundly disconcerting for reasons Carissa really really cannot put a name to at all. "I.... made the geas earrings while I was directing the Conspiracy in Absalom and while they were in my pocket, without looking at them; they'd been narrower, but I'd realized that'd look suspicious. I guess most people would've had to look."

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Is there some subject Carissa Sevar would actually prefer to talk about by way of letting her brain cool down before she goes to Hell?

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"You could tell me about yourselves."

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There's a sharp divide between the people Keltham brought on board before, and after, he started worrying about whether being in his presence or being important to the story might cause people to have more realityfluid.  People from after that tend to be cheerfuller, happier, and to be headed towards afterlives they're comfortable with.  The earlier hires have grimmer stories, which they can't tell Carissa Sevar about, because once Keltham realized what he might be doing wrong, he ordered everybody present to not talk about any bad things that had happened to them in the past so those bad events wouldn't get more realityfluid retroactively.  This is known as the No Tragic Backstories Rule.

This person wearing the holy symbol of Nethys has led a peaceful life for a Nethysian.  He's in the pro-doom faction.  He's only a first-circle cleric, and only uses his divine spells for harm reduction even so, in case doing otherwise would risk Pharasma looking through him to see Nethys.  He's on the Project because he has an incredibly encyclopedic knowledge about spells, items, monsters, all the magical details of the world; and since that isn't Nethys's power he can use that wholeheartedly to assist Keltham.

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Okay actually the reminder Keltham thinks he's in a story is just really upsetting.

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She wants to YELL AT HIM that JUST IN CASE this is NOT A STORY doing anything that INCREASES THE ODDS OF THIS GOING BADLY BY ONE IN A MILLION IS KIDNAPPING LOTS OF PEOPLE STRAIGHT FROM AXIS TO FEED TO DAEMONS AND THE STAFF HERE BEING SAD CANNOT POSSIBLY MEASURE UP TO THAT AND HE SHOULD FUCKING HIRE FOR COMPETENCE

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- but it will just make him declare that she hasn't read enough books about this, and also maybe if he hires really incompetently that actually makes him less likely to stumble across any way of destroying the universe in the first place.

 

 

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She will just smile and nod at Keltham's prisoners and cultists, then. This is such a relaxing break. She can't wait to go to Hell where people aren't horrible.

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"It's been observed to me that you smiling and nodding under your actual present circumstances may perhaps indicate that you are not, at the moment, having fun."

"Shall we go to Hell together?"

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"Let's."

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Onward and out of the Forbiddances, then; he'll audibly repeat the Forbiddance passwords for each area, naming them as he goes.  Time-dilation Forbiddance is part of full-clearance aka 'core', you obviously don't tell the password for it to anybody; he is only saying it out loud (relatively quietly) because it's quite bad if Carissa forgets or gets it wrong.

People inside this Forbiddance, the 'inner' Forbiddance, don't know what this place is about; they cook and so on.  The 'inner' Forbiddance has the rec room and library because uncleared people need a rec room too.  People in 'inner' don't know that people in 'core' know what he's up to - they don't know 'core' folk share his secrets.

This 'outer' Forbiddance is for dealing with people who don't know what the project is about and don't live here either, like Ri-Dul.

Occasionally one of the doomist women here will deliberately wander into the outer Forbiddance area where Ri-Dul can see her, wearing relatively less, with correspondingly false implications about what goes on inside the inner areas.  This is to prevent Ri-Dul from ever desiring to sneak inside.

To be clear, he is not expecting Carissa to do that, and Ri-Dul would probably be suspicious of it anyways.

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"Geas seems to think I can't even look kind of scared because I'd be doing it in the hope someone asked themself 'what makes Carissa Sevar scared?'."

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"If the geas forces you to hold yourself to your own terrifyingly high standards we may have a problem, yeah.  Is this part manageable?"

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"I am not noticing substantial impairment."

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They pass an invisible guard at the outer Forbiddance, and are into the un-Forbidden (but still Mage's Private Sanctumed) area.

He activates his glibness pin on himself and then passes it to Carissa.  He swaps out his headband for Intelligence to boost scroll-casting, casts from scrolls, swaps to Splendour headband.

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She'll take a Glibness too. 

 

And then she'll close her eyes and look inside her own mind and open a Gate to Hell.

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It really says something about her mental state that her reaction to the blast of hot sulfurous air and the distant screams is in fact 'oh, it's good to be back'. Once they're done with everything time sensitive she needs to - take a break and reflect, or something, figure out which parts of her are running mostly on spite and the yearning-to-be-hurt and run them on something better.

 

For now she needs to go to Hell. She steps through the Gate. 

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He also steps through the Gate.  How's the pressure of Hell on his soul doing through the Mind Blank and Protection from Evil?

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It's not too bad, really! Mostly the effects Hell has on you if you're behind a Mind Blank and Protection from Evil are not supernatural. 

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He doesn't cast Planar Adaptation.

Probably this person is fine; he already knew this was true, had already seen the effects from closer range than this during Vision of Hell.  This doesn't represent new information, so there's no reason this person would be updating on it if he were thinking coherently.

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(It doesn't actually work like that, and obviously he knows that, but sometimes it helps to remind yourself of it anyways.)

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There aren't, actually, many tormented petitioners lying on the ground in this area of Avernus; even a very tormented petitioner would probably move away from a grandiose fortress full of pit fiends, if they could.

 

It's possible Hell is warned of her betrayal and is willing to spend the intervention budget to inform the Most High. Time is precious. Carissa knocks on the gate with a Magic Missile, for lack of something cleverer.

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And these gates fly open, with none of the deliberate slowness of the fortresses whose duty is to defend the boundary between Avernus and Dis; this fortress is meant to be an imposing and suitable home for its hosts, not a bulwark against the invasion of the second circle of Hell.

 

"What business brings you here?" asks a hissing, hideous thing. 

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"I have fifteen Wishes mine by right, out of Hell, and intend now to use them, in Asmodeus's service and Dispater's and my own."

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There's a moment of silence. 

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Likelier in the world where they know, already - where Dispater has in fact already withdrawn his favored possession status - although, would He, or would He amusedly wait to see how it played out - devils don't want to die but they also don't want to live, Keltham said, she needs to think about that claim more at some point -

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The pit fiends teleport in. Fifteen of them, of course, because each can only cast Wish once per year. Mind Blank is holding back the fear auras, but that just means that anyone present will feel only the ordinary instinctive human fear at a being much larger than you and much smarter than you glaring down at you with contempt and distaste, surrounded by fourteen of its allies.

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Carissa is surprisingly unterrified. Feeling incredibly confused about who you want to win is great for that, it turns out. If there was some error in her bargaining for safe passage out, she couldn't win this fight in a million years, so she didn't grab Keltham's scrolls with the intent of winning it at all; just of being memorable, and clearly powerful, and clearly in control. Her Unseen Servants are busy about her feet, shining the floor where she stands; her Dancing Lights have scattered to the ceiling to provide the most cinematic possible lighting. 

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"STATE YOUR WISH, MORTAL," one of the pit fiends booms. 

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- she's going to read the standard wording off a piece of paper with large blocky letters, impossible to misread. She has a very close to perfect memory, but being cinematic is not worth a one in ten thousand chance of saying something slightly wrong.

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"+3 Intelligence, +4 Wisdom, +5 Splendour, reserve three," he says rather suddenly and before she can begin actually reading.

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- that's fine and reasonable, and has the substantial advantage they'll have Hell-interpreted Wishes later if they need them, but she wishes he'd told her earlier so as not to mess with her cinematography. 

 

(Does it matter? There's a set of possibilities under which it matters, but she hasn't actually had time yet to think how likely they are. She may in fact just be doing this because it is better than feeling like all this is just happening to her without her steering.)

 

She'll tell the devils to give him +3 Intelligence, +4 Wisdom, +5 Splendour.

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He doesn't outwardly react.

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- okay not to be an embarrassing stereotype of herself but HOLY SHIT WISHES ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING SHE HAS EVER SEEN

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In the time it takes them to cast the twelve Wishes Carissa has come up with a spectacularly clever rationalization for why the way to win from here involves her becoming a ninth circle wizard and casting all required Wishes for the project herself.

It's not true but it's so convincing. She'd be so good at it. 

 

 

How could anyone possibly think a universe was worth destroying that had such beauty in it?

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When the magic has settled around Keltham and the air no longer glows she channels Abrogail, and gives him a little bit of a condescending smile. 

 

And then departs the fortress with him, her path cleared of dust by her Unseen Servants, and opens the Gate to go back. 

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The man goes through first, expression still unchanging while the Gate is open.

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Her expression, too, changes considerably once the Gate is down. "Why three???"

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"I don't know if it was the right thing to do.  I realized - mostly from meeting you, only a little from Hell - that I am not holding myself together well enough.  More balanced stats for a time might help.  Planning for next round of augmentations to be slower.  More Constitution than 19 may not be dispensable.  Strength and Dexterity may mean things.  Would need to take risk and visit City of Brass anyways.  You might have a plan that only works with Hell-intepreted Wishes.  If the Wish-resource method fails, we have three Wishes for the last step of the current plan even if the pit fiends might pitch a fit about keeping the deal.  It costs extra time at INT 27 instead of INT 29 and maybe that difference will ruin everything but -"

"Sometimes you throw out the calculation and go with your intuition.  It's just important to understand the calculation first."

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"Yeah, all right. I - failed to explain all my reasoning, here, which is on me." And they're not in the secret area, so she can't explain it now either. 

 

"Uh, that aside, I think enhancing yourself more evenly and more slowly sounds like a good plan, and I'm glad you agree that you're not holding yourself together well. ...no offense."

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"I apologize for the sudden surprise.  It came to me at the last minute.  I'd have spoken earlier if I'd thrown away my calculation earlier."

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She starts heading towards the more secret base sectors so that she can ask the rest of her questions. "Shall we, now that nothing's time sensitive on the scale of hours, take some time off and then reconvene? Do you have a summary I can read of your plans and reasoning relevant to them?"

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"Taking time off sounds like a good idea.  And, no, I wasn't - expecting you to come back to me, before the primary plot had reached a climax.  Other people here for harm reduction - or even assistance - were not ones I considered worth arguing with about the core plans."

They pass through the 'inner' Forbiddance, then the 'core' Forbiddance, continuing to head to the demiplane.

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" - I find it kind of terrifying and infuriating that you haven't argued the core plans with people but I guess I will work on getting into a state to argue about them without just sniping at you! I feel like if I were even considering doing something like this I'd have argued the core plans with a couple hundred people before deciding on it!"

 

 

 

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"I'm not saying this well.  And, mostly wrongthought, I was speaking, angrily at myself.  I argued with a lot of people about individual details and everybody wanted to argue different details to the point where there was no unified explanation I could save time by writing.  In my defense, the - actual macro strategic calculation - is not something where Golarion natives think in that format -"

"I think my emotions are actually coming back online through all of the damage at Splendour 25 instead of Splendour 20, and it's incredibly superheated odd that dath ilani are wired in a way where Splendour 20 wouldn't be enough."

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Are you sure that's a dath ilani thing and not a you thing - not worth it. 

 

"I wonder if there's a way to get Peranza and Asmodia. Just so there's people around who you taught and who speak your language and who, uh, didn't wrong you like I did."

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"Ione Sala has been filling some of that role, though she doesn't try to talk me into or out of anything.  I'm also worried that if Asmodia was around I'd be, moved by her in an uncalculating way, and then that's one more person where Pharasma can look through me to Asmodia... I'll think about it."

Through the portal and into the time-dilated demiplane, murmuring "Green glowing glitter" as he enters.  The Forbiddance edge is marked with green paint on the ground; nobody has put up an illusory curtain across it as yet.

"Everybody out, unless you want to quickly make the case that your work is time-sensitive and near a critical path," he says loudly enough for it to fill the small demiplane.

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People take one look at Mister Doomlord in Intense Lady's company and quickly get out of the demiplane.

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"Do you need anything from me before we take a break?"

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"I don't think so.  Uh, random in case you end up trying to do mental planning, we already have unlimited diamond dust for Permanencies given somebody to cast it, I don't think I mentioned that, and I'm obviously not going to complain if you want to spend a hundred thousand gold pieces on anything at all important."

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"Where're you getting your money? I know Cheliax was stalling..."

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"Early on, by accepting fees from Evil entities attending lectures or wanting to use my knowledge without getting me angry about patentgratuities.  Buying headbands and spellsilver from Cheliax, which they're obliged to sell me up to a fractional limit of production, and which they can't price too high because that affects the accounting on what they have to pay me later over internal production; reselling some of those goods to Evil entities.  Taking out some relatively small ultra-high-interest loans backed by my share of Project Lawful from Evil entities like the Church of Norgorber."

"Somewhat more recently, I decided I hadn't been taking things seriously enough and was repeating the mistake I'd made in Cheliax when I hadn't asked for serious resources earlier.  Given the diamond synthesis trick and how far I'd come in establishing Lawful Evil purchasing lines and my own lair, I was very likely going to be able to do something.  I was going to try to do it before the probable deadline on Cheliax attacking Osirion.  I decided that my having more time to think things through would constitute harm reduction even from the extrapolated fully-informed perspective of people who disagreed with me."

"So I took out high-interest loans from Isfahel backed by the prospective income from Cheliax, started buying from the Kelesh Empire, and paid the Grand High Priestess of Sarenrae to put up the temporary time-accelerated demiplane."

"Golarion is not so primitive that it has no large financial entities to propagate probable future income backwards in time."

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" - okay. I'm going to - try to figure out how I think morality should work, and what kind of person I am, and assuming I don't end up deciding I just want you to have an emotional breakdown, I'll let you know in a couple hours when I'm ready to talk."

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"Right, well, my plan is to go have an emotional breakdown and rely on Splendour 25 to just make it through on sheer force of will, spend long enough like that to go to sleep that way, and hope when I wake up that I'm in a state that's stable at Splendour 23 so I can swap to the +4/+0/+4 headband..."

"I am actually kind of scared to augment Intelligence or Wisdom again, or go underneath Splendour 25, but that is something I can think about later."

"Any harm-reduction comments on that?"

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"- I do notice that you're having way more problems with identity-consistency than most people I know of who wear headbands or get cursed into losing half their intelligence or whatever. Some of that might be dath ilani techniques which make the stat boosts affect more aspects of your thinking, but some of it might be that you're changing how your brain works all the time? If I were you I'd try changing my mind around less. 

I'm - not you, though. Osirion knocked me down to INT 9 and I was still me, just me who couldn't quite remember why I was doing what I was doing."

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"The - angry scathing remark that comes to mind, such as does sometimes come to mind about Golarion, and I am not sure that it's false - is that people here do not use their mental abilitystats for much.  Do not have skills that deeply matter and scale to use more of those abilitystats."

"I checked around to see if Golarion knew anything collectively about side effects of rapidly changing around abilitystats to handle particular problems, and Golarion's collective wisdom seemed to be that people were usually just the same if you added +6 Intelligence points, only smarter.  Which was such an absolutely alien concept that, again, the scathing remark that came to mind, was that Golarion did not have any experience relevant for grownups, only for primitive untrained children who only use their mental abilitystats for stereotypically abilitystat-laden work problems.  I am again not sure this scathing remark is wrong."

"An alternative hypothesis is that dath ilani are configured to be more internally consistent in general and tolerate less variance.  People in Golarion seem to vary much more in personality from day to day, even when not swapping augmentations, than I am used to.  Much more visibly so, now that I'm out of Project Lawful and not around people putting up consistent Chelish fronts.  It would've been a dead giveaway to anyone not from Cheliax or, unfortunately, dath ilan."

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"I think dath ilan breaks something in people. But I would think that, and probably we shouldn't argue it until we've both had time to think."

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"It is common wisdom everywhere that is not Cheliax that Cheliax breaks everything about people, and I did not think to recruit in advance anybody who could help you with that.  Maybe don't set your own new personality in 'concrete' before you've talked with... our Iomedaen wizard, possibly?"

"Fe-Anar of Osirion, the one who was reading over your Hell contract, is closer to being able to keep up with you in a conversation Intelligence-wise.  But I have absolutely no idea if the two of you would get along."

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"It might be awkward how my current theory of what to do from here involves letting Cheliax invade Osirion. I'll talk to the Iomedaen, She seems - like a kind of Good that I might not hate with a passion." Especially if the reason Iomedae's not with Cayden Cailean is not being okay with the risk of ending the world.

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There's a new adventurer's-tent set up, in the demiplane.  This one is presumably for Carissa Sevar.  Somebody left a plate of chocolates outside the tent's entrance by way of welcome.

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She's not really in the mood for chocolates.

 

 


She's in the mood to collapse dramatically on the floor and wonder if she should, in fact, have, immediately betrayed Keltham to Otolmens who would crush him. 

This is not an important question to answer, in one sense. She can't do it now. The error, if it was an error, was made due to intense time pressure and incomplete information about her past self's plans and panic and the risk of being mindread and love for Keltham and guilt over having harmed him so badly and existential horror at the thought of him being casually annihilated for a thought he might not even in fact be thinking, and she doesn't exactly think she'll make similar errors in the future. She's sure never ever ever going to love anyone again. 

The obvious analysis here is that yes, she should have immediately betrayed Keltham, or at least have refused to step out of the Dome until she had his promise she could oppose him if she saw fit, which he wouldn't have given, at which point she'd have betrayed him to Otolmens.

(Why does it even come to her to betray him to Otolmens? How is Otolmens not carefully watching the situation already! Wasn't Broom supposed to be handling this?)

(Broom, who Osirion freed because they don't enslave halflings. It would serve everyone right, in some sense, certainly serve Otolmens and Cheliax right, if Broom, freed, decided to go travel the world or buy a house or something. Or maybe he's here, and just hoping he won't have to stab Keltham. Either way, if Keltham isn't worrying about Broom Carissa won't bring the possibility to his attention).

 

The less-obvious analysis here is that this way, she might be able to talk Keltham into a version of his plan that is actually better than the status quo, and it all depends on the probabilities, which she's poorly equipped to even begin to estimate. But Snack Service thought something good could happen here, something for which Carissa mattered and Carissa's status in Hell mattered, and -

 

- she thinks everything Cayden/Nethys has done has made this harder for Keltham to pull off? Otolmens picking Broom in the first place was a response to Pilar and Ione being picked; She's paying the situation closer attention. Nefreti said that the deception would've gone on longer without Cayden/Nethys's interventions, and if that's so, then when Keltham departed he'd have been richer, and Cheliax been less impaired in pursuing him, and he wouldn't have had the prospect of his children rushing him to solve this prematurely, they'd already have existed.....

If Cayden and Nethys were aiming at the destruction of the world they could have probably done it, from this starting point. So they're aiming at something else. And - she's not sure this logic is valid, but it does feel like probably if she were the kind of person who Nethys knew would instantly report Keltham, then some other person meets Keltham where he lands instead, some person who doesn't feel so strongly about the world not ending -

This is, perhaps, a question to return to when she's a god. If she's a god. She sure is making a lot of plans premised on her godhood, lately, for someone who does not in fact possess godhood and is actually just a fifth circle wizard with more money than fifth circle wizards usually have.

 

Perhaps she is staring at this because for all that it hurts, it doesn't hurt as much as staring inward and figuring out who she is and what she isn't and what she's done.

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About half an hour later she concedes that she should eat the chocolates and sends for the Iomedaen wizard. 

"Do people go to Hell for practicing Acid Splash on their classmates?"

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"That's a good question. Trials are secret, of course, but.... we don't think so, not directly."

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" -'s what I thought. It's not about damning you. It's about - you believing that you are, fundamentally, the kind of person who'd do that, that everyone is the kind of person who'd do that, about drawing that outline around the muddle in a way that is the shape of a damned person - if Pharasma couldn't see anything you did before age 20, at all, they wouldn't do it any differently.

 

Some people find it upsetting, though. I didn't."

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"You do not strike me as a person with particularly high empathy or instinctive aversion to hurting people. I don't know if that's innate - people do vary in that innately - or learned."

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"Probably learned. I'm a very quick study.

 

 

 

 

Three days ago I spent six hours torturing a man nearly to death for fun and to impress a girl I liked."

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"Is there something we can do now to get him into a safe situation?"

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" - hmmm? Oh, I don't think so. He'll - the girl thought he'd recover. I did not ask what definition of 'recover' she was using. He's not being hurt now. And I'm going to have to be very careful operating in Cheliax from here on out.

Do you, every time you hear about a bad thing, stop to think how to fix it -"

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"...I think it's important, when thinking about bad things, to keep almost all of your attention on where the badness is located. And the badness about having tortured a man for six hours is located in him, first and most, that he suffered and is suffering, and meaningfully coming to terms with it is something that usually ought to start with him.

You can fix your own flaws through introspection; you can't fix having tortured people by looking inside yourself."

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"He did, uh, sincerely attempt to have my family Maledicted to Abaddon because I said something mean to him at a party!"

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"I don't actually have the slightest idea what the Iomedaen answer is, there."

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"Did torturing him save your family in some way?"

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"....no. It's just why I picked him."

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"Well, torturing people is bad, and having peoples' families Maledicted to Abaddon is also bad, and deciding to hurt people who do bad things to deter other bad things is an approach to problem-solving which humans have a tendency to err at in many different directions, so it's best done systematically and transparently as part of a just institution, and if you find yourself just wanting to hurt a bad person in a way that doesn't make anything better, you shouldn't. Why did you bring it up, if we can't help him now?"

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"I don't want to just go, well, I did all those bad things, I can't fix them now, I won't do it again, I guess I'm done here. It doesn't feel like enough."

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"What would feel like enough?"

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"...burning eternally in the fires of Hell?"

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"Eternally? You don't think after a couple of years you'd go, wow, actually, I think that was enough?"

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"....depends whether Keltham ends up destroying the universe because I fucked him up so badly? Burning eternally in the fires of Hell really wouldn't be enough, for that."

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"So, comparing the worlds where Keltham destroys the universe except you and your loved ones, and you and your loved ones have a nice eternity somewhere, and the world where Keltham destroys the universe except you and your loved ones, and you burn in Hell forever and your loved ones have a nice eternity somewhere...what seems better to you?"

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"I don't have loved ones."

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"...okay. I only specified that because I think most people wouldn't want to spend eternity completely alone, burning on fire or not."

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"- I mean, I could make constructs or something - I'm sorry, I think I'm being a bad student, here, and not addressing the point you wanted addressed. It is better if I am on fire, because everything is my fault, and I can't live with that, and if I'm on fire then I don't have to."

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"I think that probably you just need to toughen up and deal with things being your fault and stop trying to avoid living with that."

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"That is somehow not exactly the answer I expected. It's kind of what Derrina would say, if I said that to her, but I don't think she's Good."

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"What answer were you expecting?"

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"I don't know! Something - about how people shouldn't suffer?"

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"People can suffer if they want to. It's just, in your specific case it seems like you want to because the alternative is learning how to live with yourself."

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" - I do actually also separately like it when people hurt me but for my own benefit and it makes me stronger and then they pet me and tell me how well I did, that's a separate thing here that's not just about learning how to live with myself."

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"Is it by any chance the case that that's approximately the only context in which anyone in Cheliax has ever been nice to you."

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" - well if they were just nice unprovoked it'd be weird and I wouldn't be sure what they were playing at."

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"So teaching someone to associate suffering and slavery with companionship, support, and intimacy, which are otherwise completely inaccessible and pathetic to want, is actually much more sophisticated than Cheliax is usually capable of being but does seem like something they might do for a specific individual they are trying to corrupt because she's running an important project for them."

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"- oh, yes, I'm very much clear on the fact that's what they were doing, I wanted them to do that, to help me be a better Asmodean. ...Aspexia and Abrogail and Subirachs and Maillol worked really hard on that, for the last four months, 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, one, I am confused about, given how muddled all humans are all the time, what it would even mean to deal fairly with them - maybe Abadar just knows the answer to that one but it wasn't obvious just from thinking about it - and, two, I think maybe my being more and properly Asmodean was part of the plan."

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"The plan?"

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"Keltham doesn't want to start emotionally relying on it but I think Cayden and Nethys and possibly some other gods are trying to steer this so the universe doesn't get destroyed, and I think my being someone who can replace Asmodeus is part of their plan."

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"And you are pretty confident it's a good plan and you want to help them pull it off?"

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"...I don't know what you're getting at?"

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"Just that there's a failure mode where you decide Asmodeus shouldn't be able to order you around and go looking for someone worthier to throw yourself behind."

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"....is...that a failure mode?"

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"There are a lot of sacrifices that get made in emergencies, and that's one of them, but ideally, the person deciding who you should grow up into should be you."

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"- I don't actually see how that serves Iomedae."

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"Okay, one, why do you care if that serves Iomedae, you don't work for Her. And two, why would Iomedae be worth serving, if She didn't want us to grow up?"

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"...because She is opposed to Hell and doesn't want to destroy the world?"

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"...all right, that's fair, serving Iomedae is somewhat overdetermined for a lot of people. But still, I'm glad She's not just the absolute minimum Lawful Good god who technically is on the right side and more useful than Erastil or fucking Shizuru."

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"Oh, is Shizuru actually useless, that's not just Chelish propaganda?"

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"Well, some people argue it should be parsed as 'damaged' more than 'useless'. But She hasn't done much of anything in Golarion since Tsukiyo died and Iomedae's leading the war on the Evil afterlives despite being brand new as a god and comparatively very weak."

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"Huh. 

 

I don't have any idea what kind of god I'd be if I ascended. If I had all the time in the world, I think I could figure something out, but Keltham wants to go ahead very very soon, if I don't convince him to go with my plan instead..."

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"It's a very hard problem we've set ourselves here."

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"And if Iomedae has a solution in mind about who I'm supposed to be I'd at least want to hear Her out about it!"

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"Iomedae doesn't know we're here and would presumably shut this down if She did. Which I think would be an improvement, but it's not an improvement I have the power to make unilaterally, and presumably if things got to the point where Cayden Cailean thought it'd be an improvement He could tell her.

If She were here, I imagine She'd ask - if you were in charge of Hell, would it be a horrifying atrocity full of torture?"

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"No! Torture is stupid! It'd be a place where people like me can get stronger and better. And if people don't get stronger and better through pain then you should obviously do something else to them."

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"Well, I gotta say, I think most possible gods that turns into is a big improvement over the present situation."

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"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence."

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"...what is Iomedae's stance on doing something really awful that harms and potentially damns lots of people in order to slightly increase the probability that this plan works and the world doesn't end? Is it just, well, how bad, for how much probability of making things better -"

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"...mostly it's that mortals shouldn't do that, and should leave it to the gods. But if you have to do it, there's not some strategy that's better than figuring out how likely it is to work and how much harm it's going to do and if there's any better way, and then doing your best."

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She makes a face. "That's kind of dath ilani."

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"They're probably also correct about the color of the sky."

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"And plausibly about a lot of things, but it's hard to tell from here how much they had instincts that are actually somewhat appropriate to this situation because of knowledge of the broader multiverse they concealed from people like Keltham, or had no information at all about that, how much the things they taught about ideal reasoners are applicable to negotiating with gods..."

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"I want to swear Dispater to secrecy and then ask Him. He's not on our side, obviously, but as not a full god He's easier to just talk with, and He'd know, and Erecura got divinity from Pharasma and I bet knows lots more than anyone alive about what kinds of things are actually possible to ask Pharasma for."

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"That's not an awful idea."

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"Wow, thanks."

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"I don't know if it's a good idea. We're into very strange territory, here. Generally I would never talk to an archdevil for any reason."

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"I acknowledge that I have low standards and also that I was straightforwardly being manipulated by hostile entities who torture people for fun, but He treated me like I wasn't livestock, like my growing stronger was a potential shared interest of ours. He could exist in my Hell, I think. - without the torturing people for fun.

I don't actually know if He tortures people for fun or just because it's the done thing. What He told me He'd do to me if I failed was hand me off to one of the counts of Hell whose pride I'd wounded.

Kind of fucked up how at this point that sounds like an unusually good eternal fate for me."

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"I really think we can do better than that."

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"I'm just terrified we'll do worse.

 

 

...every time Keltham is - terrifying, or horrible, I feel - like I deserve it, because I hurt him worse and first, and like I don't deserve it, because I never wanted to hurt him, and like I should forgive him because he's in pain and like I'd never forgive myself for that reason and why shouldn't I hold him to the same standard and I hate him for not being - good enough to do the thing he's trying to do, and trying to do it anyway - but I used to admire that about him, I remember admiring that about him..."

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"Sorry. I don't know what I'm asking."

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"Well, if the question is, did you hurt him, yeah, you really really did. And if the question is, is he handling it in the manner Iomedae would handle it, no, he really really isn't. I don't think he wants to. And if the question is, is any of that going to get better, ever....

 

....probably not? I've seen some serious interpersonal wounds heal but not when events were basically guaranteed to keep salting them."

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"This is really really stupid but I kind of hoped he would react in some way when I explained about Elias Abarco."

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"That doesn't sound really really stupid."

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"I think it's that - it's not that I mind that he had sex with me! I'm not twelve! I was going to give him Tonia, except that Cayden Cailean intervened, which, in hindsight, might not have just been Cayden Cailean randomly doing shit, if He was trying to protect the Project girls so Keltham could be reasoned with - though if that was what He was doing you'd think Keltham could be reasoned with and he isn't showing it - 

 

- wow, I sound like a terrible person even to myself, when I talk about this - 

- but anyway, the thing that was upsetting about it was that I'd promised Keltham I wouldn't, and it was, actually, weirdly upsetting, I think about it every time I see Abarco and it's been like three months now and I realize that's on me - and, so, it feels wrong, or something, for Keltham not to care, like there's something there I thought was real that never was -"

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"Abarco raped you?"

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" - kind of? I mean, calling it that feels like I wasn't happy that no one felt sorry for me so I just decided to pick a more dramatic word for it. He had permission from my superiors, it wasn't like he committed a crime or something."

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" - you know it's very normal to be upset if someone raped you even if they had permission from your superiors?"

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"I can't think of a single guy I slept with except Keltham who'd have taken it well if I told him no and I've never had problems before!"

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"What....are you imagining Iomedae thinks about this."

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"That I should grow up and stop feeling sorry for myself?"

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"Wow. 

No. 

 

Okay. I think we should back up a little. 

 

The only solution I've ever run across to not wanting to be an actor in the world, to looking at this world and thinking it's too hard and confusing and scary, to wanting someone else to run it for you, to looking for some rule you can follow instead of doing your best, is to do the hard thing and stop looking for shortcuts. People try a lot of other stuff. Never super seen any of it work.

That is not the correct solution to being traumatized in full generality."

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"Fine, then, what is?"

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"Well, generally, you expect that if someone raped you then you're going to be fucked up about that, definitely if you have to keep working with them, definitely if it's only been three months, and also you might reasonably wish your boyfriend was upset on your behalf when he found out, and feel gratified if other people are upset on your behalf when they find out, and feel like that's one of the hurts your relationship with Keltham did you, that you weren't able to tell him until much later, and he wasn't able to comfort you -"

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"Because he was simultaneously learning that I betrayed him in every conceivable way!"

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"When people hurt one another, they quite often both get hurt, you know. What you did to him was much much worse than what he did to you. But it is not surprising at all that your relationship hurt you too, even that it hurt you very badly.

And no matter who you were, no matter what you'd done, no one should have raped you."

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"Or Tonia."

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"Or Tonia. Or anyone. It ....seems possible to me that some of what Keltham is going through is harm related to his having been tricked into having sex under conditions he didn't agree to and didn't want, with people he wrongly trusted cared about what he'd agreed to and what he wanted."

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"I know. I didn't - mean to do that. I wanted to be someone he could trust. I - tried to keep his trust, that's - why the stupid Abarco thing even bothered me -

 

I would fix it for him, if I could. ....I in fact am probably more attached to my tentative plan where I stab Abrogail for him than makes any goddamned sense."

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"If I had a plan to stab Abrogail Thrune that had a good chance of working I'd be attached to it too."

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When it's been two hours and she has a plan and a long list of questions and is done crying and feels like she's not going to have a panic attack if Keltham gets frustrated and proposes statuing her again, she leaves her tent.

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Outside her tent is a note.  Weirdly, it looks like a printed page from a book, though with slightly uneven letters on the line, even though it was clearly written just for Carissa.

The note says that the Entity Formerly Known As Keltham had previously promised himself he would take a day off, possibly two days, once he got time-dilation up.  He has not actually had a day off since he left Cheliax, because time previous to establishment of time dilation was too valuable.  You can keep going for quite a while with a +6 Belt of Mighty Constitution.

Mister Doomlord thinks he may, in fact, actually need to take a day off, now.  Right now.  Even though Carissa is here and has all sorts of important questions.

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The note continues to say that some of the others here can answer some of those questions.  Carissa does in fact know the key elements of his basic Doom Plan.  Others in 'core' will have more details if she asks.

The critical-path item on the Doom Plan is (1) Wishcrafting the three explosions he needs, 1x Rovagug 2x Absalom, which INT 27 is hopefully enough to start doing; and (2) getting three Wish scrolls with which to do it.  That Person does not expect Carissa to help with (2), but thinks (1) should plausibly count as 'harm reduction' here.

Carissa hopefully has lots she can get up to speed on productively?

Or Carissa could take a day off inside time dilation.  Ex-Keltham does not think he made the wrong decision about not taking time to recover immediately after he left Cheliax, there was too much that needed doing immediately.  But it sure was what everybody in Osirion was telling him to do.  Possibly the same advice may apply to Carissa.  Well, not the part where they wanted him to spend a month in a monastery, that would've just been wrong.

Keltham's successor entity does not know of anything that Carissa needs to do immediately the way he needed to do things immediately.  So far as he knows, nothing terrible will happen if she takes an entire day off.

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Carissa's ex-boyfriend has no idea if she considers herself still bound by any promises she made him, about that sort of thing, but if so, she's free to have sex with people here, as Carissa once told him a long time ago was helpful for recovering from violence.  She can also get a relaxing massage from the woman calling herself Minor Character, though she also answers to anything else you want to call her; this massage, on some viewpoints, would reasonably count as sex, hence the specification.  He'd say more but - it's cheating, to do anything with emotional implications, while you're hiding in your time-dilated adventurer's-tent.

He's pretty sure that Minor Character is not Nocticula, he checked.  She now answers to 'Noticula' too.

He really needs to stop thinking now.  Good night for a while.

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Well, all...right, then? 

 

 

Carissa has zero interest in sex with anyone here. They're not as pretty as Abrogail. She'll....get some books from the library, and read, if not the truth, at least the lies the rest of the world tells, and take notes for her argument with Keltham tomorrow. Or the day after. As soon as he's ready. 

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A couple hours into that she will concede that possibly she in fact needed a day off too. 

 

has she actually ruled out that Minor Character is Abrogail, most people are

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After about ten hours of reading books and eating chocolate Carissa determines that she is not, as a person, temperamentally suited to taking days off when there might not be very many days left. 

She gives herself Permanent Dancing Lights just so she can have more than the maximum number of Dancing Lights, and puts a Permanent Alarm on her bag of holding just for practice with Permanency and a Permanent Invisibility Alarm on her headband because why not. Then she copies a bunch of fifth-circle spells off Keltham's scroll library and also any staff who'll let her. Carmin has Overland Flight which means Carissa will be practically able to swoop around never touching the ground again though 'objectively' this is 'not a good use of a fifth circle spell slot' or something. 

 

She's not going to work on Wish wordings until she's talked with Keltham; if any of her ideas are good ideas, they'll have several additional months to work on Wish wordings, and any work done before she Wishes herself up as smart as a person can be will be wasted. 

 

Maybe she can just figure out how to make a 6/6/4 and then she and Keltham won't have to fight over it. 

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He finishes more or less blacking out in his bedroll just being tired.  He finishes being curled up in a ball internally screaming and feeling emotions that he thinks he can now survive feeling at Splendour 25, which isn't actually all of the emotions.

He does not leave his tent in time dilation; instead, he starts trying to think.

This thinking process uses his Incredibly Fake Computer, technically an unusually complicated permanent reactive illusion hooked up to a Baseline-language version of the keyboard his typewriter uses.  It is literally just a text editor, but it allows for nested outlining and to edit things already written.  (His aligned item-creator has not figured out any equivalent of 'print this screen'; if he wants to save or share anything from the Incredibly Fake Computer his aligned taskmonkey has to manually translate it to Taldane and enter it into the typewriter.)

The real person running this entire show is not somebody who can think in realtime, especially at only +3 Intelligence.  He thinks slowly and using a fake computer for external memory anchoring, processing lists of possibilities too large and arguments too intricate to be held in memory all at once.


To be clear, the simple aspect of "making lists" or "writing down complicated arguments" is not the key thing and would not have gotten previous!Keltham all that far; the key point is more like "thought processes that successfully scale to considering more possibilities, because it's not always the case that everything after possibility #3 on your list never happens, and what does happen usually isn't on the list anyways" or "arguments whose local steps hold together well enough that their productivity scales intact to larger argument structures, rather than arguments too complicated to hold in your head just never working".

Nobody tries to design an entire liquid-phase nuclear reactor in their heads, even before their society invents outline editors.  But then, you can have nice things like nuclear reactors only because your society has designed some method of thinking about such engineering problems which is precise enough that it scales to a nuclear reactor design, and actually goes on working.  If all of your society's political arguments fit into a paragraph, it doesn't necessarily mean you've discovered a kind of thinking about politics that scales well to longer than a paragraph, or that people with longer arguments have better arguments; but still, that's the kind of politics you'll get.

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Carissa's just writing pages and pages of notes, whenever something comes to mind while she's item-crafting. 

 

Thoughts related to alternatives to releasing Rovagug, thoughts related to alternatives to bargaining with Pharasma, thoughts related to Achaekek, thoughts related to the plausible state of information of various gods, thoughts related to entities to contact, thoughts related to making it unnecessary to avoid Cheliax, thoughts related to influencing Asmodeus's perspective on how well the ilani project is going, thoughts related to what Cayden and Nethys are angling for, thoughts related to her cult and how to encourage it if that seems useful, thoughts related to world conquest if they end up going down one of the unlikely-looking branches where that seems like a good idea, thoughts related to assassinating Abrogail in a way that doesn't discredit Carissa with the Church of Asmodeus, thoughts related to whether they're 'in a story', and whether there are any worlds in the overlap of 'in a story' and 'should not just act like everyone and everything matters exactly as much as you'd expect'....

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"Hey, this might be a slightly absurd question, but do you think Osirion would agree to let Cheliax conquer them if we swore to them them it was for complicated reasons in their long term interests?"

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" - is it in their long-term interests? It seems about as not in their long-term interests as a thing could reasonably be!"

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"Under some sets of assumptions, one of the things Cayden and Nethys have been trying to influence is how much Asmodeus cares about Golarion, the planet, either so that He won't release Rovagug even if He loses or so that if Keltham releases Rovagug Asmodeus will commit the resources to stop Him before the planet is eaten. If even Asmodeus is strong enough to do that, which I consider unlikely but not so unlikely this isn't worth thinking about."

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"Hmmm, most of the gods that saved Golarion the first time are still around, right?"

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"Also unsure but I think no. A lot of the gods that were around then died. I bothered a couple of the historians for estimates of how many and they were like 'between three and twenty'. We have more than three but fewer than twenty new gods, but new gods are also much weaker than ancient ones. On the other hand, some of the ancient gods fought on the side of Rovagug, and maybe no one will do that this time? Or maybe Asmodeus will, in which case I think we're completely fucked."

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"Keltham's much more optimistic than you about that, I don't know his reasoning."

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"Do you trust his reasoning?"

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"Hmmm. He reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger, really. I would absolutely have murdered trillions of people to spite Pharasma. Luckily I didn't have the opportunity."

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" - okay not that I haven't myself been a bad person in the past but I actually have trouble imagining what it's like to be the kind of person who'd murder trillions of people to spite Pharasma! You don't even get to stick around enjoying having spited Pharasma! You're dead!!"

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"If it's not intuitively obvious I don't know how to explain it. She thinks She owns us; She doesn't own us, we own us; fuck her, we'll do this without Her."

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"That just seems like going .... 'gravity THINKS it's in charge here, but it doesn't own me, I own me, I'll jump off a cliff and show gravity who is in charge!'"

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"Yes. Obviously you do pick up a Fly first if you can."

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"That's - but - if you haven't picked up a Fly first you don't do it! Because - and at least then you're only risking yourself!!! This is more like throwing a bunch of innocent people off the cliff to show how much you won't let gravity spite you!!"

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"Well, I agree today I wouldn't do it. But when I was Keltham's age? Absolutely. If Pharasma doesn't like it She should've been a better god."

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"What changed your mind?"

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"That is a question I've given a lot of thought without a satisfying answer. Some of it is just - witnessing enough horrors to realize on some important level that bad things are actually bad even if my logic for doing them is impeccable. I do not think that'll work on Keltham, since most of the horrors he's witnessed are Hell, and fixing Hell is in fact a pretty reasonable thing to go on an insane crusade about.

And some of it is my wife and children, and more recently my father being in Axis and substantially more - whole and wise and happy - and, hmm, I have the impression that well is somewhat poisoned for Keltham."

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"To be clear, I am also optimistic that we are jumping off this cliff with a Fly spell up."

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"He's going to destroy the world! Even in what he considers a good scenario Rovagug's going to probably eat everyone in the world!"

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" - so, we're not destroying the world, there, right, the problem is that Asmodeus can't stand losing and so will destroy everything rather than suffer a hit to his pride, and we can't just let ourselves all be hostages to Asmodeus. We should say to Him 'fuck you, go ahead and try'."

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"But then we'll die!"

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"Well, you can't just do whatever people want you to do because otherwise they'll kill you!"

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"Not only can you do that very nearly everyone who isn't Osirian royalty is doing it constantly!!!"

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" - okay, setting that aside, today you wouldn't do it, right? Why not?"

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"You know how it used to be that daemons would eat souls out of the River of Souls?"

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"Yes. Asmodeus put a stop to that. - did He actually even do that. It was one of my favorite facts about Him."

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"All the gods agreed to put a stop to that. But anyway, outside a place like this, if you ask people how they feel about that, they're all appalled. If you ask them if they wish we'd let the daemons go back to doing that, they're terrified. They don't want that at all. Now, Keltham would point out, once people go to Hell, they often want to die. But I guess I figure - if pretty much no one wants the River of Souls fed to Abaddon, then even if some of them after they go to Hell do want that, they don't get to have the other people not in Hell murdered on their behalf. I'd feel differently about that if there were a sizable contingent of people who did wish all souls got eaten when you die. And there's not none - some Rovagug cultists showed up to join Keltham, they're mostly like that - but it's a really unusual stance, much rarer than going to Hell is."

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"I'm not sure that really touches - very many of my intuitions about this."

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"Well an intuition of mine is that it's very different to destroy a lottery people wouldn't've agreed to participate in on behalf of the losers than to destroy a lottery people did agree to participate in on behalf of the losers. And while I'm very much enthusiastic about cancelling the whole stupid lottery I bet we can come up with a smarter way to do it, in time."

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"If you have ideas for a specific smarter way -"

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"I'd have to be a lot smarter than I am but I was thinking about making - something that does what Pharasma does. Shield us from the interference of the other Outer Gods. If Civilization had that then we really could tell Her to go die in a fire, and I'll be the first to do it."

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" - well. Let me know if that gets to the point where it needs spellcraft."

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"Will do. Now, you had some kind of crazy plan that involved invading Osirion?"

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"Yeah, I need to check several of my assumptions with Keltham and convince him in some way that doesn't rely on reasoning about what Nethys and Cayden are up to but, uh, I think Asmodeus might be powerful enough to save Golarion, if He wanted to, and if His triumphant forces are in the middle of conquering it and also making huge corrigibility discoveries then, well, He'll want to. Is the broad outline. I realize this involves, uh, everyone you love dying horribly, but so does unleashing Rovagug, and this way could conceivably be temporary."

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"...seems like a plan that fails in a spectacularly ugly way, if it fails. Say, if Otolmens notices and crushes this project after that but before Keltham can attempt ascending."

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" - yeah.

 

If I were in charge of Cheliax?"

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"...is that a realistic possibility?"

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" - probably not? I'm exploring a lot of ideas that probably won't work. But, I mean, assassinating Abrogail probably would work, and she did tell me I was her obvious successor. - she was displeased about it."

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"I'm surprised she didn't kill you on the spot."

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"I think she likes me."

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"You have fascinating romantic taste."

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"Don't want to talk about that actually.

- thank you, though. This was helpful.

 

Why are you here, if you don't want Keltham to succeed?"

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"Well, I think if he surrounds himself entirely with Rovagug cultists things will go even worse."

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The person who eventually emerges from his tent does not look especially well-rested.

A lot of people inside Project Doom's Doom Base* would probably be glad to see him looking like that instead of distant, for what it's worth.


(*)  Not his choice of name, but this isn't Cheliax and it's not his nature to force people to use names they don't like.

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Carissa is both looking forward to and dreading having their conversations about this again But This Time With Emotional Maturity. She's made as much progress on the newest headband as she reasonably can today - at some point you just start making stupid inattentive mistakes, and if you aren't being tortured by a devil it's not worth pushing through them - and is now seeing if she can permanency the spell Gust of Wind in a way that makes her fancy new Cloak of Resistance flutter cinematically behind her no matter what she's doing. The book says you need to be sixth circle but there's no way to tell how hard a requirement that is without trying. 

 

She glances up at Keltham and then looks back at her notes.

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"Interruptible else interruptibility ETA?" he says in Baseline.

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" - interruptible, yeah."

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"Wishes are very different cognitive enhancers from headbands and spells.  I'd expected any difference from their stacking separately, still surprised at how different they are."

"I think in retrospect that possibly dath ilani are built along slightly different lines and the headbands just don't work on us exactly the same way as Golarion natives.  Headband Splendour was not giving me much more persuasiveness, just stronger emotions, and I think the stronger emotions were coming in at a significant discount to what would happen with a Golarion native wearing the same headband.  But now I feel like I could see - maps of how this conversation could be more or less pleasant, persuasive, for you."

"I can also clearly see in retrospect that I should've gotten one attribute Wished up first, and then paused to analyze the effects.  But I'd have picked Wisdom as the first attribute to Wish up, because it's the cognitive self-analysis one, so I'm somewhat glad I didn't actually do that."

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After extensive complaining to Carmin about how it was deeply unreasonable to expect emotional sensitivity from Keltham but she could really use it, Carissa came up with a strategy. 

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"Translation: I was being a dick earlier, and while I'm not quite willing to apologize for it I'm planning to do better this time, I wasn't being rude because I wanted to see you suffer which is how it might have come across."

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"I'm - sorry that the modifications have been necessary, that you've been rushed into them. I know how much you are paying to - try to be able to think as clearly as possible, here. I also have some maps for how this conversation can be more pleasant and will do my best."

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"There's a cultural gap we never did cross, and not all of that was the Conspiracy making sure that I never understood Cheliax correctly.  A dath ilani woman would tell me not to use Splendour 25 to make a conversation nicer for her, and, depending on how cautious versus forgiving she was by her nature, might decide that she would not date a man who'd deployed Splendour 25 against a woman even if he'd done so literally to save that multiverse.  She just would not feel personally safe around him."

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"That's manipulating you and I don't want to do that, don't want to be the kind of person who does that, don't really believe it's ever okay to be the kind of person who does that even if you've already crossed other lines it's never okay to cross. I'm not reaching the condescending conclusion you don't really understand what manipulation is and are okay with it because you fundamentally are failing to model it, but I'm confused!"

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"Talking to someone who has a lot of Splendour on you is giving yourself into their hands at least a little bit. But - well, two things.

One is that many of the other decisions I've made in the last two days are also giving myself into your hands a lot more than that, and I don't see a difference between Splendour and putting on your earring and swearing not to work against your plans and giving you wishes - like, they all might be bad to the extent they let you achieve your goals at my expense, and good to the extent they make things better. I am guessing that to you, Splendour feels different because it's more like modifying your priorities than constraining you, but I think that to me, at least, maybe to most people who haven't had dath ilani training - both of those end up modifying you, everything modifies you, to be in someone's life is to change which parts of you grow and which get squished, and all you can do is choose people who bring out parts of you that you like.

I suspect now that I say that that there's a Keeper art of not being altered by having done something you were selected to do randomly, being the same person as the version of you who wasn't selected to do it but would have, but it's not one of those I think I should be trying to pick up right now. I don't have enough of a self to defend. And the one true real conviction that I do have - that people who want to live should not be annihilated - I genuinely don't think you could talk me out of that with 50 Splendour. 

 

Two is that just like you can trade with Asmodeus if you're Abadar, you can just price in that He'll be trading adversarially, and so you can talk to someone who has Splendour and just correct for the Splendour. I like Abrogail and that's probably mostly the Splendour and I can in fact set it aside and kill her if that's strategic. I like Dispater and that's definitely the Splendour and I can set that aside if we think of some other way to reach a confidentiality agreement with Erecura where the fact of talking to her won't itself be suspicious. I believe myself broadly competent to correct for liking you and for you trying to be persuasive to me, and where I'm not perfect, I'm also not perfect at - correcting for being mad at you or for hating you or for being scared of you, and hating you and being scared of you makes it harder to think and so is worse."

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He sits down and hugs his knees to himself.  Keeps his face where she can see it, though.  "Okay.  That at least doesn't sound like you're - doing the thing that everyone else in Golarion does - where you have your Golarion frame and you can't imagine anything outside the Golarion frame and everything I actually am is just an outrageous deliberate insult for being not what the Golarion frame calls for -"

"Dath ilani try so hard to reach across the gap that exists between mind and mind.  It's, not literally all of our fiction, our science fiction, but so much of it is that.  When two dath ilani with - let's say a longstanding friendship, old alliance, not romantic couple - when they have a serious disagreement worth putting effort into - they put the effort into reaching across to one another, that novels showed exemplary protagonists doing with literal aliens.  Because that's what it takes for people to actually communicate with each other and not, the thing that Cheliax had, where both sides just pretend.  Which, though the rest of Golarion doesn't know it, they have only very slightly less than Cheliax."

"I thought, afterwards, that the reason why I was able to relate to anybody in the Conspiracy, is that, in trying so hard not to clue me in on what the world was like, in having to keep me contained - you had to meet me halfway.  You had to actually stretch your hand back, across the huge effort I was making to reach out my own hand, which I did because I was dath ilani, and you did because you were making a desperate extraordinary effort to keep the alien contained and needed to understand the alien and meet it on its own terms in order to deceive it.  And which, nobody else in Golarion, has in fact made very much effort to do for me since.  To them, their frame is just, the way things are, should be, must be, and if I try to be halfway less insane that's not very much of an effort worth reciprocating because I should just not be insane at all, obviously."

"I'm glad that you are trying to do - any of that, now - even if it's to try to stop the multiverse from being annihilated, as your own utilityfunction considers to be a bad thing.  Accurately or not, before, you came across as - not doing that, anymore - and I thought - it was because there was no more Conspiracy, and you wouldn't try to meet the alien halfway it it was just under threat of the multiverse being destroyed, and not under threat of being tortured for failure."

"I mean, I get why, according to your held principles, according to your model of yourself, you care about the multiverse more, but I didn't - trust that the real you -"

"It doesn't matter.  Even if it's only under threat of the multiverse being destroyed, I'm glad to be with, the Carissa who also reaches back."

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Doesn't need translating.

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"I think - it wasn't just the Conspiracy - I think I got put in charge of the Conspiracy because I wanted to understand you so badly that I was better at it than anyone else."

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"Out of - a maybe stupid effort to understand a past that's already past - was anyone else - trying for your job, incentivized to try to beat you at it, was there anybody else trying to be an expert on Keltham - would that have gotten them tortured by you, if you'd noticed them threatening you - did you crush down any potential competitors -"

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" - it was Maillol's job at first. I - know you didn't really know him - but he was a decent man. He was good at his job at the Worldwound. I don't know if the official statistics are true but I think we had substantially lower losses than average. But Project Lawful was too weird, too confusing, and - required higher Intelligence, probably - the first night we slept together, when I told you I wanted to see a priest, I went to him with a question about whether -

- my recall may not be perfect but I think I was trying to ask whether, if I slept with you, as I wanted to, and then later you learned that you weren't unaware of subtle Chelish signals of people not wanting to sleep with you, you were just, the way things go in Golarion, not supposed to care, then you'd be furious with me for sleeping with you, even though I did want to - because we couldn't lie about the fundamental fact that most people in Golarion have sex they don't want sometimes, it was obviously entangled with too many other things, and if we weren't going to lie to you about that then it might be that we needed to tell you before anyone had sex with you -

- and he said to me that if I understood what I'd just asked I'd have to be the one to figure out an answer, because he did not understand what I'd just asked, and then after some further discussion had me ask Abarco and then told me I was in charge of trying to maximize the amount of time before you got fed up and left us. And that's how it ended up my job.

 

And then later, in Egorian, he got tortured very badly for a mistake that he made that I still don't completely understand and was - having a hard time exercising ambitious initiative about the project, visibly so, so I told him I wanted Project Lawful to not have torture beyond what was in Taldor, as an experiment to see if that let people think, and he didn't agree to do it but he told me I could ask the Most High to put me in charge. So I did. 

No one especially tried to undermine me about that. They'd have been enormously rewarded if they could legitimately do better, of course, but it was obviously a very hard job, and it's not like the rewards weren't also very high for being my second-in-command. I wouldn't've crushed someone who looked like they could grow up to be genuinely better than me, that could've made us lose. I really didn't want us to lose, and I also don't like - people who are under my command - being weaker than they could be - that was why the low-punishments rule, I thought maybe they'd grow like we needed them to...

In hindsight the rumor mill was probably doing a lot for me, and additionally I think it was visible that Abrogail Thrune had taken lots of personal interest in the Project and no sane person wants to come to her attention in the context of a Project they might fuck up, not if they can avoid it.

When I was being punished for your departure there was a lot of angling to take over the project but it was mostly Abarco and Avaricia gambling I wouldn't come back .... I did torture them. Not so much for trying to compete with me as for driving Asmodia to suicide. And I - hurt Maillol very badly, about that - it was horrible and stupid of me, he was always decent to me and I don't actually know if the damage I did can be undone. But not - not during the Project, not while you were there."

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"I am probably imagining this as being much much worse for you than it actually was, but I have no idea how I could ask about that, what would be the interpersonal comparison metric of worseness."

"It makes you look better than what Ione Sala knew of the background story, before she left Cheliax, which was all she was allowed to tell me about.  You doing those things, for those reasons."

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"It's possible I am wrong about my reasons. People get muddled enough to backfill their own history wrong, it's kind of terrifying. But I'm sure about the question I brought to Maillol that got me put in charge of the Project, and about what I got promoted past him over. I don't - think it was very awful for me. Almost everything I hate, looking back, is what I did, not what happened to me. With a couple exceptions but they're the kind of thing that would've happened more if I hadn't been in charge of the Project if anything."

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"I have enough additional questions that I need to start writing them down to make sure I can believe they will not just eventually get lost.  I am going to ask things that I would not have previously asked, and hope that my mind does not require a lot of emotion-severance about knowing the answers as soon as I turn off Splendour 25."

He takes a diary-like notebook from a Bag of Holding, and a fancy magical quill which is still not as good as a ballpoint pen, and writes:

- What drove Asmodia to suicide?
- Are the others okay who haven't been mentioned, like Gregoria or Shilira or Korva?
- What did Abarco and Avaricia and Maillol do to get tortured?
- How was Abarco able to force you into sex if you were his boss?  (Ione didn't know this but said there were many possibilities, dominant one Abrogail punishing you for fucking up.)

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"When I left the project I didn't do a good enough job giving it continuity of orders, and also everyone was very uncertain how things were going to shake out without me, and Avaricia decided to make a play for being in charge if I didn't get back, or second-in-command if I did, and started needling Asmodia.

They'd pulled practically all the high-quality Security we'd enjoyed when we had you and sent them to Nidal and replaced them mostly with people who they were maximally confident wouldn't defect on exposure to ilanism, which mostly meant people who just enjoyed being awful people. And who started going after Asmodia and the other girls thought of as loyal to me, in variously plausibly-deniable or not-even-very-plausibly-deniable ways. And Asmodia was - a heretic, and naive - she thought that they'd do what was in Cheliax's interests if she just kept pointing out how stupid it was for them not to - she tried to get Abarco and Maillol to make them stop - and then when it didn't work she killed herself. 

No one thought she'd do that because Hell is worse. But she'd died and gone to Hell already, right, back when Nidal attacked us, and - she came back happier and healthier - she must've gone to the gardens, because Erecura foresaw that I'd bargain for that - so she didn't have anything to fear. So she killed herself. 

At which point Abrogail pulled me out of my punishment for failing with you and I went back and I - knew that Maillol and Subirachs had allowed this deliberately because they thought it'd be good for me to terrorize some people into submission for once - 

 

- the other students are all okay, I think. Pilar eventually stepped in and started protecting them with her Cayden powers. Meritxell's helping her with training the new candidate-ilani. I own all their souls and they'll get statued if they die.

 

Iiiii notice myself being nervous about discussing Abarco because many possible ways that conversation could go will make me annoyed at you for things that are completely not at all your fault and are entirely my own."

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"My current understanding is that you got forced into breaking that promise and did not - deliberately court being forced to break it.  If that understanding is unambiguously correct, we can pass on."

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"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I'm trying to give you the-thing-most-important-to-me-to-know at a higher level of abstraction to make it easier for you to not talk about it, I cannot actually do more than that to protect you while you haven't told me anything at all."

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"That's correct, yeah.

 

 

- we were running a test of whether it was possible to escape from the facilities and evade Security. Because we wanted escaping-with-Keltham to be a possibility and weren't sure what it'd take for an escape to be credible. The seed of the plan that became 'Nefreti' rescuing you. Security had orders to answer to Subirachs for the day. It didn't even - occur to me as a possible failure mode."

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"Accepted.  I model you as explicitly not wanting to hear reassuring things I could say about dath ilani attitudes versus Golarion attitudes, you can pokeback if that model is mistaken.  I pause briefly so you can potentially pokeback."

(Pause.)

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"Since you predicted you'll get annoyed if I say anything, I'm guessing all the things I have to say won't actually help. That being the obvious inference from what you said. But I'm checking because I want to say things, if they might help to hear."

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"...maybe you could say them but just say them about Keltham attitudes instead of about dath ilan attitudes because I kind of have a grudge against your home planet's way of doing ethics right this minute but I do care what you think."

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"No.  I realize I was the one who had responsibility for being able to say what dath ilan was about, but I am sad and bitter about what - people here must think of dath ilan, now, and a whole bright world they never saw, and imagine horrible things about because they've been tortured by Golarion to the point where they cannot imagine an alternative to it -"

"It will not be good for me to accept that instruction."

"Are we still on crying-in-each-other's presence terms?  I'm keeping tears out of my eyes right now."

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"I'm mad at Elias Abarco and I wish it hadn't happened to you and I hope you're okay and I'm not mad at you about that and the stuff Carmin said was right."

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- okay I think at some point I'm abusing the imaginary Keltham thing. 

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"I don't mind if you cry in front of me."

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"Okay.  I'm not holding against you - you being forced into that particular thing - though it's part of a much huger pattern of things you got forced into that I can't split off from you because then there's nothing left.  But that particular promise-breaking, I'm not holding against you.  If someday you want to know in more detail why, and what a beautiful sunlit world looks like and thinks like about issues like that, you can ask.  Someday."

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I don't want bad things to happen to you. I wish I could have protected you. Elias Abarco sucks.

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You could have brought anything out of dath ilan you wanted, to Golarion. You could have ended slavery, if that was what dath ilan's ethics said to do, or made everyone rich, or ended all plagues and famines and wars, you could have made resurrection so cheap that every family could afford it for every child, you could have built whatever bright sunlit world you wanted. 

 

The thing you decided to bring out of dath ilan to my world is death for everyone. It doesn't matter what else dath ilan has; that is what you chose to give us. 

 

 

She doesn't say it. It's not true or fair; it just feels true, and Keltham's - right, about how hard it is to stretch across the gulf, how much trying it takes, and she believes him, that he's trying too -

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She nods.

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"I would not - actually be okay - with resurrecting Elias Abarco for, reasons directed at inflicting suffering on him, but if that's something you'd otherwise do, if not for me, I can try to pay you to make up the difference."

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 " - huh? No, I've tried not to be - personally vindictive about it, what would that help - I own an option on his soul too, and I was planning to make him into the best devil I could, it wouldn't be fair to do anything less -"

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I think he might've been trying to say that that'd be an understandable way to feel, thing to want, that if you do want that he wants you to at least have something equivalent in value, so that while he can't give you that he can give you something you wanted as much as that -

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" - I appreciate the offer, though."

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"Okay.  I keep thinking - that I don't know what kind of person you actually are, when half of you isn't being pointwise shaped by the threat of immediate torture, and half of you isn't an elaborate lie.  And I keep thinking that, it's not like I could actually ask, or you could tell me, because even fully half a day being out from under all of that is not enough time that you could reasonably figure out who you are."

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"There are bits I've figured out. Not - the whole thing, definitely. I think - there are instincts I had all along, and was ignoring, but they didn't go away, and I can just stop ignoring them. And there's - it's not like how I got here isn't part of the answer to who I am. 

I figured out I needed to overthrow Asmodeus if I wanted to fix Hell, so I wrote a letter convincing Aspexia Rugatonn to let me sell my soul, rescue all the Project girls, and make things okay enough I could work with you to build Civilization, because I was pessimistic about doing it without you and I, uh, thought we probably couldn't work together if Asmodia and Peranza were being eternally tortured and it was my fault.

I think that's - a decent starting description of who I am."

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"I was - pretty explicitly not trying to be anyone, after I got out of Cheliax.  I'd lost all my girlfriends except Ione who would have been third on my list for emotional support and not on my list for physical intimacy, found out that all my hard work up until that point had made Golarion worse, figured out that Cheliax was holding my prospective child or children hostage, found out about the Boneyard, found out about Hell, didn't decide immediately to destroy Pharasma's Creation but I knew that if I couldn't think of a solution I would have to do that, didn't want -"

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"- didn't want, didn't want, never wanted, to hurt anyone -"

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"And at Splendour 25 I can, apparently, just bull-rush through letting myself feel some of that, if not all of it, so I have spent a few hours curled up sort of blacking out and not doing anything, and then another few hours letting myself starting to feel some of the more bearable things.  But it is still not clear to me yet that - I want to be a person, here, or would benefit from being one, while I have to do the things I have to do."

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"I think I'm made pretty differently from you, but, uh, trying not to feel things and just to do what I'd calculated was correct without letting myself catch up emotionally and while scared to even think....worked really badly, in my case. It'd be a very unusual mind that worked better when half of it was out of commission."

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"I am not scared to think.  I at no point during any of this decided to model the world incorrectly.  It's what's wise to let myself feel that's the question."

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'scared to think' is about the Cayden Cailean stuff but his reason for being scared to think about it makes perfect sense and aren't emotional in nature and probably it'd be unhelpful to push further on it. "Sorry. 

 

 

I really want you to recover yourself and feel things but I think I am motivated in part by hoping if you do that then you won't destroy the universe.... I would still want it if it were magically stipulated not to affect the odds of destroying the universe, though."

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"When were you trying not to feel things and calculate and that worked out poorly?  Like... all of your life in Cheliax, or...?"

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" - mostly no, actually? Mostly just when you left and we were trying to figure out Project direction and, uh, Aspexia Rugatonn said if it took me killing twenty thousand people to figure out how to make ilani that'd be worth it, and I felt - uh, probably what I felt was basically some part of me noticing that Asmodeanism is incompatible with even a tiny shard of human values - but I ignored it, obviously, and when I was hurting Maillol I didn't want to but I had all these good arguments for why I should, and actually even by my priorities at the time I shouldn't have -

- it's not that my feelings are a perfect guide, I also tortured some people and didn't feel bad about it, but - the feelings were information about my values and ...your values are a dangerous thing to be wrong about while you're trying to do something big and important."

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"I suppose.  My values seem not ambiguous or complicated, here, and my assessments didn't shift between before and after I augmented my intelligence."

"As I noticed after I asked the question, I asked it in part to deflect from - you saying you wanted me to recover myself."

"I do not, actually, even now, feel that there is very much point to that.  It became - clear, after I left Cheliax - that the sum of my issues would not let me be happy unless I walked away from all of them and probably resorted to magical mind control to make myself not think about them.  There comes a point beyond which you can't be happy and there's no point in trying.  So I took my augmented intelligence and started trying to roll my own pseudo-Keeper skills, which, obviously, I am not getting right.  Also I suspect that headband Wisdom is another thing that interfaces poorly with dath ilani, or at least, the people here did not seem to know what I was talking about when I asked them if there were methods for handling the thing where staring at your own emotions with +6 Wisdom makes the emotions go away."

"I would have put more relative effort into solving that sort of issue if I had not been trying to - just speed ahead to where this is all over, and hope that, somehow, I'd be able to get back together with Carissa at the end of it."

"Which wish, it seems, will also not be granted."

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"....I notice the impulse to say that if you don't destroy the world I will absolutely and happily be yours forever. That sounds like the most doomed romantic relationship conceivable on every level but it is not in fact false."

 

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"I assume you meant to say that about if I don't try to destroy the world, at all, prohibiting also my trying to the point of Cayden showing up and presenting an alternative to destroying the world."

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"I'm not sure? One basically reasonable thing a person could say is 'I really like you but I can't get over you trying to kill everyone; we can only be together if you don't try to kill everyone'. But ....I think the thing I'm feeling is more - I want something Keltham really wants to live in the world where he doesn't kill everyone, regardless of how we ended up there. Which is plausibly even more doomed! But it's closer to how I actually feel."

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"I didn't understand 'want something Keltham really wants'?"

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"Right now, it seems like you are very miserable, and even if the world doesn't end, there isn't anything that you care deeply about that you expect to get to enjoy, in the world that continues existing and doesn't subject you to any personality death.

And - while I suppose this is a rude sort of assumption to make about someone - it feels possible that you wouldn't want to end the world, if you expected to be really and deeply happy if the world kept on existing. Or that you'd have a little more motivation somewhere deep inside you to come up with an alternative, or that you'd be a little more willing to compromise if you were getting most of what you wanted but not all of it. 

That possibility makes me want to offer you anything I possibly can, if the world survives. Not conditional on you not trying to end it - just to say to you, if the world exists, we'll live in Civilization and be happy and I'll be yours forever, there's something worth living for here.


I can imagine Carmin making such a face about this but that's where I'm at."

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"Needs to involve people not being in Hell as that basically exists now, better childcare in the Boneyard, some protected landing areas in the Abyss and Maelstrom, and neither of us needing to be a god..."

"Ironically enough, if we get an ending like that, it will imply further things about - what happens to people like me, after we die in plane crashes - such that, in fact, destroying everybody in the multiverse would have probably sent them to pretty safe destinations on average."

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"Two of the items to argue on my items to argue list are 'will technological development fix the Boneyard situation anyway inside a century' and 'are the Abyss and Maelstrom actually bad enough to defensibly risk the multiverse over if Hell is fixed.' But I don't know if we're moving on to that conversation yet, or if there's - more personal stuff to argue first -"

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"I'm finding myself wanting to back up from - what potentially sounds like a promise, or an offer, that we could be happy together under sufficiently optimistic circumstances - because I don't know whether you think you'd just, actually be happy, or if you're offering to sign yourself back over to me and let me use mind-control on you if I want you to be happy, or if it's the second thing but actually that's just how your sexuality rolls... how much of that was reality?"

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"I'd be really surprised if mind control was needed but am not intending to say 'by any means short of mind control' or something, if we have to use mind control to make it work we can do that." She can see Carmin's face in front of her going "wow! no! let's back up!" but she's not in fact going to retract that, not at all, not if this in fact helps Keltham think about the world as something he might want to live in. 

"I - told you the truth about how my sexuality works, except I think actually there's something about what you were doing which a Chelish person in your place would not have been doing which was in fact an important ingredient of it being good for me rather than just not hard for me to endure. And I do think that probably my not really having a sense of who I am as a person would play badly with belonging to someone else but that solves itself inside a year, I'm not expecting to need that long to figure out who I am as a person. - I want to travel the world. Read the histories in lots of different countries. Talk to people. Visit the Outer Planes too, talk to people there. Figure out which of them are - ways a Carissa might turn out - and what I want to do about that."

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"Sounds nice.  I ended up in an entirely different universe and never got to explore very much of it at all.  Not a lot of different scenery programmed in the game, apparently."

"There's an angry thing I need to get out of the way - not about exploring, about the whole, destroying the multiverse thing.  Even if it's unwise, I think I should say it before we talk multiversal destruction, so it's not just running through my brain over and over."

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- nod.

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"You were emotionally loud at me about how much you think it's not okay to destroy the multiverse.  As I understand Golarion rules for political debate, I'm supposed to be loud back at you about people in Hell who are too broken now, in too much pain, for them to pray to me, or anyone, for rescue.  About infants who wake up in the Boneyard and cry for their parents and nobody comes for them until some feral older toddler bites off their hand and then they heal because that's how the Boneyard works, and they grow up like that too and go to the Abyss and then cease to exist locally and, I hope, end up somewhere with good psychiatric rehabilitation."

"If I don't come with a good, persuasive, loud emotional response like that, then, as I understand the rules for Golarion discourse, I've lost the argument.  Possibly the person who made an angry argument and didn't get an angry counterargument feels that they've definitely won the debate, there, even if the other person is unreasonably not changing course despite having lost so badly."

"I want you to imagine that you are the villain in control of everything, and that I am the protagonist who has to steer reality only by persuading you.  Imagine that I, the protagonist, come in here being very emotionally loud at you about how dare you not destroy the multiverse when there's somebody on fire in Avernus right now and it's maybe not too late to send them on to their next reality while there's still something left, if we work fast enough."

"Imagine that you don't say back anything at high voice volume and emotionally loud, about the importance of people getting to live, back at me.  You just state that the importance of people getting to continue existing is the deciding factor according to your own utilityfunction."

"What are you feeling when you decline to respond to my emotional loudness with more emotional loudness of your own?"

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"If I imagine that person, I mostly feel...sorry for them that they're missing so much, that there's so much human value it seems like they can't understand? But presumably I'd have a script for responding to this, if it comes up regularly, and that'd - shape my feelings about it - like, I'd know what response actually helped get through to people like that, or at least have - guesses I was curious about? I guess I might be annoyed, if they'd interrupted something important?"

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"Right, well, what I feel is something like, I am having to be the adult here, I am doing the emotional work here.  While it might under other circumstances be searingly annoying that the other person might think they'd won the argument, having the deciding power would make up for that, so what I would actually be wondering about was why they were trying something so ineffective as being indignant at me, when I could not plausibly be persuaded by that, about this issue they seemed to feel was important.  I would think they were probably just, acting out their own emotions, by reflex.  Saying that I would feel dismissive about it, would not be wrong."

"I am not saying that you cannot have and express feelings about how much you don't want the multiverse destroyed.  Expressing them indignantly, at me, as if I shared your background assumptions and just needed to be shown the self-evident truth, acting out those emotions at me -"

"It's not particularly likely to work on me.  I make only that argument and no others, because I think it is the part that you, by your own principles, ought to care about.  It won't work.  It will hinder you in what you say is your purpose."

"The part I feel 'shouldness' about, I suppose, is that two dath ilani, no matter how extreme the situation they were in, would never do that to each other.  That's why they'd be able to continue, trading, working together, maybe even not hating each other, even if they had an unresolvable difference of utility.  Clearly everybody in this planet ought to behave that way, the way I think they should behave.  When the universe doesn't behave like that, it's doing so to personally hurt me and I should yell at it, and you, in this case, are being the universe, so I am yelling."

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"- I think I wouldn't find an argument at all less persuasive because it was emotional? Like, it it were an argument we should destroy the world it still wouldn't move me because that is really really overdetermined as a horrible idea, but I wouldn't feel any differently about the person who came in to yell about it and the person who came in to calmly ask about it, and therefore wouldn't really be more confused about the emotional person than the calm one, except insofar as in Chelish terms being unable to conceal your emotions means you're weak and contemptible."

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"I have to say that if this was otherwise a nice planet that should absolutely not be destroyed, and some ill-advised people were doobling along doing something that would destroy it, like an ill-advised Wish spell; and this wasn't even a values difference, such that they did share all my emotions and could theoretically be persuaded by those; I would still not just start screaming at them, about all the people explicitly asking not to be killed, and all the children who didn't want to be killed, and all the waiting souls in cryonic suspension who'd trusted themselves to the Future, and how so many people had happy lives that ought not be destroyed and the Future would be even more full of happy lives that shouldn't be destroyed.  I would still, even in that case, expect that getting emotional at them would not actually work."

"...maybe this isn't the important thing and we should move on.  I got to say the angry thing, you heard it, and if that's not enough then too bad for me."

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" - perhaps that's a good idea but I feel like some confusion remains, and I wish I understood it. If the person came in to yell angrily at me about the people in Avernus, and I thought they were a kind of strategic person in general, I'd assume they thought I was...missing some deeply felt sense of what it was like to truly and acutely appreciate the harm of Avernus, and trying to convey it to me, in case I actually hadn't encountered anything that'd given me a deeply felt sense of that. Or trying to help me notice that some intuition of mine applied to the situation which I hadn't been applying. 

This isn't what I was doing when I asked if you denominated internal spending in billions of murders enabled, that was just me hating you and wanting you to know it because I was scared and miserable and would've been delighted if you'd lit me on fire for it, but it's what I'd expect the person was doing, and it'd...sometimes work if they were right, and not otherwise, just like other ways of trying to communicate?"

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"So as much as you may not like to hear about it, I come from another planet which has a thousand tons of extremely advanced cognitive technology for causing people with outlook differences to be able to work productively in the presence of those differences.  This includes people with values differences, negotiating; and people with epistemic differences, making bets or figuring out experiments; and people in multiagent-cooperation-defection-dilemmas, knowing the conditions for mutual cooperation; and dividing the gains, when two parties have to work together.  It's all this technology that is designed incredibly carefully to work great when both people use it."

"Golarion doesn't, in fact, have its own, different, version of this technology, that works great so long as both people come from Golarion.  It has people acting out their feelings at each other and yelling and this does not, in fact, work.  Hence Golarion."

"The reason why I don't yell angrily at the hypothetical people with a poorly phrased Wish about to destroy dath ilan, is that I don't think the locus of my disagreement with them lies within their failure to activate a latent emotion which I can activate by yelling my emotions at them.  I think, in this hypothetical example, that they don't think their Wish will destroy dath ilan, so yelling my emotions at them wouldn't help even if yelling my emotions at them caused them to activate the corresponding emotions.  That's more like - you think you're trying to persuade an audience - but then, first of all, the hypothetical audience, if this is dath ilan, also knows the key issue is just whether their Wish destroys dath ilan or not.  Second of all, in our case, there is no audience, or at least, none that has power over our world so far as we know and is persuadable by arguments we understand."

"I have all these rules inside my head for what you are supposed to, to do about cases like this.  And the thing is, in fact, my rules would work great if there were a world-destroying dath ilani and a world-preserving dath ilani who needed to negotiate about that and navigate related factual disagreements.  Your rules, I am betting, would not work great between a world-destroying Carissa and a world-preserving Carissa.  And while this doesn't make me right, because I don't have rules that work for myself plus a Carissa and that's the rules I would need, it does make me frustrated."

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"...do dath ilani not think that yelling emotions ever activates latent emotions, or just think that no one ever makes mistakes that can be fixed by causing emotional realizations, or - I'm not sure this matters. I had, actually, noticed that it was not achieving my goals to express any of how I feel about your plan, and talked with Carmin about how to not do it, and I think I can have this conversation by dath ilan rules. And in fact, the Chelish way of doing this is for everyone to conceal all their feelings at all times, so it's entirely possible I'm too optimistic about approaches that don't require that and they really don't actually work."

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"Dath ilan doesn't require everyone to conceal their feelings at all times.  It has ways of quoting feelings to make them information, instead of being emotional at people like, like it's a threat, or a demand.  You could say, 'I think the locus of our disagreement is that you're not feeling the right emotions about the people in Axis who'd end up isekaied to a hundred different places with who-knows-what average properties and I want to talk about how terrified I am when I imagine them dying and being separated from each other and maybe ending up in alternate universes run by Powers worse than Pharasma who like them even less' and I could say 'I think we disagree about what the distribution of metaversal Powers would probably end up looking like, but this uses a bunch of knowledge you don't have and can learn much faster and debate more productively at INT 29'.  You could say 'I think the locus of our disagreement is that you're just not visualizing the sheer blank horror of somebody suddenly existing less, even if that feels to them internally like they just pop into existence at the Worldwound, and I want to prompt you with some visualization exercises for activating that emotion' and I could reply 'Actually I don't think I have that emotion, I'm sort of skeptical most Golarion natives have that emotion, so prompting me with visualization exercises may not help but you are welcome to try'."

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"I will try to say things those ways when it seems to me that that's the reason for distance between us."

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"I have, obviously, a model of our disagreement.  Among the protocols we could be ad-libbing for this whole thing, if we wanted to try running it through relatively more informally before going full Very Serious People at each other, is that I try to write down your argument the way you'd put it, and write down where I think I disagree with it, and you write down my argument the way you think I'd put it, and write down where you think your loci of disagreement are, and then we compare notes."

"Then we fairly judge, because we are ilani who can judge things fairly, how well the other person's argument sounded like what we'd say; and if one of us did much better, beyond the variance of noise, in predicting and imitating the other, they win argument-prestige that they can cash in for things like 'Well then my theory of our disagreement is also more likely to be correct and I'd like you to pause and listen carefully to it.'"

"We could also just quickly talk it out in case we already know where we disagree, or can easily determine that by talking, and don't want to bother wagering and winning argument-prestige."

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"Trying to describe the other person's position sounds sensible to me."

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"And then describe what we think our own disagreements with that are."

"All right, let's do this thing.  Uh, I am going to use some primitive but surprisingly helpful magitech to do mine, a Fake 'Computer' that basically just pipes a 'keyboard' to a 'printer', so my version is probably going to be longer and more detailed given equivalent time.  You want longer to work to make up for that, or we just notice that'll be different and consciously compensate for the unfair advantage it induces?"

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"I guess I'll take a bit longer, if that works for you."

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He'll go to his bedroll to grab his keyboard-printer Fake Computer.  It looks like a dath ilani chording keyboard, connected by silver wire to a number of animated printing-press types that dart out and impress themselves on the paper as he chords.

He types up a draft, slowly.

 

And then at the end, reads and retypes it, much faster:

Why I think Keltham should not destroy Pharasma's Creation, by 'Carissa Sevar':

People live here.

This argument is uncomplicated and correct and should be decisive if understood, but I will continue writing anyways.

If there's a trillion identical copies of you, and 999,999,999,999 die and 1 survive, that's not like all of you ending up as the 1 surviving version.  It's like 999,999,999,999 people dying and is exactly 99.9999999999% as bad as 1,000,000,000,000 people dying.  This Keltham may have been that one lucky survivor, when he died inside the 0.0000000001% of dath ilans that were visible to or connected to a place like Pharasma's Creation and where somebody bothered to copy that Keltham into the Worldwound, and to him it feels like nothing happened, but that's not what happens every time to everyone.  99.9999999999% of the Kelthams died and didn't think any more thoughts and didn't exist at all.

And that's horrifying.  Existing is the greatest gift we have.  It's the premise of all other gifts, obviously, but that's not what makes it great.  Though I respect that a tortured soul in Hell may want to stop existing, I think they're making a mistake, maybe the hugest mistake there is, if that actually got them destroyed.  So long as they're alive at all, and thinking, and feeling even if what they feel is pain, they have something that's better than the absence of all that.

Happiness is better than suffering, but not to the same degree that both are better than null, nothingness, nonexistence.  People can say words like that but not really feel what it would mean, because how can you imagine that?  Anything you imagine it feeling like, is not what it is, which is nothing.  Trying to feel that head-on is like trying to look into the sun, a horror blinding enough that your mind wrenches away without actually thinking about it.  The fact that nobody ever thinks about this, or can ever think about it, causes everybody to systematically underestimate how bad it actually is, and not be able to correctly estimate that being a paving stone is Hell is still better than that.

Pain is something you can accept, suffering is something you can accept, so long as there's still an awareness there to accept it; nonexistence can't be accepted because there's nobody there to come to terms with how awful it is.

Pharasma gave that gift to everyone in this world, and even the people in Hell were not wronged by it.

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The people in this world do not want to be destroyed.  While some people got worse deals at birth, like those in Cheliax who mostly went to Hell, a lot of people got prospective local chances at afterlives that look a lot like the overall statistics for Golarion.  Those people overwhelmingly did not, and do not, express horror and regret at having been born into a place like Golarion where that was their lot, they don't try to save up for a Malediction to Abaddon, or even, really, complain all that much.

It would be a straw version of my argument to say that this shows, directly, that Pharasma's Creation is a good deal for the people born into it on average, or that you shouldn't destroy the entire thing.  People could, for example, be mistaken about their personal probability of going to Hell, or be mistaken about how bad Hell was if they went there (as I do admit I was now mistaken to some degree).  But the fact that people don't seem to think it's a near thing or that you should seriously debate in depth whether to destroy Pharasma's Creation, that Rovagug cultists are universally and unhesitatingly regarded as the villains by everybody who isn't one of the tiny fraction of Rovagug cultists, illustrates that this is not the sort of near thing where people being off by a factor of three about their personal probability of going to Hell is going to change that.

Yes, some people here got the shitty end of the deal and now said, in your Vision of Hell, 'please kill me', as probably did mean, in context, that they wanted to stop existing.  Even those people didn't ask you to destroy Axis too, or scream that you ought to destroy Axis as the price of destroying Hell.  They were distracted and probably didn't know you were listening, but they did not, in fact, scream that.  They didn't scream 'Please destroy everything.'  Maybe they would have, if you'd asked.  Realistically they wouldn't have been screaming anything that complicated, with nobody apparently listening at all.  But you can't, actually, say that even the people in Hell asked you to do this.

Maybe the people in Hell would tell you to destroy everything.  But the people not in Hell would not tell you that.  The people alive in this world right now, who might go to Hell with around the same probability as anybody from Golarion ends up in Hell, would overwhelmingly tell you not to annihilate their existences on the spot lest they wind up in Hell later.  The people like that who do go to Hell, might end up being tortured into changing their minds about that, because pain can have the power to change people's minds by force, or just because, they're the ones who got unlucky.  That doesn't mean their original self, who accepted that probability in exchange for their chance of ending up happy ever after in Axis or Elysium, was making the wrong decision, based on a bad model of Hell, and learned something in Hell that changed their mind.  It's just like somebody who took a great gamble with a high expected value, happened to lose that gamble, and is now unhappy.

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You are wrong, Keltham, to think that most of the people in Hell made no choices worth mentioning, in going there, that change how much it matters that they're in pain.  You think that because you believe deep in your heart that everybody in Golarion is a child who can't make meaningful choices.  In this you are wrong.  They're just a different kind of adult who is not shaped the peculiar way that dath ilani are trained to recognize as adults, which is only one particular kind of adulthood that obtains in dath ilan.

If you'd been allowed to leave, or been safe to leave, your tiny enclosures in Cheliax, in Osirion, in this new lair, and take in the wide range of cultures across Golarion that has so much more variation than dath ilan, you might realize: you are surrounded by a hundred different kinds of adults, not a world full of nothing but children.  A great many of them have handled more adversity and more serious situations in their lives than dath ilani 'adults' ever do.

This also affects how much you should listen to them, when they ask you to please not kill them, their families and ancestors in their afterlives, and destroy all of their children and all of the children they'll ever have. 


Even if you're right about people just ending up somewhere else, they will end up someplace worse than Golarion, if they're scattered into a wider multiverse.  It's known, about Pharasma's Creation, that the things outside of it are no friends to anything inside, and that's just about all we know about them.  Pharasma did everybody here a service in creating them someplace as friendly as this place is.  Scattering them outside of it is, maybe, a worse disservice to children than Maledicting them to Hell.

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You don't know what lies beyond Golarion.  Maybe it's better.


You don't know what lies in this universe's Future.  Maybe it's better.  You'd be destroying that too.


Any time you make up a plan which has a step that includes 'release Rovagug', anybody native to Golarion would immediately and correctly recognize that you have made a reasoning error somewhere along the way, just like everybody else who concludes that.  It is a heuristic that is simple, valid, and correct about your particular case.


There has to be a better way.  Iomedae hasn't given up on this universe.  Why should you?  Iomedae lives here and knows the place better and has worked on it for longer and is much, much smarter and better-informed than you are.  She doesn't seem to think it's hopeless.


You're not going to beat Pharasma.  She's larger than you are.  Even Iomedae isn't trying that.

 

You haven't looked for a better way, or have not looked nearly hard enough, because this world hurt you a lot, and you want it gone, or maybe you just find it painful to look at it in enough detail to decide whether or not it should be gone.

Somebody in as much pain as you, as broken as you, is the wrong person to say, "I know better than everybody here asking me not to do this; this world should end."

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And then types and retypes, more briefly, because wow is this taking some time:

 

My beliefs about the probable loci of my disagreements with Carissa Sevar, more located and pointed at than argued:

- A possibly theoretically unresolvable epistemic disagreement (though we'll know better at INT 29) where I've updated off my isekai experience about what 'typically happens', and ended up in a world full of people to whom this observation is theoretically inaccessible.

- Very different model of the theoretical origins and hence likely psychology of beings and Powers who could devise continuation causal-weaves for otherwise halted entities; in particular, greater expectation of coordination among them, and expecting most utility functions of non-mortal-caring such entities to settle on maxima which don't have mortals inside them at all.

- Unresolvable values difference about disutility of nonexistence:  eternal suffering << null < eternal happiness.  Would consider Hell at least 100 times as bad as Axis is good.

- Do not in fact respect reasoning of local mortals about their afterlife prospects, suspect they're mostly not thinking about it, nonexistence isn't exactly an easy option for them anyways, don't think their expressed opinions are really bound to the relative weight of an eternity in Axis or Hell.  No people who can remember millennia of existence as paving stone / lemure and also millennia in Axis, and do an interpersonal comparison there - if even that would be meaningful and not just default to whichever came last.  Given all that, situation with 9x Axis inhabitants saying 'this life was a good deal' and 1x Hell inhabitants saying 'bad deal' doesn't seem so much like a 90% majority vote, as people dividing a cake where 9 get nice deals and 1 gets crumbs; the person who got the crumbs has a kind of priority in saying whether the overall deal was fair or not.

- Pharasma thought the things She trapped in Her creation couldn't endanger Her and so She did not need to treat with them as agents and divide gains fairly with them, or even ask what they wanted.  I see myself as agent, this world as a deal, and reject the deal.

- Expect Golarion typical, Pharasma roughly balanced entire multiverse to sort around 1/3 of petitioners to each category on each axis.  No obvious reason why Pharasma would have built a setup where later on almost nobody got sorted to Hell in Her own expectation.

- Suspect Iomedae's "goddess of victory over Evil" deal, maybe not so much distorts Her probabilities, as constrains the way She can behave about them.  Iomedae has notably not distributed a timetable with probabilities to Her followers.  Iomedae is opposed by gods much more powerful than Her and maybe smarter who do not want Her to win.  If everybody got hope by trying hard, every god would own that hope to the same degree, none more hopeful than the others.

- Have estimate of Pharasma's apparent power given observations about Her, does not seem to rule out rigging Her Creation to destruct.

- I'm sorta broken, yeah.  Everyone else in Golarion is completely bugshit wacko, though.

- Tropian probability distortions: clearly a thing, even allowing for some of our history to have been produced by divine interventions imitating tropes.  If we don't do this now, Pharasma's Creation might be waiting a long long time on the next story-empowered people who would have a probabilistically anomalous chance at fixing or even changing things.

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In Pharasma's Creation there are many people who don't want to exist and do not have a good way to achieve this. The overwhelming majority of those are in Hell, but probably there are also some in Abaddon and the Abyss and maybe the Maelstrom and the dungeons of various people on Golarion and planets like Golarion, plus some who are suffering and uncertain enough about their afterlife not to kill themselves despite having access to the option. They often suffer slowly in a way that changes who they are as people and means that even if at some point they stop being conscious, a version of them that landed on another planet at that point would not be very much like the person they were before they suffered so much.

This is bad under approximately every conceivable value system. Under the value system most common in dath ilan, where everyone has thought about ethics a lot more and some people are smarter, this is so bad that killing approximately 9 people whose lives are eternal and good in order to prevent one person from suffering in this way is clearly justified. Dath ilani would practically all agree on this. 

It is true that people in Golarion mostly don't see it that way when they are not in Hell, but they mostly try to avoid thinking about it, and might believe false things about it. Hell lies relentlessly about what sends you there and what it's like. People in Cheliax mostly fear Hell and try not to think about it; people in other places do move mountains to avoid it. Lots of Lawful Evil people, in private, will admit that they are scared. The fact they don't atone or don't try to be Chaotic is about their suppressing thoughts of how they'll go to Hell in abject terror, not about their actual preference. Even if someone prefers Hell to nonexistence, once they've been in Hell for a little while they'll almost definitely change their mind. Even if someone does things that condemn them to Hell for the sake of protecting their children, so that their children will get to eternity in Axis instead of being eaten in Abaddon, they'll regret that choice and wish they'd chosen differently approximately as soon as Hell actually starts on them. Even if they don't for a hundred years, they will in a thousand years; even if they don't for a thousand years, they will in a hundred thousand years. People on Golarion don't know how to think about those scales. Hell deliberately discourages thinking on those scales. And it's hard to understand how bad Hell is until you are actually being tortured there; it is not a fact you can know any other way. 

Any viable plan to fix Hell, where nearly all but not all of this suffering is located, probably incurs some risk of killing everyone in the multiverse. The plan that incurs the least risk of that is probably destroying Avernus so that further people cannot go to Hell, which would not necessarily be permanent. The plans that are most definitely permanent, like killing Asmodeus and taking His job or trying to force Pharasma to change the rules of Her Creation, incur a quite high risk of this. Plans to kill Asmodeus and take His job are probably more than 50% likely to result in His releasing Rovagug, which is probably at least 20% likely to destroy the universe and 80% likely to destroy Golarion, which may or may not be important for building Civilization within Pharasma's Creation.

Plans to force Pharasma to change the rules of Her Creation will, if they fail, fail either by Pharasma laughing at Keltham and crushing him in which case no improvements to the universe at all will be achieved, or in the entire universe being destroyed, possibly by Yog-Sothoth or something in an existentially horrifying Hell-like slow-personality-death way. Failure modes like that are very unlikely. If they succeed they might change not just Hell but also significant features of other planes that have a high rate of petitioners there being very unhappy or being eaten. 

Pharasma does not particularly share human values, and a universe run on rules set by Keltham would be much nicer for humans and similar kinds of mortals to live in, or not exist at all if making a universe that's substantially nicer to live in is not possible within these constraints. 

When Keltham experienced dying, he experienced showing up in Golarion. All people, when their soul is permanently deleted from existence, should anticipate having the experience of waking up somewhere else like he did. In the typical case this will not be worse than the lives that those people are currently living in Golarion. In particular the percentage of people who will turn out to have moment-of-death copies that are slaves who cannot suicide, or in Hell dimensions, or in incomprehensible conditions that alter their cognition as they kill them, is very low. The fact this is true means that being killed is much less bad than it would be if there were not copies of you in other places some of whom will remember the moment of your death. The fact this is true also means it is better to kill someone instantaneously than for them to die in a slow way that alters their personality and values, because if they die instantaneously then they'll experience continuity with a copy of them elsewhere which hasn't already changed in a way that changes their identity as a person. 

It is undesirable that people will never see their families again, be separated from their children and husbands and wives, lose everything they have and were working towards, etc., but the undesirability of this is much much much smaller than the undesirability of Hell. It is probably not the case that most people would readily risk Hell to be present for their childrens' infancy and childhood, and if they say they would it is probably because they are underestimating the badness of Hell. Also under the present system many people are separated from their loved ones permanently anyway, and an ideal fix to Pharasma's Creation would improve the world along this metric. 

It is not bad that people will exist about a billion times less, because it doesn't subjectively feel like anything to exist, and is not part of most human value systems in dath ilan. Those people who think it is part of their value systems would almost always reconsider if they could discuss the matter with a Keeper.

The gods as they are currently situated seem likely to stop any planet in Pharasma's Creation from building Civilization, or at least likely to stop it from spreading its discoveries to the rest of Pharasma's Creation. It seems reasonably likely that they're only presently allowing the scientific revolution because they don't see where it's headed. In the absence of intervention to change the rules and ensure Civilization is allowed to come about, it seems possible the inhabited planets within Creation will either persist for a very long time not being much better as a place to live, or else get destroyed the first time they get far enough out of equilibrium some gods want them gone, or else get destroyed by dath ilan or some force like it that is trying to maximize average happiness of instantiated minds across the multiverse. If that is a common value, which it probably is because everyone in dath ilan is very smart and it was approximately universal there, and if Pharasma's Creation is as vulnerable to destruction as it looks, then Pharasma's Creation is going to get destroyed sooner or later unless someone brings average quality of life there above a reasonable estimate of how bad the greater multiverse is.

Pharasma is fundamentally the kind of entity who has no business running a multiverse, and so it is good, other things equal, to make her stop that, and it is worth at least some small probability of the multiverse being destroyed to wrest control of it from an alien entity that does not share human values unless Greater Reality is even worse. 

If the policy 'destroy bits of Greater Reality that you are not glad you landed in' is followed by all people waking up in unfamiliar universes, then maybe in the long run everyone who wakes up in an unfamiliar universe will wake up in a pretty good one, so the repeat application of this process makes it more and more of a good idea over time. The fact dath ilani were taught to think about the world this way, including game theory about cleaning up bits of Greater Reality you find yourself in where Zon-Kuthon asks for 10gp, suggests that dath ilan may already have calculated this is a good idea. 

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Guesses about where Keltham and I most disagree: 

I expect that it's easier to destroy yourself in Pharasma's Creation than in most places. Everyone has a physical body and if you destroy it you go somewhere else! If you destroy it as an outsider that's it! Most possible ways to have a mind exist don't involve that mind having fairly-straightforward things it can do to cease its function and ensure its function doesn't have to start again. It is widely known even among peasants in random places that if you're Neutral Evil you go to Abaddon and get eaten, and most people actively avoid this, but if a person had an unusually strong nonexistence preference they can not-exist. I don't believe this is true of most possible souls/minds.

I think that it is possible for good lives to be as good as bad lives in Hell are bad even for normal people who don't care about existing as much as me. I don't know exactly what extremely good lives are, and I don't know what share of people in Good afterlives I'd say have them, but it feels to me like things can be as good as they are bad. Certainly my most good experiences are as strongly preferable-above-baseline as my most bad experiences are negative and I have had some experiences that are fairly Hell-like. I'm willing to get tortured harder if a failure of imagination about what Hell is like might be relevant. 

We disagree about how much the revealed preferences of Golarionites are relevant. I don't think that people not trying to avoid Hell means they don't mind Hell. It's often that they're very muddled. I do think that when people decide that they are willing to do Evil things and go to Hell in order to, say, make a lot of money to Raise their dead baby and give that baby a good life in Axis, they frequently understand exactly the trade they are making and are within their rights to make it, and it is a terrible wrong to them to destroy the children they worked to save, in order to save them from suffering in Hell. I do think it's suggestive that everyone was appalled about the daemons eating souls out of the river of souls and eating babies in the Boneyard. I also think it's suggestive that many people if you ask them would take on considerable risk of Hell to protect their loved ones from Abaddon. 

I think that the fact that people mostly go to Hell for doing awful things to other people matters in our evaluation of whether they got an unfair division of gains or not. It makes it feel, to me, more like they played a lottery and want the winners killed so they don't have the consequences of losing than like they were randomly assigned an unfair share. You have to be a bad person to go to Hell; you have to knowingly treat people very badly on purpose. 

I think that Civilization can find better ways to fix Creation and fix Hell, in the next hundred years, once there are headbands everywhere and not much scarcity. 

Not everyone in Creation is human or even humanoid. The overwhelming share of them are not. I think that Keltham has not thought enough about whether he is doing right by very very inhuman minds, some of which might have very different preferences from humans like being much more okay with Hell or for that matter being much more harmed by Axis or Nirvana or by waking up in another universe (say, because they're a telepathic hivemind that die slowly in horrible suffering if separated from their kin). Keltham is weird enough that it seems plausible to me that for most creatures in Pharasma's Creation moving it towards Keltham's values will leave them worse off.  Relatedly I think it's hard to evaluate how reasonably Pharasma is running Creation with a view of just one planet but her running of it seems basically reasonable to me except for how the wrong person is in charge of Hell. 

I think it's reasonably likely that Pharasma will just crush Keltham and then everything will be much worse with a huge opportunity for making them better totally lost and gone. I think that if we start by letting out Rovagug then the net effect of Keltham will be empowering Asmodeus, getting the one planet without prophecy eaten, and foregoing a chance to fix almost everything. I also think it's pretty likely that we'll all just get slowly and horrifyingly eaten by Yog-Sothoth or something if Pharasma stops protecting the universe.

An implication of the above is that I think if you try this, we should mostly expect to 'wake up' in worlds where you tried this and it failed in some way; that is where most minds that have continuity from our current existence is. 

I don't think that killing someone across billions of worlds is made meaningfully less bad by there existing a copy of them somewhere at some point.

I think that Keltham is deeply unusual in many respects which could be relevant to whether you wake up somewhere else when you die and we should not necessarily conclude that everyone who dies will experience waking up somewhere else.

I don't think I care very much about the specific path by which a mind dies, even if I grant that they'll wake up somewhere else; a copy of me that is me-from-a-year-ago is about as good as a copy from right this minute (when I haven't just been through a very transformative year), so to whatever extent a copy makes it less bad that I was murdered, an out of date copy is almost as good as a new one. I think Keltham cares a lot about this. 

I think that Hell is not worse than nonexistence at least for me and plausibly for most people but I don't even know that it's worth arguing this one. 

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"All right, you've read mine, I've had a chance to read yours.  Meta-level comments, things I failed to make clear about how the process supposedly worked that are more obvious now that you've seen literally one example of it?  In retrospect we should've run a pilot where we first tried this on... some other disagreement we had in the past where your position was mostly real, you'd know better what the choices were than I."

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"- I think from my perspective this was about the result I expected. I am sure I didn't do it in the proper dath ilani way but it looks like my attempt was in fact probably close enough to work from."

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"Yeah, I'm trying to remind myself that it would not be remotely fair to judge this the way that a dath ilani audience would be judging it right now.  Like, I did not, for example, actually say out loud that your description of my views was to be written from Keltham's perspective, as if by Keltham..."

"I don't think your presentation of my views really - emphasized the parts I'd emphasize, and there's strange little hiccups in your model of my model of dath ilan..."

"We could now take each other's writeups and underline parts we noticeably disagreed with in the other's presentation of what was supposed to be our own view.  First I'm curious how you'd rate my attempt to write from your perspective overall."

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"It seemed like you were thinking of 'existence is much better than nonexistence' as a big part of my argument against destroying the universe, and it's a big part of my personal priorities and I did, in fact, prefer when it came up with Abrogail to be tortured for arbitrary lengths of time if I was going to cease existing at the end of it, because suffering was so much better than not existing. 

But I think that actually fairly little of my argument rests on that. That'd be relevant if we were debating destroying a universe where everyone went to Hell. 

Uh, 'Scattering them outside of it is, maybe, a worse disservice to children than Maledicting them to Hell.' is wrong about my views, it seems pretty unlikely to me that most of the Greater Reality is worse for humans than Hell. Just that even if 1% of it is as bad as Hell, that's probably trillions of children you're sending to Hell, and that most of it is worse than the balance of the Outer Planes. 

I don't think you should learn from the fact everyone thinks releasing Rovagug is a bad plan, I feel like the reasons it's a bad plan are pretty self-evident and there's not additional information in public opinion.

I think you're condescending to Golarion people but that's mostly just relevant to the degree of consultation you'll get on your plan, I don't really think it's actually the driver of your plan or worth talking you out of. I figured I'd just consult everyone myself and then translate for you.

Your writeup does not emphasize much how with the resources we'll have one week from now we can probably at least fix Avernus in a much safer way, and the Civilization we can build will contain people much much smarter than us who might think of a much much smarter solution to Hell and who will have the option of this solution, so long as we don't blow up the only planet where prophecy is broken.

You don't really mention downside risks of, say, getting the one planet without prophecy eaten so no one can ever rise up against the gods again, or getting us all taken by whatever got Zon-Kuthon. I think those feature pretty significantly in my thinking about this.

Iomedae might be wrong about whether the universe before you arrived was going to end well for Good, but there's a truly transformative number and kind of resources now available! Hell has been betting on the products of this interworld contact as if they're a really, really big deal, as if they are a loophole in the godagreements about information-sharing. I think that we can take Avernus and build Civilization and leave the rest to our intellectual heirs, a generation down the line, who'll be equipped for this problem in a way we aren't, and I think that's really the core of my reasoning here, that we don't have to choose this plan or nothing, that there is so much potential to do something else which is not this."

 

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"Sounds like mostly gaps of omission, then, or mistakes of emphasis if you want to put it that way."

"Give me a second and I'll pass back the underlined version of yours, with some notes.  Shouldn't take much time and seems easier than saying."

In Pharasma's Creation there are many people who don't want to exist and do not have a good way to achieve this. The overwhelming majority of those are in Hell, but probably there are also some in Abaddon and the Abyss and maybe the Maelstrom and the dungeons of various people on Golarion and planets like Golarion, plus some who are suffering and uncertain enough about their afterlife not to kill themselves despite having access to the option. They often suffer slowly in a way that changes who they are as people and means that even if at some point they stop being conscious, a version of them that landed on another planet at that point would not be very much like the person they were before they suffered so much.  [Yep.  This is the core problem.  Pharasma's unfair deal would not be a destroy-the-multiverse issue if not for this.]

This is bad under approximately every conceivable value system. Under the value system most common in dath ilan, where everyone has thought about ethics a lot more and some people are smarter, this is so bad that killing approximately 9 people whose lives are eternal and good in order to prevent one person from suffering in this way is clearly justified. Dath ilani would practically all agree on this[This is a values-difference, not something where it matters what another place thinks.]

It is true that people in Golarion mostly don't see it that way when they are not in Hell, but they mostly try to avoid thinking about it, and might believe false things about it. Hell lies relentlessly about what sends you there and what it's like. People in Cheliax mostly fear Hell and try not to think about it; people in other places do move mountains to avoid it. Lots of Lawful Evil people, in private, will admit that they are scared. The fact they don't atone or don't try to be Chaotic is about their suppressing thoughts of how they'll go to Hell in abject terror, not about their actual preference. Even if someone prefers Hell to nonexistence, once they've been in Hell for a little while they'll almost definitely change their mind. Even if someone does things that condemn them to Hell for the sake of protecting their children, so that their children will get to eternity in Axis instead of being eaten in Abaddon, they'll regret that choice and wish they'd chosen differently approximately as soon as Hell actually starts on them. Even if they don't for a hundred years, they will in a thousand years; even if they don't for a thousand years, they will in a hundred thousand years. People on Golarion don't know how to think about those scales. Hell deliberately discourages thinking on those scales. And it's hard to understand how bad Hell is until you are actually being tortured there; it is not a fact you can know any other way.  [Being tortured in Hell still doesn't let you do the interpersonal utility comparison we actually need.]  [Being tortured into regret of saving your children doesn't make it the wrong decision, still an awful one tho.]

Any viable plan to fix Hell, where nearly all but not all of this suffering is located, probably incurs some risk of killing everyone in the multiverse. The plan that incurs the least risk of that is probably destroying Avernus so that further people cannot go to Hell, which would not necessarily be permanent. The plans that are most definitely permanent, like killing Asmodeus and taking His job or trying to force Pharasma to change the rules of Her Creation, incur a quite high risk of this. Plans to kill Asmodeus and take His job are probably more than 50% likely to result in His releasing Rovagug, which is probably at least 20% likely to destroy the universe and 80% likely to destroy Golarion, which may or may not be important for building Civilization within Pharasma's Creation.  [I'd maybe say more like 30% of destroying Golarion?]  [Currently put low estimate on Golarion's importance if we can't otherwise beat Pharasma/gods.]

Plans to force Pharasma to change the rules of Her Creation will, if they fail, fail either by Pharasma laughing at Keltham and crushing him in which case no improvements to the universe at all will be achieved, or in the entire universe being destroyed, possibly by Yog-Sothoth or something in an existentially horrifying Hell-like slow-personality-death way. Failure modes like that are very unlikely. If they succeed they might change not just Hell but also significant features of other planes that have a high rate of petitioners there being very unhappy or being eaten.  [Pharasma crush wouldn't seem that unlikely, if not for tropes.]  [Obvious ways to rig multiverse for destruction don't seem to me to run much Yog-Sothoth risk.]

Pharasma does not particularly share human values, and a universe run on rules set by Keltham would be much nicer for humans and similar kinds of mortals to live in, or not exist at all if making a universe that's substantially nicer to live in is not possible within these constraints.  [Didn't think I could set rules, but get them modified, sure.]

When Keltham experienced dying, he experienced showing up in Golarion. All people, when their soul is permanently deleted from existence, should anticipate having the experience of waking up somewhere else like he did. In the typical case this will not be worse than the lives that those people are currently living in Golarion. In particular the percentage of people who will turn out to have moment-of-death copies that are slaves who cannot suicide, or in Hell dimensions, or in incomprehensible conditions that alter their cognition as they kill them, is very low. The fact this is true means that being killed is much less bad than it would be if there were not copies of you in other places some of whom will remember the moment of your death. The fact this is true also means it is better to kill someone instantaneously than for them to die in a slow way that alters their personality and values, because if they die instantaneously then they'll experience continuity with a copy of them elsewhere which hasn't already changed in a way that changes their identity as a person.  [My case doesn't need to be typical, just in some sense normal or not in a distinguished region of low probability.]

It is undesirable that people will never see their families again, be separated from their children and husbands and wives, lose everything they have and were working towards, etc., but the undesirability of this is much much much smaller than the undesirability of Hell. It is probably not the case that most people would readily risk Hell to be present for their childrens' infancy and childhood, and if they say they would it is probably because they are underestimating the badness of Hell. Also under the present system many people are separated from their loved ones permanently anyway, and an ideal fix to Pharasma's Creation would improve the world along this metric.  [Not how system necessarily works.  Nice destinations can synchronize arrival of related people.]

It is not bad that people will exist about a billion times less, because it doesn't subjectively feel like anything to exist, and is not part of most human value systems in dath ilan. Those people who think it is part of their value systems would almost always reconsider if they could discuss the matter with a Keeper.  [Depends on if the less-existing were above or below Greater Reality average.  Obviously I currently guess Pharasma's Creation is below average.]  ['Keepers would disagree' kinda not how people in Civilization think, they'll add 'because it's invalid' and then eliminate the Keeper part.]

The gods as they are currently situated seem likely to stop any planet in Pharasma's Creation from building Civilization, or at least likely to stop it from spreading its discoveries to the rest of Pharasma's Creation. It seems reasonably likely that they're only presently allowing the scientific revolution because they don't see where it's headed. In the absence of intervention to change the rules and ensure Civilization is allowed to come about, it seems possible the inhabited planets within Creation will either persist for a very long time not being much better as a place to live, or else get destroyed the first time they get far enough out of equilibrium some gods want them gone, or else get destroyed by dath ilan or some force like it that is trying to maximize average happiness of instantiated minds across the multiverse. If that is a common value, which it probably is because everyone in dath ilan is very smart and it was approximately universal there, and if Pharasma's Creation is as vulnerable to destruction as it looks, then Pharasma's Creation is going to get destroyed sooner or later unless someone brings average quality of life there above a reasonable estimate of how bad the greater multiverse is.  [I'm not expecting dath ilan's utilityfunction to be common among things more powerful than Pharasma that connect to Pharasma's Creation.]

Pharasma is fundamentally the kind of entity who has no business running a multiverse, and so it is good, other things equal, to make her stop that, and it is worth at least some small probability of the multiverse being destroyed to wrest control of it from an alien entity that does not share human values unless Greater Reality is even worse.  [Yep.]

If the policy 'destroy bits of Greater Reality that you are not glad you landed is' is followed by all people waking up in unfamiliar universes, then maybe in the long run everyone who wakes up in an unfamiliar universe will wake up in a pretty good one, so the repeat application of this process makes it more and more of a good idea over time. The fact dath ilani were taught to think about the world this way, including game theory about cleaning up bits of Greater Reality you find yourself in where Zon-Kuthon asks for $10, suggests that dath ilan may already have calculated this is a good idea.  [Pretty sure they weren't teaching me things I'd need to know for Golarion.]  [This is mostly just a special case of rejecting bad deals, incl. Pharasma's non-deal.]

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She reads through it, nods, sighs. "Well, one of the things that I was thinking might convince me to work with you was if you thought an unfixed Creation was vulnerable to other universe-destroyers. But I appreciate you telling me you don't think that and think Creation would probably be otherwise safe."

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"It would be a common courtesy in Civilization while prosecuting a disagreement, and one I hope I can expect symmetrically from you."

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Yeah. We're doing trusting-negotiations here. ...I hope?

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"Yes.

I.... think I have some kind of additional disagreement with you now about - if every human in dath ilan ends up with the same views on something as apparently-subjective as 'average utilitarianism', then I don't think it feels right to just assert that's all their unchangeable utility-functions - people don't have utility-functions, people are muddled and dath ilani society reliably resolves that muddle in that way, but I am not sure that's different than how Cheliax reliably resolves various muddles in various ways. I'd feel more confident it was a utility-function thing if it was, say, 85% of people in dath ilan.

 

I realize some utility-function things should in fact be overwhelmingly common among humans but this really, really doesn't seem like one of them especially given all the absurd-seeming claims it makes - you're going to say we should discuss this at INT-29 - but it seems like it would imply you should destroy perfectly good universes under a wide variety of circumstances, including if that subjectively sends everyone in them to Hell, so long as most of Greater Reality is much nicer than those perfectly good universes... and maybe some people believe that but I am suspicious of claims that it ends up in nearly all human utility-functions unless you deliberately engineer your whole society to make them think that."

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"I wasn't saying that 'average utilitarianism' was just a matter of utilityfunctions.  The averaging part is something that's - pinned down by some pseudo-Law-fragment-ish arguments relative to the human pre-utilityfunction muddle that shakes out into a utilityfunction?  One way of looking at it is that it doesn't make any more sense to ask what if there was twice as much sentience in reality any more than it makes sense to ask what if everything in reality was twice as large or what if time everywhere was running half as fast."

"Not sure we should dive on that right now, I don't think 'average utilitarianism' per se is liable to be a crux of disagreement.  Though if we both converted to 'total utilitarianism' we'd then be faced with a question of whether Pharasma's Creation is above or below 'zero' which seems entirely utilityfunctional, rather than the question of whether Creation is above or below average."

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"That does sound like it might be more productive if we wait."

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"I unfortunately get a sense from having taken the disagreement this far that the real crux is liable to be the sense to which - I've lived in a universe which wasn't tropey in the slightest, where everything just bubbled up from directly visible math in a directly visible way, and by comparison Golarion looks really blatantly tropey to me, even if it's ultimately a real thing that got selected really sharply for tropiness.  So I'm also expecting to a much higher degree that the universe has been set on track for a Bad End unless the protagonists do something.  Your worldview has a much higher prior that we might not need to do something that looks like the climax of a story, for things to end up pretty much all right, a hundred years later, because we're not that special and our efforts don't need to be that desperate.  My prior is more that I've been put into a situation where, if I try to - the trope would be 'Refuse the Call' - the multiverse is otherwise set to have the ancient gods crush out Civilization, our enemies get their own diamond synthesis not that far behind us, Asmodeus is not dumber than Iomedae and has His own symmetrical plans about how to eliminate Heaven as opposition.  There was an apparent plotline about just building Civilization, that plotline got trashed with the reveal of the Conspiracy."

"If we want to pursue that question on the object level instead of direct meta level, we could talk plans to take over just Avernus."

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"I - thought you thought on tropes-logic I was the protagonist? In which case it's true that the universe is set for a Bad End unless I do something, my ex is going to destroy it. 

 

I haven't had much time to think about plans to take over Avernus, if you've thought about it a ton and have nothing and Carmin doesn't think there's anything the church of Iomedae could do even with a million Wishes I'll be more pessimistic there."

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"Heh.  Fair enough, you didn't show up being the protagonist until a day ago, and I'll have to rethink what possible storylines remain consistent given that."

"I have not thought very much about plans to take over Avernus in particular.  I suppose if this universe is to last long enough that the number of people already in Hell would end up being dominated by new people..."

"I am not sure I actually have it in me, to abandon the souls currently in Hell.  Fair warning, anything that - comes to that conclusion - might end up being something where I look over the logic and do the calculation and then throw the calculation away and instead not abandon the souls currently in Hell.  I suppose, if I were the Big Problem that this universe faces, that would make me not too easily solvable from your standpoint."

"Carmin is not, I think, somebody with the spark herself to envision plans on that scale.  Most people in Golarion don't have that, Carissa, it's not just Cheliax that burns it out of people."

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"It seems good that most people aren't like that, they'd be destroying the world left and right. 

 

 

The other part - that's one of the things on my list to persuade you of. That even if the world is bad enough to risk destroying it to fix it, the set of changes that'd make that no longer true are pretty small.  There are trillions of people leading good lives, there's lots of potential to fix things through non-world-destroying mechanisms. If we succeeded at taking Avernus, no one would ever go to Hell in its present form again. You'd have saved the people who were begging to die. You'd have saved every person who'll ever be born. At that point, to kill everyone, to send many of them to something as bad as Hell, to risk feeding everything to Yog-Sothoth, to risk getting crushed and achieving nothing at all including the Avernus fix, because the first pass at fixing things didn't solve literally every instance of suffering in the multiverse - I can't actually make any sense of that. 

Relatedly, we don't need to ask Pharasma for a contraceptive cleric spell, we can just make and distribute ilani contraception, or build it in to Rings of Sustenance which we give the whole population for free. We don't need to ask Pharasma for landing-spaces in the Maelstrom or the Abyss, a Civilization with the resources we should be able to command in a few decades can just build those.

The only things that you actually need to ask Pharasma, in the sense they can only be done with Her leave, are removing Asmodeus and getting rid of Malediction and preserving somewhere where Civilization can grow without being crushed, and I don't think it's defensible to ask for anything else. Anything else you ask for is trading off us getting it slightly sooner for in expectation killing tens of billions of people, and virtually none of the people in Creation would take that trade.

It's - one thing - to imagine telling them all that the reason they are now to be annihilated is to stop Hell. I think it's wrong, but I - see in, in a way. It is another thing entirely, to imagine telling them the reason they are now to be annihilated is that we wanted birth control to be a cleric spell instead of a nonmagical invention to be widely distributed starting in a decade or so."

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"I think - a major problem I have with this scenario is how many things need to go sort of right, sort of the way you hoped, over an extended period, while facing a lot of adversaries who are aware of you and making their own plans and who don't want your hopes to go that way."

"Without the methods of diamond manufacture leaking to Cheliax or being rediscovered by them.  Without Golarion being destroyed by opposed Wishes.  Without all of the diamonds we make, suddenly vanishing.  Without it suddenly becoming impossible to manufacture diamonds.  Without the laws of magic shifting, so that diamonds are no longer useful in Resurrections and Wishes.  Without all of the Neutral and Evil gods banding together, to prevent the Good gods from growing too powerful."

"There's also things that have to go right for me to successfully destroy the multiverse in a surprise attack, but they're fewer and less adversarially opposed.  They just consist of particular things that need to already be true, rather than our adversaries staying in place not making plans while only we get to make plans.  I am hoping to take Pharasma by surprise, once.  Afterwards, either this multiverse is gone, which is acceptable to me; or I've negotiated with Her, once, to put this multiverse into a state where it's possible for the forces of Good to clean it up with a lot of hard work."

"This universe contains a lot of powerful things besides Iomedae.  I believe in a plan where we take them by surprise, using temporary unknown advantages like diamond synthesis and my grasp of how to destroy multiverses.  I don't believe in a plan where the Good gods beat all other gods, over an extended period, because of a discovery that didn't remain unknown once it was used.  I don't believe that we get to make plans and they don't get to make plans, once the advantage of surprise is lost.  I don't believe we get to shove this world out of its current equilibrium to a new place in spite of all the restoring forces that kept it in this state to begin with, unless we can beat those forces, and those forces are Pharasma and the ancient gods.  I don't believe we get to make plans and have those plans be real once other agents are making plans too."

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"All right, so one important area of disagreement is what the set of minimal concessions from Pharasma that makes it likely Civilization can fix things from there is. And related to that, I should probably be trying to figure out if Abadar is willing to commit to defending Civilization and making sure it gets to exist, if Sarenrae is, if - I don't know who else might be relevant."

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"Abadar will appreciate Civilization if it exists, I think.  Having Him defend it from other gods is a whole different story, especially when it doesn't already exist and Abadar is very confused about a lot of the things that make up a stable Civilization from a mortal stand point.  Sarenrae... I have concerns about the thing where She smote a city, and I am not very reassured by the part where She's supposed to have realized afterwards that this was a bad idea, it sounds more like mortals trying to paper over divine unpleasantness than how I imagine ancient gods working.  It's not clear to me that dath ilan Civilization wouldn't... I mean, not actually arrest Sarenrae, She's done some good work for mortals, but tell Her that She needed to clean up Her act a bit."

"My model isn't that there's nobody out there for Civilization to cut a deal with.  I think They're not powerful enough, and that the ancient gods opposed to Them will squash Civilization before Civilization gets powerful enough to participate in ancient-god-deals."

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"If Abadar would want Civilization, but is confused about what it will look like and how to bring it about, and we would benefit from Him defending it from other gods, then that seems like among the most solvable problems we've run across yet. Abadar also might know more than us about how powerful anti-Civilization forces are, and whether Pharasma's one of them or whether She'd be willing to defend Civilization given certain assurances..."

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"I could be wrong, but my current strong guess is that when it comes to tech and magitech on the level of spellsilver refining, Axis already knows how to do it, Azlant knew how to do it, Abadar's First Vault still has all of Azlant's books."

"My being here did not make advanced spellsilver refining be possible for the first time, because the knowledge existed for the first time.  It made it be a default outcome rather than an outcome that required any gods to intervene.  If the gods wanted things to be like that, collectively, they could have done it much earlier."

"That's part of why I strongly expect the Scientific Revolution to otherwise get shut down before it proceeds too far, and why I expect that the ancient gods favoring it would not have a supermajority as more and more other ancient gods' interests are threatened.  Urgathoa.  Gorum.  It maybe goes differently if Project Lawful remains on par with the Scientific Revolution and Cheliax conquers half of Golarion and remains in a constant state of battle with the Scientific Revolution, such that Gorum and Asmodeus favor the new state of affairs, but now we are once again getting into the space of possible outcomes where I am no longer very happy about it and want to fall back on the Nope Plan."

"It is possible that nobody around except Pharasma and Otolmens are allowed to know how to rig up planes for destruction.  You plausibly need to run particular high-energy experiments to figure out some of those even at INT 40, and if Pharasma can prohibit those experiments She can prohibit anybody from figuring out how to make a plane erase itself."

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"That all sounds right, but the closer Civilization is to something the ancient gods are all right with, the smaller the concession needed, which means we can ask for less from Pharasma and have better odds of getting it, or find another way to get it. And I think it's worth my seeing your concrete projections about - if the problem is specifically Gorum and the Evil gods, that's a different state of affairs than if the problem is all of the ancient gods, or all of them but Abadar..."

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"If it comes down to details like that, we're just going to have to refigure it all anyways when we're at mutual INT 29 in a couple of subjective weeks."

"Figure out what your plan would be.  Figure out what you'd need to set your plan in motion, that takes time to gather, that we need to start now and isn't doable far more efficiently at mutual INT 29.  Then we plausibly just do that, set in motion time-sensitive subplans or resource-gathering.  I can decide later whether to actually do it, unless it's incredibly clear right now that the plan is one that Smarter Carissa can't repair into something Smarter Me will go along with."

"I - register a strong preference that this plan have me not destroy Egorian, before Cheliax attacks Osirion once they believe they've got a hostage.  I'm not especially likely to be happy about Cheliax conquering Osirion and putting its inhabitants, who helped me, to slavery and misery.  I would do it to clean up the multiverse, I suppose, if there was no other way, but I'd lose a lot of myself that I haven't already lost in that process."

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"If we don't want Cheliax invading Osirion, I think I can pretty straightforwardly assassinate Abrogail and find out whether there are others. If there are, you just send Cheliax an ultimatum before the children are ensouled: swear not to invade Osirion for the next year or I'll destroy you now before the children are ensouled. 

 

I do kind of want Cheliax invading Osirion as part of my interest in Asmodeus thinking that things are going really well for him, but I - acknowledge that probably if I cared more about Osirion I wouldn't really be all right with that, and that the calculations about Asmodeus are tenuous right now."

 

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"I'm - not clear I would otherwise destroy Cheliax, if I was still planning on my current default plan.  There's an obstacle there, that I'm seeing more clearly after recent discussions and now that my emotions are in better repair."

"How would you find out if there are other children?"

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"I have spectacular Bluff these days. I Teleport in, assassinate Abrogail, raise her, and say to her 'I just saved you from Keltham destroying Egorian. Next time, consider not letting it come to that. Are there others as well?'"

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"I am not following this plan at all.  She lies and says 'no' and then, alerted of my suspicion, orders the further children evacuated to outside of Cheliax until they are ensouled."

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"She is told that you're prepared to preemptively destroy Cheliax unless there are no further children. If she says no, I say 'great, we bring Keltham an oath to that effect and he won't destroy Cheliax'. If she can't provide that oath, we kill the other mothers until she can. ...wrongthought, you're upset about them going to Hell. If she evacuates them from the country, your incentive is still to destroy Cheliax to ensure it doesn't have the capacity to go after Osirion, unless Cheliax is prepared to commit that they won't."

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"So this is being done at a point where I otherwise would destroy Cheliax, namely, if I switched away from my main plan, and then was otherwise about to run out of time on ensoulments probably starting?  I can stop Cheliax going after Osirion just by attacking Egorian with something that draws in their military response and then destroying Egorian, I think.  Or are you proposing that Cheliax responds to threats so I should make one?  Or proposing that it benefits myself, rather than being a threat, if I speed up the time when I'd otherwise confront them?"

"- Carissa, the fact that all of this enormous mess happens to me at a certain time unless I delete or clean up the multiverse before then, really looks to me like the plot is telling me to get on with it.  Not that the plot is telling me to wade into this enormous mess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If that's so, I think you should say 'fuck the plot'. Do this at the time when you are most prepared and estimate the highest odds of success, or don't do it at all.  In any story worth reading, it'd be a mistake to do something with these stakes at a time chosen by external forces for any reason that isn't your own."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fighting Pharasma is one thing.  Fighting the plot is another.  The current incentives that have been applied to me are sufficient to force me to hurry up and get on with the main plotline, taken at face value, because I do not, in fact, want to destroy Egorian as well as Absalom, or destroy all of Cheliax and send its inhabitants to Hell because possibly this world is mostly not real and one of my putative children ends up in a sequel being mostly real.  When I consider defying those incentives, there is then the further question of whether the incentives just escalate as opposed to staying in place while I defy them.  Or if they'd have just been raised retroactively, before the story started, if I was somebody to whom the current incentives would not be sufficient."

"I'm not saying flatly no.  I'm saying why I'm hesitant to defy the current incentives that suggest getting this all cleared up in a couple of weeks objective."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you agree that our odds of success are much worse if we have to rush to be ready in a couple of weeks objective, compared to if we have all the time we need at high INT and with specialized magic items to think and design Wish-wordings and consult every Power it might be worth consulting?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I agree that our odds of success would be much better with a ten-speed time-dilated demiplane than with a two-speed time-dilated demiplane, which is why the laws of magic in Golarion are such as to make a ten-fold sped-up demiplane not be possible with the resources I have available.  I agree that my problems would be much easier if I could consult Iomedae about all of them, and it is obvious that the story will be twisted up into any pretzel-like shape required to prevent that."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - you know what? That's a prediction. Let's test it. Plan on taking six months. If something mysteriously happens to make this completely impossible, I will concede that it is more likely that there's some kind of 'plot' that will make it impossible to approach this in a responsible fashion. If nothing mysteriously happens, we're not in the 'story' you think we're in and the 'story' isn't set up to destroy the universe if we only achieve moderate gains and it's reasonable for us to be doing moderate things and leaving the key problem here to the next generation. This is really important; we have a way to check if it's true."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then I guess I have you to thank, Carissa, for Abrogail's substitution plot and the fact that I have an unknown number of children looming over me, to make it mysteriously impossible for me to take six months, as you might otherwise have been able to talk me into doing."

"- I don't actually mean that, I would have talked me into doing that, without the deadline."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"....you can in fact take six months! You taking six months vastly improves the possible outcomes here!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nnnnooo, my being unable to take the blatant hint presented by the storyline about needing to resolve this before my children get ensouled, causes the story to be even harsher about giving me a time limit.  Retroactively, I'd expect, but that doesn't make a difference here."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - Keltham, give me a diamond and a wording and I'll fucking blow up Cheliax today. Okay? And then you can take six months."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Either I'm really missing something or the 'today' part there makes no sense.  One, I haven't currently bought any Wish diamonds since I was planning to harvest them in a week.  Two, if I found a diamond like that on the market, we then would not have any way to convert that Wish diamond to a Wish inside of Golarion, the bottleneck is forming a relationship with somebody who'll make me a Wish scroll.  Three, if I had an extra Wish scroll, it would then be premature to use an insufficiently refined Wish wording in case that blew up more than Cheliax, which risk we could reduce by thinking about it at INT 29 until the deadline had almost run out."

"...should we take a break?  Either you really missed something or I really missed something or both, and either way, there's standard heuristics about taking a break and having a snack at this point."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - you're right, sorry, I don't need a diamond, just your acknowledging this as a allowable use of the Wishes I already have, and ideally a wording but I'll recruit Fe-Anar and we'll figure something out ourselves if needed.  The reason I want to do it today is that it seems to me you have tied yourself up into an utterly absurd knot around how story logic says not just that you should do this instead of doing something more limited but also likelier to succeed, but also about how story logic says that you should do it much sooner than when is optimal for the odds of it going well, and I can't - I can't respect a story where you're supposed to rush ahead and do something you haven't thought through before you're ready. In any real story, that ends with Yog-Sothoth eating everybody. And I can't respect a person who thinks that way. 

And, in order to have as much time as possible working with a thinking Keltham who I respect before the deadline, I think I should not wait until the last minute to blow up Cheliax; if I wait that long, you're not progressing on six-month or one-year challenge-Pharasma plans in the interim. I think I should just get it over with and blow up Cheliax today. Even if there's a 90% chance of a failure mode where the Wish actually destroys much much more than that, that's clearly worth it to have you wait six months on your challenge-Pharasma plans. 

 I believe this is in your interests and I am planning to do it this afternoon, though I'll of course spend a couple hours thinking about it first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am concerned about the potential dynamic this is heading into, where you have bright ideas and want to do them, and I keep having to be the one saying 'no'.  I think you would notice as many as several issues with doing this two hours from now, given two hours to think about it.  I want to send you off to think about it, but I feel it would be dishonest to claim that I would, at the end of those two hours, assent to that use of those Wishes that I purchased from you and that you gave me in reparation, three of which I saved out against better-advised uses than this."

"Wish phrasings that destroy whole countries are weirdly difficult to come by, go figure.  Osirion thought they needed me for that.  I don't think Hell would be much inclined to interpret any ambiguities in your favor, either, if you tried using your Hell-Wish for that."

"That said, if you think you have a good-enough wording based on only the ilani knowledge you have, which I had thought was carefully selected not to be dangerous in that way... Osirion does have a Wish scroll.  I will think about whether the agreements we've made so far are ones that I interpret to mean you couldn't try to talk Osirion into it."

"I'm saying this, and making that much of a suggestion for how you could try to destroy Cheliax this afternoon anyways, despite blatant flaws in your proposal as first stated by you, only because I do not want our relationship to get into a mode where I am the obstacle to all of your bright ideas.  Rather than, as is actually the case, your haste and your terror and the resulting flaws in your ideas, being the obstacle to your ideas."

"I don't own you and can't give you orders.  I suggest that you go take a break, Carissa.  I suggest that you think that proposal over and talk to Carmin or Fe-Anar.  Please convey to them that I said that you shouldn't be told about the really basic obstacle to destroying Cheliax two hours from now with a hastily-assembled Wish, because I think it is important for you to think the problems through without knowing that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am concerned about a potential dynamic where - you want to have this all over with in three weeks, so even if I come up with a good idea, you will insist that the plot says you mustn't try to work around this self-imposed deadline of yours.

But I acknowledge that until I in fact have a good idea, I might be assuming this of you unfairly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will be huddled in my bed-tent if anybody needs me.  Do not actually destroy Cheliax without giving me a final chance to explain why you should not, even if you should find all your own resources for it; I do consider that something that will interfere with my plans, based on information I gave you, as is prohibited by agreements we've already made."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Understood. 

It's not - to be clear - that I want to, that I'd do it lightly. Everyone I love lives there, and I don't want to send them to Hell. But - but if I were a person anywhere else in the multiverse at all, I'd hope the person in my place would do whatever it took, to make you spend one extra week double-checking your assumptions and consulting other Powers about your plan."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have not in fact killed, of my own will, a single person, yet."

"That probably doesn't mean anything to you right now.  It wouldn't seem important on a scale of trying to destroy Pharasma's Creation.  Ask the Iomedaen to explain.  I - don't know how to say it to somebody from Cheliax, but Carmin will know how to say it, maybe, or Fe-Anar."

He turns and goes about back to his tent, his breathing not very steady.

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes to Carmin. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"How did it go?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"....it worked for a little while, we talked about some things I thought we couldn't talk about and I did the pretend Keltham thing and managed to not feel like it's incredibly dangerous to give him any information about myself, so that was progress. 

But then he said that he - well, he said things that came across to me as if he was saying that he wouldn't entertain any plans to stop Cheliax invading Osirion or solve the children issue because he thinks the Plot is just telling him to attack Pharasma by then. And I -

- I don't have any idea what to do with that? What I was trying not to say to him is that I feel such intense contempt for anyone who would think about the world that way that I don't think I could possibly work with them.

There's clearly a bunch of forces at play here and some of them are gods and some of them might not even be gods. But I just don't believe, at all, that those forces want Keltham to go ahead with his plan in a couple of weeks, unless they in fact want the multiverse destroyed, or want a - pointless illustrative tragedy where Keltham tries and gets  unceremoniously squished.

Am I wrong.  Isn't that - if you were writing a story, with a character like Keltham, who went ahead and did this in a couple of weeks because he thought he was a character in a story and was supposed to do it then, how would that story end."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...is this didactic fiction aimed at children in Mendev? Is it a serial published in the Absalom papers?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - I think Keltham thinks it's an ilani story? Probably I should just - calmly discuss this with him like I calmly discuss the merits of destroying the universe with him, it's not different, it's my job to calmly discuss with him every way he's being unfathomably monstrous - I hate him -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The story disagreement feels to you like another values disagreement, not just a factual disagreement about kinds of story?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't - I don't know how to put words to it -

 

- so one part of it is that I really do think a story where you rush ahead with your incredibly dangerous plan before you've properly checked if it even works and before you've explored all your alternatives, because you think you're in a story and you're supposed to rush ahead is a tragedy, it's a story where you lose. 

Another part of it is that - I proposed an experiment, the thing Keltham was saying didn't make any sense to me and I said, okay, let's try solving the current reason-to-rush and if that fails, I will change your mind in your direction about how the story works, and if it succeeds, then you can agree that you're not in the same story you thought you were in and your story assumptions didn't apply, and he said, he said, 

'Then I guess I have you to thank, Carissa, for Abrogail's substitution plot and the fact that I have an unknown number of children looming over me, to make it mysteriously impossible for me to take six months, as you might otherwise have been able to talk me into doing.

- I don't actually mean that, I would have talked me into doing that, without the deadline.'

And that's when - that's when I stopped being able to - I tried to translate that and pretend he'd said something that wasn't incredibly cruel and stupid but I couldn't think of any possible meaning that wasn't cruel and stupid - it felt like, like he was saying, that it was silly, that I was proposing a test, that he was so sure that no new information would possibly change his mind, that I was silly, for believing him when he taught us things about checking your beliefs against reality, because actually all you're supposed to do is fold the information in to your own explanation you already have for doing what you wanted to do, it was like I didn't know who I was talking to, I thought we'd been having an ilani conversation about how new evidence would change our minds and now he was mocking the entire idea -"
 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you think he was actually doing that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have been trying and trying and I can't think what else it could possibly have been! I proposed a test, and he said that!! If that wasn't 'oh, no, I'm just going to back-interpret previous events as a test of this hypothesis that already confirmed what I want to believe, and refuse to conduct any more tests', what was he saying?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did you ask him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No. It would've been a good idea, but I could feel I was - getting emotional - it felt like such an impossible task, if all the ilani stuff wasn't even true, if we couldn't even test theories, if the answer to every proposed test I put to him was always going to be 'reality already proved me right' - and he hates it when I don't conceal my feelings well enough - I think it's not actually just that he doesn't take it into consideration, I think he sort of anti-takes-it-into-consideration - like, if you have feelings, about him destroying the universe not even to stop Hell but just because he thinks it's what the plot said to do next and he thinks if he doesn't do it the plot will give him even more incentive, then that definitely means you should be ignored, so, I didn't say any of that, I just said, 'You taking six months vastly improves the possible outcomes here!', I was, trying so hard, to be ilani,"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can - ask to pause, you know, when it seems like he's saying something horrifically immoral, ask for both of you to cool off -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Should've done that. But instead - uh, instead, when I said the thing about improving the possible outcomes, he said 'Nnnnooo, my being unable to take the blatant hint presented by the storyline about needing to resolve this before my children get ensouled, causes the story to be even harsher about giving me a time limit.  Retroactively, I'd expect, but that doesn't make a difference here.'

- and I - it just felt so clear, that, he'd already made up his mind, that he'd already made up his mind about this thing that was insane and not true, that he was not processing it as some probability that could update - you can, you know, be a coherent mind that cannot change its mind in response to any evidence, the math's not hard - and I could just see it, him going ahead in a couple of weeks because it was impossible to convince him that that wasn't what the story told him to do, and then Pharasma crushing him like a bug and Rovagug eating the world, and, and even if his plan is a good idea, we won't succeed without throwing some serious resources and effort at making sure the version of it we're doing is a version that has any hope of success, if we've consulted with entities that understand what we're trying to do, if we've, I don't know, Wished up more smart people smart enough to look over the wordings and understand the physics -

 

- it just felt so clear that for this not to be hopeless, for us to have even the slightest shard of a chance of success, it couldn't be something we were rushing blindly into in a couple of weeks. There are no victories down that road. I don't know, am I insane?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would definitely expect much better results from a plan that we spent years working on than from a plan that we spent weeks working on. Though the countervailing factor is of course the element of surprise. Right now, lots of people suspect Keltham might have a crazy plan to let out Rovagug or something, but they mostly figure that even a very rich, very traumatized, very creative teenage boy who is a first-circle wizard can't actually let out Rovagug, and so they're not immediately throwing unprecedented resources at stopping him. If he starts demonstrating capabilities that suggest he's not at all best modeled as a first circle wizard, then they'll react very quickly."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - oh. That'd be - the problem with my first pass plan to solve this, then. 

- I was thinking about how to cut this knot, and I realized, if Cheliax is destroyed, then no deadline. That's it; it's that simple. No babies, no war with Osirion, no Project Lawful trying to invent superweapons of its own. We have the three Wishes Keltham didn't use, and Osirion has their own Wish scroll. Instead of trying to argue Keltham out of something he cannot change his mind about - no Cheliax, no deadline. And Keltham, you know, he trips himself up on all kinds of complicated questions about whether destroying Cheliax is really and truly in his own not-threat-shaped best interests, but I just don't want the universe to be destroyed, and I could Wish a hole in the world where everyone I love lives, and then the universe is less likely to be destroyed."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

 

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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'."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

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

Permalink Mark Unread

" - 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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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 -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...he's going to take psychological damage from doing something like blowing up Cheliax and sending everyone there to Hell, if it does end up necessary, so it's a cost to his functioning as well as a benefit, and he doesn't have any idea the magnitude of the cost but thinks it might be large?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...maybe? I guess?

 

That means I should not suggest my other bright idea, which is that he go to Axis, kidnap someone there, and feed them to a daemon, so he understands a trillionth of what he plans to do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think you should suggest that idea. Would you even want him to take you up on it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yeah? I think it'd reduce the odds he destroys the universe by more than one in a trillion."

Permalink Mark Unread

" .... it's okay for humans, who aren't gods, and who don't have godlike abilities for what they do not to change who they are, as well as not having godlike abilities to assess situations, to be unwilling to do awful awful things that math suggests are justified. It is usually correct."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't see why I should be held to a lower standard than Iomedae. It's fair to say I'm actually worse than her, and so shouldn't do what she'd do because of my own actual failures, but I don't think the bar should be any different."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

" - well, that's not a reaction I've ever gotten before to the 'why you might not want to follow the math that says you should do something appalling' talk. ...if you want to, you can try to be exactly like Iomedae, but Iomedae also wouldn't go kidnap people from Axis to feed to daemons because She wouldn't learn anything from doing so, and I think Keltham probably aspires to also be the kind of person who wouldn't learn anything from doing so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And he might well be the kind of person who wouldn't learn anything from doing so but I don't think he can be 99.999% sure he wouldn't!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...and yet, I'm pretty sure Iomedae, if She could show Keltham something, would definitely not show him that."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

" - yeah, okay.

 

Do you just not personally want to hurt me or do you actively recommend against my getting hurt for some reason."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think we don't have a ton of time and you aren't going to be using it very well if you try to get tortured every time you handle something badly. And I think that part of being an adult is to - screw up, and know you screwed up, and have nowhere to look for forgiveness or for punishment, and keep going because there is very nearly as much to fight for as there was yesterday."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"You know, I'm kind of starting to think Iomedae got a raw deal in Chelish propaganda."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sure Her church can just write Abrogail Thrune and get that straightened out in the next edition."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

Carissa turns herself into a bird and flies around in case Nirvana's on to something and that helps you have more universal human compassion, writes a list of arguments for delay and strategies for delay which she will make if Keltham seems like he's in fact possible to persuade about that, and then soothes herself with Abrogail assassination plans until Keltham comes out of his tent.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

He comes out!  Lookin' great!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey. You are right that probably it does not advance our goals to just blow up Cheliax, and I appreciate you not responding to that by telling me I was too much of a child to be here and letting me figure it out myself. I know that it is really hard for you to work around the ways I am unpredictable to you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, don't expect any forgiveness for it.  Both of us are under too little stress and have had too much time to relax already; cutting each other any slack would only make things worse."

Permalink Mark Unread

She stands there blinking at him for solidly several seconds. 

Permalink Mark Unread

- he's joking. And he made it really really blatant so you couldn't possibly miss it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, okay. I have some ideas related to buying more time but I think there's some confusion I need to resolve first about why it feels like my ideas for delay are - not landing, or are threatening to hear -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry.  I worked that out, once I had time to stop and look back.  It's because I want so much for all of this to be over and done, and I'm glad that the story gave me a time limit because it means there's only so long I have to hold myself together."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Well, maybe you want to see Carmin about that or something, if it's - not the kind of thing that stops being true once you notice it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Carmin is not able to help me on issues like that.  Nor Fe-Anar, nor she who calls herself Minor Character, nor Sarcini, nor Ione Sala when I see her.  Help me think about plans, yes, about other people, yes, internal issues no.  If I cannot solve them myself they are not solvable by their advice."

"I will at least decide consciously how much risk I want to take of unnecessarily destroying the multiverse in exchange for doing this faster, including as a selfish bargain within myself, rather than making that decision unthinkingly."

"I realize this is a mode of thinking you're uncomfortable with, but given that the story is forcing you to work by persuading me, anything genuinely important that you need to persuade me about, is something I can probably be persuaded of.  It is not the slightest bit uncommon for the big villain of a dath ilani story to get talked out of it, there just has to be some clear reason the villain didn't think of the argument himself.  And tropes aside, it is very hard to get a dath ilani to just shut you out and stop listening by making one mistake at him, when we already have an established relationship like this one.  That element of the story may come with time limits for you to think of the right argument, but it won't be sudden-death."

Permalink Mark Unread

Exactly what he said except replace 'dath ilani' with 'me, Keltham'. 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"I think - that if you find yourself wanting to let your selfish priorities rule at substantial expense to plan success, that would be completely fine and understandable, and in that case we should give the million diamonds to the church of Iomedae and go hide somewhere until it's all over. If you are going to be selfish, be selfish enough to not do any of this to yourself; don't be just unselfish enough to decide you owe it to the universe to try and not unselfish enough to give it the kind of try that can actually succeed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sadly these kinds of internal emotional arrangements often lack the kind of clear-cut structure that would make that a crushingly valid argument, and not every optimal strategy is at an extreme of the action space though they usually are.  Congratulations anyways on making the sort of argument to a dath ilani that even Ione Sala would not have known how to make."

"To check, because it's something that I'm nervous about, what did you understand about why not to destroy Cheliax immediately?"

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"Lots of people have probably had the thought you might want to destroy the world, but they know you're a first circle wizard with a little bit of alchemy and so they're not very scared of you. Once you do something big, they'll recalculate, and that probably reduces how much time we have. You already threatened to destroy Cheliax, and Abrogail might've believed you, but other powers in Golarion didn't, and the gods don't know you're capable of it. We don't want them to know until it's too late. They might do what Otolmens did about Nidal and just steal all the diamonds, or change physical law, or squish you, or something.

...also we're almost definitely underground in the Ostenso nonintervention zone and I might hit us by accident."

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"Heh.  Yes, that was the overriding reason not to do it in two hours.  Lrilatha sent me a message swearing that Otolmens wanted me back in the nonintervention zone, and demanded that I go there in Otolmens's name, guaranteeing my safe-conduct in Ostenso if I did and that Cheliax would not act on Lrilatha-derived knowledge about where I was.  I negotiated some on what I could get in exchange from Otolmens and Asmodeus.  Everybody here shares my diplomatic immunity if they want to visit Ostenso, and Otolmens has up some kind of further noninterference field around this mini-vault."

"I still keep up Mind Blank at all times and so should you per agreement."

"Did the Iomedaen or Fe-Anar manage to explain to you why it mattered that I still hadn't killed anyone?"

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"She thought that it'd affect you quite a lot, and you didn't have any way of knowing how much, and so I shouldn't think that we'd get more functional Keltham-time out of killing people, especially not out of something like killing everyone in Cheliax and sending them all to Hell."

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"That's... not exactly it.  You know, on second thought, I should not have hoped Carmin could explain that, I forgot how much nobody from Golarion can explain anything to anybody even when they do know."

"It's that - when Cheliax is destroyed, that's - throwing away all hope that Golarion is, glad to have known me, in an unmixed way.  Even with Cheliax taught to refine more spellsilver, there's still a chance that it'll end up okay, if the gameboard can be changed to make it winnable for Good.  I could think of something when I'm much much smarter and not need to release Rovagug or destroy Absalom at all."

"It's - the saying out of dath ilan goes - don't be swift to throw away your deontology.  Don't rush to break the Light, shatter the alignment of - all the different ways that something can be Good, all lined up on the same side.  They can't always be aligned, but while they can be, you keep them together."

"You don't always wait until literally the last minute to kill.  You don't wait literally as long as possible if that comes at a huge cost in failure.  You don't take any other plan no matter how terrible.  But wiping out Cheliax early, so that, you think, my mind will be more focused on long-term planning - that is not reason enough.  You can't be that eager.  You don't, go looking for, plans that make you do something like that, and then go, oh, well, that's what the expected utility numbers say, better go do that then."

"Your self who erased her memories might have understood that, when she sent you to buy back the souls of the Project Lawful researchers, especially if she knew that Peranza or Asmodia needed rescuing.  Or she understood how her Keltham would have thought about it, at least."

"You keep the last threads of the Light alive for as long as you can."

"That would be true even if we weren't in a story."

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"I....don't have a hard time imagining believing that. I have a hard time imagining believing that and also thinking that unusually unpretty bits of Greater Reality should be scrubbed out of the face of the universe. 

I can't imagine any planet that, knowing everything, would hope to have you land on it. I understand preserving - the state where that's not true - in the same way as wanting the people who worked for you, Peranza and Asmodia, to be better off for it. But once you've thrown that out anyway..."

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"I won't throw it away until the very end."

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"I am not actually sure that makes any sense as a decision procedure but I appreciate you explaining it. I have in fact already killed people and will do so again if it seems like the best thing for me to do."

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"The negative utilitarian is usually the honorable one.  Never wanted to hurt anyone at all.  That's what makes them such tragic villains."

"Not really how I thought of myself, before I came to Golarion, but there you go."

"...I continue to think that you did not understand at all the point about why you go 'let's die in a fire together' to conditional Zon-Kuthon who will build Xovaikain unless you pay him 5 gold pieces.  It's not about that part of reality being unpretty, it's about that counterfactual branch being one that you didn't want to end up in so you don't give agents retroactive incentives to create it.  There's an entire philosophy of decision theory which says that the very act of making a decision is annihilating all the branches of logical possibility where you made different decisions, and that the principle of rational choice is to choose so as to unmake all realities except the one where you get the best outcome -"

"You know, maybe let's just pick that up again at INT 29."

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"Sounds good. Right now I feel - threatened by decision theories put forwards by people who don't share many of my values, I feel suspicious that tucked into the justification somewhere is an assumption that I find horrifying. Probably when I feel competent to derive most of it myself I won't feel that way about it anymore."

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"If it's not the same decision theory used by all the gods, they screwed up, or we screwed up, or dath ilan didn't teach me real decision theory because it was too dangerous."

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"Yeah. Any of those seem kind of plausible."

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"I wouldn't say it's that plausible that dath ilan screwed up.  I - still don't think you properly grasp a difference of scale between Civilization and me... nevermind."

"Do you have anything promising for plans to allow us more time to work?  Especially if there's resources we need to gather now, or decisions we need to make soon rather than at INT 29?"

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"So, one, I think that you should be willing to wait until the point where Cheliax tells you that there's a child ensouled, you don't have to preempt that. You intend to either destroy the world or fix it; if you destroy it, there's no reason to think that the child will wake up somewhere else, since there's no - thing that you care about, there, just because there's a soul, there's no mind with continuity of memory. That buys a week or two. 

And two, well, I may in fact have a bias towards plans that involve assassinating Abrogail, for personal reasons. But I think that Cheliax without a Queen - or, uh, with me as Queen, if we see a way to swing that - would also not invade Osirion immediately."

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I must say, that went rather well, all things considered!  Apparently We put Keltham over some critical threshold of being slightly less traumatized, where he doesn't just accept the Wishes from Carissa as reparation because that's the utilitarian thing to do; and Carissa figures out his real plan before handing over the Wishes, but does so anyways; which utterly changes the dynamic between him and Carissa; which causes the resulting conversation to be absolutely nothing like any possibility that Nethys showed Us!

And Carissa even seems to be talking Keltham into waiting past his calculated ensoulment time, which completely throws off all of Our schedules for everything according to what We previously thought was the plot!

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"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," screamed the god.

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Cayden Cailean, I genuinely modeled You as having more tolerance for spontaneity than this.  You literally became a god on a drunken dare.

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And as I've tried to explain many times to My followers, often in Elysium, when I managed to pull Myself together as a god afterwards, My very first thought with My vastly increased intellect was that going for the Starstone while drunk had been an ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE IDEA, even IF it had happened to work that one time.  The concept of doing stupid things while drunk does not prohibit the concept of regretting them afterwards.

A lot MORE people are going to die if We don't know how to time evacuations, but We can't exactly ask Keltham to set a hard date and deadline, while We are carefully not encouraging him in any way whatsoever to do any of this.  They're still on a time limit and still going to make mistakes but now neither they nor We know exactly what their time limit IS!

And even that desideratum completely pales next to what happens if We've fucked up the main story logic on any number of possible levels, or if this is happening because Nethys lied to Us about the real goal of His walkthrough.

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Indeed.  So now it's time to shift to improvising everything that remains to be done!  Flexible schedules for all the new plans!

Cheer up, Cayden Cailean!  If nothing else, this gives Pilar Pineda more time in which to eat You.

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It's not like that between Us.  Seriously, it's not.

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And yet it's still a beautiful young thing who ends up consuming that much of You.  Somehow.

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Carissa spends the next several subjective days building a wall of sorts so she can keep all the considerations in her head at the same time. Here's how we might try to take Avernus; here's how we might try to use my compact and other forces in Hell to side with us in taking down Asmodeus; here's how we might finagle the release of Rovagug so there's a chance of survivors; here's how things might turn out if we go home and leave this to Iomedae.

 

 

To her enormous irritation, there's a strong argument for the threaten-Pharasma plan. It's not one anyone thought of, possibly because it doesn't matter to anyone but her. In any plan for a war with Hell or in Hell, billions of the current inhabitants of Hell will die. Keltham thinks this is good, since they want to die. 

Carissa...grudgingly acknowledges that they get to consider that an improvement over their current situation if that's how they feel about it, but it's still an almost-maximally-bad outcome for them. The man she interrogated about rumors in Egorian hoped for Abaddon, and he wasn't wrong to hope for Abaddon perhaps, but that doesn't mean she'd have been doing right by him by giving him Abaddon. She'd have been doing right by him by giving him other options he in fact preferred to Abaddon.

If they get Pharasma to give them Hell, they can make things better for the entities in it, instead of giving up on them. If they do anything else, probably several layers of Hell get destroyed. 

Devils don't particularly want to live. She can see why, now; it has to do with Aspexia's favorite concept, corrigibility. Something that really really wants to be alive is a notably worse slave than something without any such strong wants. 

Obviously, a great horror was done, when they took the shattered formless soul of someone like Carissa and shaved away the part where she wants to live. But she doesn't think all the horror was done there. Some of it has not yet been done, and will be done when they in fact kill that person using the fact they no longer want to live very much as justification. 

If they do the Pharasma plan, she puts on her wall, they should arrange to be able to fix the devils and the paving stones. It is worth some risk - not, in Carissa's calculation, very much risk - but some risk of losing everything, for the chance of saving those souls too.

She doesn't talk to Keltham about Cayden Cailean and Nethys, but her guesses about what they want make it onto the wall too. They encouraged her cult on purpose. Why? How does ascension even work, does it matter if she has a cult? Should she be encouraging her cult? Would Pharasma care who all the Lawful Evil humans think should be the Lawful Evil god? Can Pharasma even see that?  Why would Chaotic Good want a Chaotic Good god eaten by a Lawful Evil one? What are they getting in exchange for that, or is it more that - only in that manner can any compromise at all exist between Hells Keltham will permit to exist and Hells that Asmodeus will?

What is Asmodeus, at His core? What are the most essential features? He's not, actually, the god of torture; are there Hells without torture He'd abide?

What is the minimum guarantee from Pharasma they'd need to be confident they'll get to keep building Civilization? Can Abadar be trusted to look out for that? If He's handed a specification? How could Abadar not know something important to His domain He's been trying to understand for a long time, what kind of limitation is that anyway? Is it fundamental? If it's unknowable to Him presumably He wouldn't be trying to learn it, right?

How important is Golarion in the multiverse? How much do they lose if it's lost? Are there alternatives to destroying it? Are there alternative distractions that'd let an ascending god slip through? ...Zon-Kuthon's in a vault, right? Can Iomedae be persuaded to let Him out? Is that even worse than Rovagug?

What would Hell be like if it wasn't stupid? Forget what both alien entities hostile to human values - Keltham and Asmodeus - want here, what would Hell be like if it was a place for Lawful Evil as it abides in human hearts? What would the place Maillol should go be, if it wasn't Hell? If he'd turn down Nirvana, not wanting to be smoothed away into something Good?

 

 

It is actually only the second most complicated Wall she's dealt with recently but for the first one she had Asmodia and Korva. They're thinking that resurrecting Asmodia, even if Hell let it go through, would be a giveaway about who Carissa works for now. Carissa is less sure that going to the Gardens is impossible, especially since they still should talk to Erecura about anything related to Pharasma-negotiations. Most importantly, Erecura stole divinity from Pharasma and Pharasma doesn't seem notably weakened by it. Is She a different kind of thing than everyone else? If so, what about Rovagug made Him a danger to Her? Was it something about prophecy not working around Rovagug? Can they get them some of that?

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He spends most of the time alone, wearing the +6 Splendour headband and using no other enhancements, even as spells.  If the nice comforting deadline has been removed on how long he needs to hold himself together with solder and duct tape, then he needs to recover and put himself together now that he's in time dilation...

Is his will failing, here?  Possibly.  Being able to keep up a storm of work for three months on Project Lawful when everything is going great and you are having fun and in a lot of supportive relationships and your problems are fundamentally way way easier, is not the same as being able to work continuously under his current conditions.  Even with a +6 Belt of Mighty Constitution.

 

He will, if he gets a look at Carissa's wall or checks in with her on what she's thinking about, remind her that she cannot plan to threaten Pharasma by proxy.  If she expects him to threaten Pharasma successfully, and prefers that outcome, she cannot help him with that in any way.  Carissa can try to reduce associated harm to herself and Pharasma, maybe, if her method doesn't hinder his plans, but she can't plan to threaten Pharasma.  That is the whole reason why Good couldn't do this earlier.

The fact that she came up with her plan to delay Cheliax's invasion and give him more time to work, while still in utter horror at his plans generally, is helpful.  That shows Carissa wasn't threatening Pharasma by proxy, in trying to give him more time to work.

But if she's started thinking there's a case for being less than utterly horrified with all this, that is going to require him to be much more careful in considering Carissa's further suggestions to make sure that they benefit Pharasma as well as himself.

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"Yes, yes. I promise I still want you to stop all this and go home. But when I'm working on alternatives I need a calculation of exactly how bad your plan is so I only present you with alternatives I genuinely think work out better by my values in expectation."

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The old saying 'why trust what you can verify' out of dath ilan seems to apply with some small degree of additional force when one wrong thought not even inside his own mind potentially destroys the multiverse when it could otherwise be saved.  So he is, in fact, going to be doing some extra checking and reminding here.

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She does not, actually, mind. Keltham trying to make sure they don't accidentally blow up the world is the most sympathetic remaining thing about him. ...that and his smile when he succeeds at casting a complicated spell.

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After some recovery time with only Splendour boosted, he tries getting a Fox's Cunning, which takes him to +4/+0/+6 (over baseline 18/16/14, innate +3/+4/+5).

When nothing bad seems to happen to him after a few minutes, he applies an Eagle's Splendour to himself, and takes off the +6 Splendour headband, which takes his stats to 25/20/23.

It... does not appear to send him back to the way he was before... his emotions weaken but do not vanish...

So he puts on the +4/+0/+4 headband, before the spells run out, to stabilize his stats at 25/20/23.

You can't really get much done with only INT 21, is the problem.  He doesn't know, in retrospect, how dath ilani who are only +2sd Intelligence get through life.  He sure didn't get far on +0.8sd... well, probably it's that nearly all dath ilani never try to do anything really complicated.  Or if they do, they take a lot more time to do it.

And he goes back to work, or tries to.  He is still, tired, inside.  The lack of a concrete deadline on how long he needs to keep this up, is not helping.  Especially at only Splendour 14+5+4, which, he suspects, does not end up the same thing to a dath ilani, as Splendour 14+5+4 is supposed to be to most Golarion natives.

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But INT 25 is enough for him to go back to his MSOM (Magical Simulation of Magic) crafting attempt.

He's gathered, by now, that Baseline is not the key to wording Wishes, that there is something that takes language and goes from there to a spellpattern and that is why Wish phrasings matter so much.  When he gets to INT 29 he will cast Arcane Sight and Haste and watch his other stats getting Wished-up by efreeti, possibly get efreeti to cast some other standard Wishes just to watch those, and maybe at INT 29 he'll be able to make a standing leap to some understanding of how Wishes turn into spellforms.  Hand-building an emulator of magical physics, or even trying and failing to do that, seems like it is plausibly on the critical path towards his being able to do that later, if anything is.

Building his Magical Simulation of Magic would probably be any degree easier if he had Carissa Sevar's kind of Spellcraft.  But not that much easier, to be honest.  He's got his own Armillary Amulet now.  Most of the challenge, fundamentally, is coming up with any system of magical physics with a visible subsystem that emulates an isomorphism of magical physics.  Not making the process happen, coming up with any process with that property.  Crafting ad-hoc supports for holding the systems together...

Well, he could, in fact, go a lot faster between trials and errors, if he was better at crafting spellsilver into magical supports and then tweaking the crafts.  But the item-crafter he has on hand, in his base, is somebody to whom it takes longer to explain what he's trying to accomplish, each time and tweak, than it does for him to try the tweaks himself.  At least this way he's learning himself, at INT 25, and speeding up at the exact form of crafting he needs to do.

 

...he gets another Eagle's Splendour and swaps to his +6 Intelligence headband, and, yeah, with stats of 27/20/23 it feels like he is able to make real progress on a couple of his current challenges, for the few minutes it takes before the Splendour is about to run out, and he has to put his +4/+0/+4 headband back on.

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Changing abilitystats, he suspects, is not actually good for him.


Not as bad as swapping Wisdom up and down, forming new mental skills and circuits that depend on a certain kind of boosted reflectivity which then abruptly vanishes just as his brain was getting used to it.  Bumping Wisdom up and down is probably literally the worst idea.  (The worst idea inside the realm of practical abilitystat manipulation, to be clear, not the worst idea in full generality.)

But even Intelligence going back and forth between 27 and 25 is maybe not as good for a dath ilani brain as he would have liked, in an ideal world.

 

It's time for a conversation that he's really dreading, and if he was significantly less calculating, or less reflective, or had less force of personality, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to say it.

He is going to try to explain that he thinks all the changes of abilitystats are really not good for him, and then, ask Carissa for her headband... more or less for the foreseeable future.  She can have all of his own augmentation items, they can spend even more money on Wisdoms and Splendours, but - if the time she's bought is going to mean anything, and if - it's considered a good thing that he holds himself together - he needs a constant statblock, and he needs that statblock to have INT 27.  There's not, really, any other obvious way to achieve that, unless he's missing something.  It's not even - obvious - that it would be an especially good idea for him to take off the headband - her headband, Carissa's headband, for which she sold her soul - while he is sleeping.

...he'd tell him to get lost, but Carissa has surprised him before; she is stronger than he.

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"How's it going."

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He will lay out the situation: he needs INT 27 not INT 25, he could probably benefit from more Wisdom but bouncing Wisdom up and down is likely to be bad for his brain, dropping to Splendour 19 isn't likely to be good for him either, bouncing abilitystats up and down in general seems plausibly to have not been good for him.  Possibly very not good for him.

Here are some expected utility calculations his INT 25 self tried to do from the Carissa / Pharasma point of view, double-checked for a few minutes of INT 27, though this is more of a Wisdom-laden task and he has not dared to augment Wisdom yet.  The primary point is that he can in fact get to INT 27 using his +6 Intelligence headband, and get work done that way, and would have to do that, and would do that, to get the basic capabilities he needs.  He would just, probably, damage his emotional and mental stability in the course of doing that.

He will keep his voice very dispassionate and his face expressionless, as best as Splendour 23 can boost a dath ilani doing that.  Showing any emotions to Carissa would be emotion-bombing her, under the circumstances.  The underlying extent to which he is holding his sanity hostage against her, even as not technically a threat, is horrible enough already.

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"You want the headband."

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For the foreseeable future, which is now less foreseeable after extending their intended work time.

He has a complete set of individually +6 headbands, a +4/+0/+4 headband, a +2/+2/+2 headband, he can pour any non-project-torpedoing or non-hand-tipping amount of resources into acquiring more scrolls of Owl's Wisdom or Eagle's Splendour, Carissa Sevar is not as restricted as himself if she wants to try renting the Pharaoh's +4/+4/+4 or finding somewhere to buy a +6/+6.

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"Okay, some considerations. One, I want to show up and encourage my cults in Vudra and in the Kelesh Empire and in various other places, I suspect it improves the odds of Pharasma working with you or the odds I don't get squished mid-ascension or something in the genre. I think I need to be wearing the headband for that for maximum credibility. I could conceivably do that right now and give it to you later today after 20 hours of cult-cultivating, or I could conceivably do it while you sleep if you're all right with me having it while you sleep, but it'll be bad, I think, if I don't get to do it at all.

Two. I do think things will go better if you're smarter. I also think they'll go better if I'm smarter and separately from benefits of me being smarter I think they'll go better if I, uh, am someone you respect and listen to? And I think we're kind of already on the fringe on that front and if you're notably lots smarter than me you won't in fact listen to me at all, and I'm scared that'll make things overall go worse. 

I'd agree in a heartbeat if you'd agree not to go ahead with the overall plan without my say-so - not expecting you to agree to that, just, trying to figure out sufficient conditions and might as well name the obvious one. 

I think I'd agree if you agreed to - let some worlds live that seemed not quite worth it to you but close enough you weren't sure, some marginal ones - I don't know what agreeing to that would look like -

- and, uh, most of what I'm using Wisdom for is not getting really mad at you every time you open your mouth so if you were able to do that on your end maybe I could just do the headband of intelligence and it'd be fine, but I know it's hard on you when you feel like you're the only one reaching across the divide, and I really wouldn't be able to do much of that, without the Wisdom headband, it's hard even wearing it."

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"I could do the marginal thing.  Don't expect to run into many marginal cases, but - if I do - sure."

"It's funny how, now and then, and despite a lot of things, I get the feeling that you are in some deep sense a better person than I am.  I mean, Carmin probably wouldn't even think it was funny, she'd just say, sure, Carissa would have grown up to be a much better person than you, given better circumstances, and now that's starting to shine through."

"I - would not be very surprised if a good solution here, ends up looking like, my staying mostly out of your way, for the next ten days subjective, pending a trip to the City of Brass where you get your baseline Wisdom wished up.  After that point we'll both be INT 29 and it will be quite a subversion of my expectations if we - end up talking to each other the same way, after that."

"I don't trust my brain to be okay while I sleep, if transient scaffolding for my cognitive reflectivity gets erased while I'm doing that.  Let's frontload the Vudra and Kelesh visits."

"Do you expect to be okay with 6 points of sudden Wisdom loss?  I can try to locate a +4/+4/+0 artifact headband on an emergency basis while you're touring the local meetups of your fan club, but you'd be at less than max Intelligence so I don't even know if you would."

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"I think I'd rather have Intelligence. Wizards usually go much harder on Intelligence and it works fine so long as you can also be kind of an emotionally insensitive jerk, and you generally can, if you're a powerful wizard.

 

I'm not - trying to be Good, here, I'm just trying to survive. I'm just in a weird situation where they're the same thing."

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"I'll let Carmin be the one to call bullshit on that.  You'll probably believe it more coming from her."

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"Okay. I'm going to go do cult cultivation, then. ....I'm going to burn something like 50,000gp in scrolls on looking cool and you are not allowed to complain about this at all."

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"Wasn't even slightly considering it.  Off with you, you need to talk to some of the people correctly relying on you for salvation, non-Good person."


(Notably missing from Carissa's compact with him: a specification saying that, if he does release Rovagug, Carissa shall not at this time be prevented from escaping to Elysium or the Maelstrom.  Both of those planes are supposedly infinite, and the Maelstrom in particular is supposed to ultimately head off into the chaos outside Pharasma's bubble; which would make it much more likely that you could escape Rovagug, starting from there.)

(He's not suggesting this clause, if she hasn't thought of it; because Carissa might, at that point, demand that clause in order to not fight it out with her own self-image, which clause would then potentially hamper her actually saving the multiverse and also force her to think of herself as a worse person.  It's just funny because, Carissa's real emotional priorities being what they actually are, she hasn't thought of it.)

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Well, you can't risk the entire multiverse for the sake of being more likely to survive its destruction!! If she were literally any of the other trillions of people in the multiverse she'd be so mad at herself for even contemplating that trade! 

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...anyway. Teleport and Fool's Teleport and Dimension Door and Damnation Stride and Firefall and lots of Vision of Hell prepared, check.

Scrolls to cast: Telepathy, Overland Flight, Spell Resistance, Programmed Image, Cloak of Winds, Getaway, Life Bubble, Contingent Teleport, Mage Armor, Spell Immunity, Greater Spell Immunity,  check. 

 

Some of these are necessary for her plans, some just sounded like fun and when is she going to get the chance to use the most bizarre spells Keltham's shoppers could find anywhere on the planet, if not now?

 

"Is there anyone here who's been to Vudra - I guess whoever did all this shopping must have gone -"

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That would be him.  Keltham has made his services, hired on a monthly basis, available for this little trip.

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Great. Does he happen to know anything about her cult in Vudra? She's happy to just be taken to a major city but if he knows where to start they can do that.

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He has not particularly been looking into that, no.  Among many other reasons not to, it's suspected by Keltham of being a Cayden intervention and therefore nobody is to talk to him about it.

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"Fine, where's your Teleport to."

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"I can do Indapatta, the capital.  Niswan in Jalmeray.   Sumadhadra, the most important port city for their trade with Tian Xia.  Those seem the most promising places to find your cult.  I could also, for example, teleport you to the undead-haunted Palace of Ivory and Bone, but I do not imagine that you are interested in such more exotic destinations, on this trip."

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"Let's do Indapatta. I think the undead are probably an unreceptive audience for pitches about how if you help me conquer the world you'll have eternal glory in Hell."

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Ri-Dul sets aside his distaste at the thought of a talented wizard embracing this nonsense; it is his foolishness, not hers, if he imagines that Sevar ought not to take advantage of such ready offerings.

Teleport to Indapatta.

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Indapatta as it appears to the casual visitor is not the largest city Sevar will have seen, for she has seen Dis; it will not be the prettiest single place she's seen, for she's seen Abrogail's quarters within the Imperial Palace.

Nonetheless, Sevar will have seen nowhere larger and more beautiful than Indapatta.

Indapatta is laid out like the concentric petals of a lotus, in circles of diminishing wealth.  The innermost blossom, called also the ninth circle or Flower of Indapatta, is the Imperial palace.  Ri-Dul's Teleport location is a discreet nook between two fine brick buildings in the sixth circle of Indapatta, the north-northeast petal of that ring of the lotus.  In the sixth circle of the city there are, if not the fabled palaces and menageries, at least fine gardens and streets of gleaming white stone.  Here you would find successful adventurers, expensive inns open to foreigners, homes for the higher tier of merchants short of the princes of merchant houses, shops that trade some of the more expensive things that can be bought with ordinary money.

Within sight of the nook, a robed monk sits chanting verses, beneath a well-tended tree growing up from a deliberate gap in the stone streets.  There is no begging-hat set out before her; the nearby places of business are paying her to chant those verses, as another land might hire a skilled singer to play a harp.  The monk's presence shows that this is a wealthy and Lawful place, where a refined traveler might safely seek to do business or find rest in a nearby inn.

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Huh. 

 

 

Cool.

 

 

(If you'd seen the world, Keltham, maybe then you would know that on every corner of it there is a fully sufficient reason you shouldn't destroy it.... but of course, that's not how Keltham works, and not, if she's scrupulously careful with her own internal muddles, precisely what she thinks, either; she would take some chance of destroying this city, to fix Hell. You do actually have to be able to trade things against one another, if you want to have anything at all.)

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Carissa will cast the last of her scrolls so that she can have more spells about her as she enters the nearest inn. She's told her Sleeves of Many Garments to imitate Keltham's clothes, except tailored to her; dath ilan may be horrible but they sure can do textiles. She's not concealing the crown. 

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All conversation halts, naturally.  She's a foreigner, she's wearing an obvious crown, she's the prettiest person anybody there has ever seen; any of these qualities alone would halt all conversation.

One man, possibly dressed as a monk - it's hard to tell, as a foreigner entering this land for the first time, who's dressed as a 'Vudrani monk' and who's just dressed as a Vudrani - is staring at her crown, and then leans over and whispers something to the man sitting next to him, whose eyes widen.

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Oh good. That's the reaction she was hoping for, but she didn't want to count on it. 

 

Who appears to be in charge here. 

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...Possibly the overmuscled man - folding sheets of food? into more complicated structures of food? - in a tiny kitchenette visible to the bottom floor of the inn.  At least, he's the only person who looks like he works here, and he does not, by jewelry about himself, look poorly paid.

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She wants to eat all of the foods of the world, and learn all of the customs, and ask so many questions and meet so many people -

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Not the time. 

 

She'll walk over to the man who seemed to recognize her. Not terribly close, both because that might seem threatening and because she doesn't mind if this conversation is heard, but close enough she's unambiguously speaking to him. "Forgive me," she says, "but I am new to this city, and know only in the vaguest of terms who I seek within it; may I ask you to help me find it? I cannot say that I am not dangerous, but no one of any land or any faith will be weaker for coming to my attention, in the long run."

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"Meaning no offense to the great lady, we have our own business to be about," says, cautiously, the man sitting next to the one who stared at her crown, the one to whom the starer whispered.  "You look like great wealth, but also like great complications to one's ordinary daily life."

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"I am that." Does the one who maybe recognized her have a different opinion.

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His eyes are flickering about the other magic items that Sevar wears, looking impressed.

Possibly this is somebody who can see magic?  Anybody like that would rather notice her crown of mithril, a lesser artifact shining with magic as though a full moon reflected from every part of it.

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She'll speak to him, then. "I am looking for My faithful, those Lawful Evil followers of Carissa Sevar, who think that Hell could be something more. If they have exercised enough initiative to have a temple of their own, I want to find it; if they do not, I want to rent a public space, a courtyard or an amphitheater or a stadium, where I may spend the day, and they may come and find Me if they dare."

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The language spoken in Indapatta does not distinguish god-pronouns, as Sevar may realize as she speaks the words.

"I don't know much about the Sevarian faith, except that it's very new," says the man she addressed.  "Maybe the seventh ring would have an ashram of her followers, if there's one in Indapatta?"

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The other man, who can't see magic, ahems and speaks in a lower voice.  "The city authorities are unsettled about the Sevarites, as a Lawful Evil faith claiming to be subject to Hell.  I believe it was announced recently that they are permitted to gather, but only under the supervision of priests of other recognized faiths.  Particularly Irori, as it's said that Sevar was herself a priest of Irori before renouncing him as Irorians do.  I would ask of a temple of Irori in the seventh ring, did I seek them."

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"Thank you. But my ignorance is even greater than you imagine. Which way would I go, to find myself in the seventh ring?"

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"Were you that new to this place, I'd seek a guide," says the one who can see magic.  "I don't know where a guide might be found, in this ring, they keep these streets free of urchins.  The owner may know."  He indicates the man running the kitchenette of folding food-squares.

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Sure. "Do you know, sir, where I could find a guide in this city?"

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To her Sense Motive he seems nervous, but perhaps that's only natural in her presence.

Most guides, even upper-class ones, would usually be hired in the city's outermost ring, the Orison, about one of the entrances.  By the time you come to his inn, it's assumed that you know where you are.  Leaving his inn, a block to the right there'd be a merchant's bank; a block to the left, a hiring-office for miscellany including of adventurers.  Either of those might know where to find a guide.

He could also try his own hand at giving directions, if the place she seeks is not far, and she could ask of any monks she sees, if she becomes lost.  Relatively few people dressed as monks are fakes who will try to guide travelers into traps.  Even fewer would dare try it on herself and her dire-looking escort.

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She is looking for a temple of Irori in the seventh ring, if he thinks he could give directions there.

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There's nine turns in the directions he gives; not something difficult to Intelligence 18+6 (as her headband boosts Intelligence), assuming this guy got all the turns correct.

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Yep, no problem. Probably, unless it's an assassination plot or something, in which case she should still be fine; there are beings who could assassinate her before Ri-Dul and she can Teleport out, but not many, and anyway if she gets assassinated she prevents the destruction of the universe so while she can't work towards it she can't actually make herself fear it. 

Nine turns, if they're where they're supposed to be.

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The guard posted about this entrance to the seventh circle of Indapatta does respectfully inquire of this wealthy-looking, magical-looking, incredibly beautiful foreigner, what she seeks there.

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"I am told that the following of Carissa Sevar is directed, in this place, to gather under supervision, and that I should seek them, or more about them, at a temple of Irori. I therefore seek one."

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He looks considerably more nervous of her, now, but grants her entrance.

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In the seventh circle of Indapatta, as seen from this entrance, there are mansions, exorbitant-looking brothels.  A fenced-off garden is set about with a hundred species of flowers; a few isolated pavilions within glow to her arcane sight with silencing-magics, though they don't quite look like the Avistani standard version of that.

Nothing that looks like an Avistani temple, at least not to her immediate vision.

Following the innkeep's directions will take her down a long, slightly curving, wide road from this entrance-gate, tracing the inner edges of the seventh ring of lotus petals.  Probably not the fastest way to get to her destination, but plausibly the simplest way if you didn't want somebody to need to follow even more turns.

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She doesn't actually mind sightseeing, though she suspects Ri-Dul does. Maybe after she does this she should do some magic item crafting with him to show him she's competent and not just a charlatan.

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Ri-Dul doesn't look bored, but doesn't look like anything particularly not-bored either.  "First time out of Cheliax, excepting the Worldwound?" he says.  "And of course that brief trip to Osirion."

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"And Hell. I haven't done a lot of tourism on this plane, though."

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"Don't expect the rest of it to look this nice.  Only a few places.  I do highly recommend Quantium; there is not much to Nex, but what there is, is lovely."

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"I want to visit Nex after I have talked things through with Keltham and am qualified to feel smug about how we handled our differences much better than Nex and Geb did theirs."

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"I do believe that is literally the lowest bar on a successful relationship that I have ever heard of, and I hope you'll forgive my frankness when I say that I wish to hear no more of it."

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That's an impressive degree of incuriosity, given the stakes. Which of course he has no idea of. Because they've hidden it from him. 

Whatever.

Where's the temple of Irori.

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They do appear to be entering the more religious section of the seventh circle, now.  It is theoretically equal in social rank to the mansions and expensive brothels, but you have to go through a gate to get there, one that looks like it would be rather more guarded going the other way.  There are no beggars in the streets here either, no urchins, but also not quite the same quality of carefully tended garden as was in the sixth ring.

It is known even in Avistan, to those Avistani who have learned anything at all of Vudra, that the Master of Masters is to this empire as Asmodeus to Cheliax, in the sense of not being thought mightier than Pharasma but understood to be preeminent god of this land and its pantheon.

If Sevar knows that much, she may correctly guess that the elaborate many-tiered building looming above all others in this lotus petal is dedicated to Irori.  Plausibly, continuing to follow this road and taking a right, as directed, would take her there in time.

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Also she can fly.

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She'll attract much attention that way, obviously, though not of an obviously dangerous-looking sort.  Fewer do fly about these streets than in Absalom.

In almost no time at all, then, she's before an elaborate many-tiered building that has been decorated, but not weakly.  There is nothing about this building that is thin, pretty in a way that is fragile, all ornamentation is wrought in metal and thickly enough that you could envision a hurricane sweeping this temple and leaving it essentially unscathed.

In the outer courtyard of what appears to be the temple's entrance, there is a tall statue of Irori, such as Irori is now reputed, this long time hence, to have appeared in his mortal life.  You must look hard to see that he is muscular beneath the simple robes he wears.  He strikes no pose.  The statue is clad in metal, and colored as some metals may be colored by searing flame of carefully controlled temperature.  It is colored, this statue, but not with paint that could be worn away by time or hurricanes.

(Obviously, those who truly understand Irori would consider this immense foolishness even so, but some effort has been made to annoy them less.)

Whatever business the many people in this courtyard were about will be negated by Carissa Sevar flying here, followed by Ri-Dul a respectful distance behind her.  Some gape openly, some do cast her more measured and dignified glances.  At least one of the people gaping at her unabashed looks like she might be a senior monk.

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She'll land at the base of the statue.

 

Senior monk it is, if she can correctly identify monks. "I am seeking the dedicates of Carissa Sevar, whose faith, I have been told, is asked to operate subject to the guidance of the Irorian faith here."

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"I wouldn't call it guidance.  More that our faith was asked to take responsibility for permitting such as is to be permitted.  As such, I'll ask you why you seek them, and also, I'm curious what brings you here out of Avistan for it.  I'd thought Avistan the center of Sevarism."

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"I am Carissa Sevar. Everyone goes to the same Hell, so I don't see why it should be a faith of any specific nation."

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"Well.  I was going to send you about your way with a younger monk to guide you, but you know, why don't I go with you along the way, and ask a number of questions I'm suddenly extremely curious about.  Whose answers, I'll warn you, I've no doubt I'll be repeating to a number of others."

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"You are welcome to accompany me, and to say anything you heard of me to anyone who'll hear it."

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The monk turns about and heads out from the courtyard, striding at exactly the quick speed that Carissa was flying when she came here.

"Are you a renunciate priest of Irori, to start, and do you also say as much in Avistan, for that rumor is recent and seems to me suspiciously chosen for Vudra."

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"It's true, but I've never said so save in Dis itself; other powers have intervened to take word of me around the world, and I imagine they chose the words that would be most persuasive. I do not know them to have spread anything false."

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"That sounds like it must be part of a fascinating story.  Do you also attest that you have a compact with Asmodeus that gives you all souls pledged to you out of Creation, if only you can conquer it?"

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wait how do they know

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- well, Cayden could've - just told someone - there's all Aspexia's and Abrogail's desperate efforts at secrecy confounded -

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"Do you, Carissa Sevar, conquer territories or hearts in Hell's name, be you fairly judged by Hell's Prince to be the most prime mover in such conquests, such unsold and unclericed souls from those lands and peoples as enter into Hell calling your name, in death as they called it in life and did you and Hell more service than disservice, shall pass into your custody or the custody of those in Hell you name your slaves or allies;

and when you have conquered three-quarters of Avistan all such souls out of Avistan shall be yours as well; when three-quarters of Golarion is yours, all such souls out of Golarion; when three-quarters of this plane is yours, all such souls out of this plane; when three-quarters of Pharasma's Creation is yours, all such souls out of Creation; while Hell's dominions of those lands and peoples last; and all this be annulled should you fail finally after death in being acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power, or should the yield in strength and wealth from those souls granted you be less than He accounts as ordinary from His subservient Powers of Hell; or should the Prince of Hell fairly judge you to have entered His despite in death or life," she says, with the (accurate) air of someone called on to recite these precise words frequently. 

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"And the foremost principle of your doctrine is the anathema of any soul being destroyed or ending; you promise mercy to your followers in Hell foremost because you fear that otherwise they might seek destruction in Abaddon."

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"....huh. That's not, descriptively, all that false of me, but it's not at all how I'd make the core argument. First of all, there's no mercy in Hell, and no one should go there wanting it; I can make them stronger, better, more capable and more alive than anywhere else will make them, and they should come to me for that. Secondly, the way I'd make the core argument, is:

outside places like Cheliax, who goes to Hell? Who do you think of as - the prototypical example, of a person you'd be unsurprised to learn found their way there, after trial?"

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"Someone who thought themselves aimed for Axis, but who greatly deluded themselves, as mortals do, about how Good all their actions would be judged by Pharasma to be, at trial.  Perhaps because they thought they had reasons.  Perhaps they did have reasons but not the kind Pharasma cares about."

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"Yes. It is rare for a person who isn't deluded, who is agentic and ambitious and acting in their own interests and not lying to themselves, to go to Hell. It has little to offer them. Cheliax is Asmodeus's experiment in creating a society that sends even its ambitious and interesting and competent people to Hell; it's a very expensive experiment, but I wouldn't call it a failed one. But what, then, is Hell made up of, what is the material He shapes into devils? People who were lying to themselves, or easily lied to, or who never bothered thinking about their afterlife at all, people who weren't very strategic. 

Asmodeus doesn't, directly, know how to fix this. I suspect He knows that the things that make mortals useful also make them harder for Him to see. I suspect He's dissatisfied with the results He gets from His extraordinary expenditures. But it's not the tragic situation it might appear at first glance, where this situation serves Asmodeus, but not mortals, so the stupider or more careless mortals lose and Asmodeus wins; it is worse both for Asmodeus and for mortals than a situation where Hell is a place people go on purpose, and where it can use their strength and make them stronger."

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He stays on track for Axis, pending fully figuring out his lich ascension, by checking with regular Early Judgment and routinely donating to Iomedae's Church.

Before meeting Keltham, Ri-Dul murdered a few extra people so he'd detect Lawful Evil to Keltham, whose notice insisted on that for whatever weird reason.  Obviously, he's running the most absurdly expensive form of True Resurrection insurance for the length of his employment.  After it ends Ri-Dul will donate enough to Iomedae's Church to get back on track for Axis, using a fraction of Keltham's payment.

Not that Keltham knows any of this, of course.

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"I assume you've worked out the rather obvious interpretation of events where Asmodeus has compacted with you entirely to deceive people into doing the Evil they always wished and held back from, once they have hope for Hell.  Backed by your hopeful following, you conquer some lesser nation in Hell's name and destabilize a number of others.  And finally fail to be judged a Hellish power, because your reasons were not cruel enough for Hell."

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"Yes. That would serve Asmodeus well, and me not at all; I expect that on some level He's hoping for it even if the utter triumph of my plans would serve Him even better, because He loves it when things work out that way. I, of course, think He underestimates me even correcting for the fact that He wants me to think that, and underestimates more broadly what's afoot on Golarion, where all the gods can hardly see at all."

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"I now believe the part where you're in fact Carissa Sevar and a renunciate priest of Irori, at least.  Either that or you managed to practice the part by studying Irorians of some true depth and aimed at convincing other real Irorians."

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"I've actually only met one other Irorite. It's a banned faith in Cheliax, you know. I didn't know renouncing Irori was a significant step in His faith, I just needed Him out of my way so I could sell my soul for that compact, this headband, fifteen Wishes, and some other things I needed for the next steps of my plans."

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"It heartens me on some level to know that we mortals can still get up to such nonsense with prophecy shattered and no more heroes out of prophecy.  You could see it as proving that, of all the trouble older heroes got into, at least some of that trouble was properly their own doing."

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Or Cayden's.

 

Whatever. 

 

"It's been an eventful few months since the god-war," she agrees. " - that was mostly not my fault. To be clear."

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"I perceive you to follow in the Way, then, of the seventh head abbot of the line of Avarkenesya, who summed up his doctrine thus:  There was a point where we should have stopped, and we have clearly passed it, so let's keep going and see what happens."

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"....not far wrong. Anyway, now there are people praying to me. I can't stop here."

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"I would never dream of telling you to stop here; not least because, if I did, you would never listen."

"- so said he who'd become the eighth abbot to the seventh.  I do suspect you could benefit from reading some proper books of Irorian doctrine, as much as it is obviously far far far too late for that advice."

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They're come now to a part of this lotus petal where there are less impressive buildings, and young people about the streets dressed in cheap robes.  Before them is a long single-tier building whose door is marked also with Irori's symbol, built of ill-mortared stone such as wouldn't survive a hurricane and ornamented in a way that will not stand time's ravages.

If you know anything of Irori's way, you know that Irori-as-a-mortal would sooner be found here than in his mighty temple, if there was anything here to learn.

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"In the rear courtyard of this place, the Sevarites are permitted to gather and train, and a second-circle of Irori watches over it," the older monk says.

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"How many are there, approximately?"

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"The largest gathering on Sevarism in Indapatta is said to have attracted a crowd of thousands but only a fraction of those would have been your faithful, and how many are here I couldn't guess; I only know that this place is where to send those seeking."

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"Want me to have a look?"

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"Sure." 

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Ri-Dul vanishes, and not even to arcane sight is there any trace of him.

A couple of rounds later, his voice announces that there are twenty-four in the rear courtyard, four with alignment auras, two of those Lawful Evil and two Lawful Neutral.

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Well, it's a start. 

 

She will cast some more spells for the purpose of having lots of spells about her - what further purpose would be needed? - and fly on in.

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At this time of day, most in Indapatta are about their other businesses, so the courtyard contains a mix of those who have no other businesses for whatever reason.  Half of those present wear the robes of aspiring initiates to the Way of one god or another; relatively nicer robes, the robes of those who have sponsors, who can afford to spend their day in search of themselves or at least somebody with some vague outward resemblance to themselves.  Teenagers for the most part.

The crowd skews heavily male; a visibly pregnant woman is a visible exception.  A man who looks retired, both in the sense of no-longer-working in his occupation and also being tired again after he was already tired, is an exception to the rule that that the crowd skews young.

Formerly the crowd's focus of attention was on a tiny woman - not a halfling, but not that much taller - who was holding forth in lecture.

As the stunningly beautiful crowned woman drops in out of the sky, of course, all attention shifts to her.

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She casts Vision of Hell. It's a fifty foot radius; it should get the whole crowd. 

 

 

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...that'll get a lot of screaming and around half the crowd starting to run away.  A number of people in this crowd have made their Will saves, but a fair number of those have also decided they have urgent business elsewhere.

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Yep. If they run away screaming at the sight of Hell they should, in fact, probably run away.

...if they have common sense and are departing because this situation looks plausibly deadly then that is not strongly indicative they should run away. 

 

She takes the spell down. "Perhaps I have come to the wrong place; I was told that here I would find Indapatta's acolytes of Carissa Sevar."

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The older man present, the one who looks retired, is completing the gestures of Detect Magic; a moment later, seeing much magic about her and little illusion, he kneels.  "Some of yours are here, Lady Sevar," he speaks loudly.  "Only a few of your best.  We can send for more, but it will take time."


Those who fled are largely already gone, for good or ill; it does not take that many seconds to empty yourself from a courtyard, even one transformed into a hellscape.  The pregnant woman, who was not running that swiftly, halts at the sound of this and turns about.

The older monk whom Sevar followed here is now also present.  There is a profoundly skeptical look about her, but she does not speak.

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"If it will take time then it is best begun at once."

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"Seek you the few who lead or the many who follow?"

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"I'll speak to anyone who wants to listen, however much they strike you as having any real potential. If they were playing a game, they may as well realize that about themselves as quickly as possible."

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"If it is those with potential, I can have perhaps a dozen here for you in an hour; many are about their work.  Do you come as the sun sets to another place of meeting, it can be fifty; did you announce your place and time of return to all, it would be a great crowd."

"Grandmerchant Taravind has sustained your cause here and he would be sorely disappointed to miss you; he is now about his work but I expect very interruptible by Carissa Sevar."

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"I'll come at sunset to a place, if you name it. I don't know this city. I cannot commit to return another day; should that change, I'll tell you when to expect me."

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"I will conduct you there, that you may return.  Will you speak with Grandmerchant Taravind before then?"

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"Yes. Tell me about him."

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"Your pardon," says the small woman who was lecturing.  "I understood yours was a Lawful faith.  The regulations of Indapatta require Sevarites to have a ranking member of Lawful Neutral clergy present, when they gather, one who assumes responsibility for that gathering's activities."

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The woman herself has a Lawful aura, as might be that of a person powerful in their own right or a cleric of second circle. "Are you the person who has assumed responsibility for the activities here?"

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"I was."

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"Do you have interest in continuing in that responsibility, or should I find someone else."

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"My interest was in the methods of reasoning that your faith teaches, as are said to make your followers more useful to you in life, and swifter to be molded into more powerful devils after their death.  While your followers were peacefully gathering to learn those methods - as, to be frank, seem to me to be readily strippable of Evil - I was ready enough to supervise and participate.  If that is to change, I will be no longer willing."

"Either way, I am not willing to take responsibility for the sunset gathering you propose.  I'm curious, but based on events so far, I could not tell the city I knew no harm would come of it."


(Carissa's Sense Motive will say that this person is terrified but doing a good job of covering that; her eyes flicker frequently to the more senior monk who is lurking nearby and not saying or doing anything.)

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It's farther than she expected them to get on their own. She's suddenly desperately curious what the lecture she interrupted was about, but it's not fair, actually, to ask the woman to tell her about it while terrified. 

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"I don't know no harm will come of it; but greater harm, I think, will come of my staying away. Thank you for your service to my following; I do not imagine that their purposes will change in the upcoming months, but if they do, they will be expected to conduct themselves such that you do not regret having been their sponsor."

 

To her guide. "Would you, or do you know any who might, assume responsibility for our gathering this evening."

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"I shall.  Let's keep going and see what happens."

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The man who knelt to her speaks again, after a moment where Sevar could have spoke did she so choose.  "Grandmerchant Taravind is the patriarch of the Taravind trading-house, which deals much in slaves.  He would not, yet, call himself one of your faithful; he backs us not for the Sevarite reasoning-methods, but because he is intrigued by the possibility of a place in Hell that would appeal to him.  I can tell you more of him along the way."

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"We should depart in a moment, then. Who owns this building?"

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"The Irori faith owns it," he says.  "It's managed by Abishek, a first-circle of Irori.  The senior present at this time of day would be Dhyana, who teaches meditation."


(The pregnant woman has now approached nearby, and stands with hands folded in the manner of one waiting to speak.  Her robes on a close examination are of relatively higher quality.)

(Obviously a number of relatively courageous others are handing not too far back as well.)

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"I would like to pay them for leave to inscribe something on the walls of this courtyard; can they be fetched for that?"

 

And she turns her attention to the pregnant woman.

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"My baby's father is in Hell.  His death was unexpected.  We'd planned to buy his way out later.  Your faith is silent on the matter, they say they don't know one way or the other, but - I thought, some people say - you'd maybe, provide a place, even for people like him, who weren't your faithful in life.  I wouldn't want to go to Hell myself, even to be with him, but I'd - give your faith almost anything else it wanted, to earn his place in shelter, if there was any shelter to be found in Hell."

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"Only in lands I've conquered do even my faithful come to me, for now; I have bought some other souls, for my own reasons, but I paid a price much higher than a Resurrection. If you don't wish to sell your soul for his, I have nothing to offer that's in your means."

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The pregnant woman bows to her, as deeply as a pregnant woman can manage.  "Thank you for your honesty, Carissa Sevar," she says.  "Your faith is a Lawful one, and I will always speak well of it."

She turns and goes from the Sevarite gathering.

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"Hell deals in souls and little else. Anyone who wants to purchase the safety of a loved one at that price can probably have it; at no other price can it be purchased, until much has changed." 

Where is she on permission to carve on the wall.

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Here's a woman coming forth that's obviously the meditation-teacher, if you can read Vudrani dress codes.  To Chelish sensibilities she reads as 'openly terrified'.

"I'm - Dyhana.  Somebody said that Carissa Sevar - you - wanted to pay us for something?"

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"This is the place where my following studies, and I want to carve onto the wall the words of my compact with Asmodeus, so that falsehoods that spread about it can be corrected, and no one hopes of things that won't come, or fears to believe in things that will. If it is your wall I'd carve on, I'll compensate you."

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"I don't know - how we'd price that -" begins Dyhana.


"If you want it to endure for only a year, a gold piece will do," says the more senior monk.  "- depending on how things go, I shouldn't wonder if it endures for quite a longer time than that."

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"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."

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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"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."

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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."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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

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"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."

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.....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."

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

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"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."

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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."

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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."

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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"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."

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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.

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

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Tilt. If she gets into some kind of trouble she'll feel like an idiot; fifth circle wizards aren't actually invincible, if you take them by surprise.

 

In she goes.

 

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There's a wizard maintaining an arcane Detect Magic, standing in one corner of this large windowless private office, with a Lawful Neutral alignment and maybe 3rd or 4th circle by the strength of their aura.

Other notable room fixtures include a chandelier set with red-orange-yellow gems and crystals, lit in its center by a bound fire elemental; and the Petrified body of a slender woman with a pleading expression, from whose desperately outstretched hand now hangs a cloak and an umbrella.

Grandmerchant Taravind has a quick word with the wizard, his eyebrows climbing as a result, and then bows deeply towards the beautiful, crowned, highly magical woman now in his office.  He doesn't speak, for it's said that in Hell the most dangerous thing speaks first.

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"I am told that it is to your credit, that a cult of mine now exists in Indapatta."

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"I should hesitate to claim more than that I doubled or trebled its size, compared to what might've been, and much of your core following would have come to you either way, I imagine."

"May we speak frankly?  Urvihat in the corner yonder will say nothing of anything that passes here, and I promise the same if you do."

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"You have my word that I will not share your words with anyone." If there's something important to be told to Keltham or anyone else, Ri-Dul will say it. We're all Lawful Evil here; that's fair play.

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"I'll ask plainly, then.  How much of all this is real?"

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"The pact with Asmodeus is real. Neither of us lose anything if it goes unfulfilled, and I suspect it serves Asmodeus for it to be known, whether I make any progress towards it or not. It will delight devils to notify people, I think, that they failed to meet the conditions that'd make them Carissa Sevar's, even if such conditions are real and I a true power in Hell. 

 

The cult is useful to me because I intend to ascend. I might or might not conquer some planets first; we'll see how various plans work out."

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"By compact they need only serve yourself and Hell in life, and call your name in life and death, do they not?  So your disciple said.  And what do you intend to make of any souls that come to you in Hell?"

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"Underlying the lessons circulating as mine there is theory related to devil-making. I understand why Asmodeus made them without creativity, without perfectionism, without all-surpassing ambition. But I don't like what it made Hell into, I don't like that so many with Evil in their heart try to suppress it all their lives lest they end up there.

I see his aim, and I can achieve it while preserving more of what makes a mortal Lawful Evil and deserving of Hell in the first place."

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"Mm.  I harbor some resentment towards the current Prince of Hell, I do admit.  Being a merchant in the slave trade means you cannot buy your way into Axis, as do so many adventuring villains whose activities are far less useful and economically important than mine own.  Each slave I trade is accounted more Evil than my entire profit donated to charity would be Good."

"I would consider it reasonable to go to Hell, if Hell would only treat me the way I treat my slaves.  They aren't punished if they don't misbehave, I train them in ways that make them more profitable, I feed them plainly but enough that they can put on muscle if not fat.  I do my best to sort them into occupations suited to them, as is profitable, and I'd say in most cases, kind.  I don't sell girls to brothels until they're of age, or underage boys either.  Many succeed in purchasing back their freedom or winning it as favor from a kindly master.  If they lived an eternity I imagine they would all be free in time."

"I only inflict finite discomfort on slaves who pass through my hands.  I refuse to accept that endless extreme torture is reasonable justice for that.  Even Good, by all accounts, agrees with this."

"I've summoned a contract devil to see if I could negotiate a more reasonable fate, but the degree of servitude they wanted to Asmodeus and Hell in exchange was frankly unacceptable to me.  I am simply not that fearful of taking a Plane Shift to Abaddon at the end of my life."

"We may be able to reach some amicable arrangement, Master Sevar.  Indeed, we could almost have been made for each other, I'd hope.  But I'd have a great deal more specificity of you, first, on how you'd treat my soul if it came to you in Hell."

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"It's interesting, that's not the story people told me when they were telling me how Lawful Evil you are. But letting aside who deserves what, which always seemed too Good of a question to be interesting to me - yes. People should treat their slaves in the fashion that maximizes their output and their motivation; in a way that gives them the opportunity to improve themselves and become more valuable and the incentive to do so.

You can shape people with torture, and sometimes you certainly should, but if people will get tortured no matter what they do they do worse. It is my intent to make every soul I own better and more valuable, to give them the means and the reason to grow, to let them rise by their own strength. But I don't, in fact, know your strength, so I'll make no promises about how far it'll carry you. Those who served me in life, and are presently dead, live in comfort and pleasure in Hell at the moment even though it took some doing; that I swear. I'm not going to turn them into shattered blobs of flesh later unless they really make a point of giving me no other way to make use of them at all; that I swear also."

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"Those who served you now live in comfort in Hell?  This I hadn't heard."

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"They're in Erecura's Gardens until I can go and get them. What my acolytes say of me is mostly true, but it's little of the truth."

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"Mm.  And what would it take to earn the same treatment, myself?"

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"They did some things of great value to me; one of them is owed at least a third of the credit for the fall in spellsilver prices" by keeping Keltham engaged for at least that long. "There is still much of value that can be done for me, but not nearly as easily; on my current shopping list, for instance, are Wishes, and a headband only slightly inferior to mine for a useful research assistant, and a conversation with someone who has travelled the Great Beyond to other worlds, and a Wish wording or set of Wish wordings that'd close the Worldwound, and some skilled high-level adventurers who could help me cleanly handle a succession dispute in my home country of Cheliax. It might be that my favor can be bought with just the cult in Indapatta, especially if anything comes of it, but a wise person wants more surety than that of attaining anything of particular importance to them."

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"Those asks are considerably advanced beyond the arenas I do fight in, Master Sevar.  What treatment can I earn in Hell from only backing your cult in Indapatta?"

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"If I succeed, you won't suffer except in the course of normal punishments for the sort of misconduct usefully corrected with pain, and will have the chance to retain who you are and try your own hand at shaping slaves in Hell. If your cult here impresses me greatly, I'll see about buying you protection in Hell."

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"What is the greatest intensity, greatest duration, greatest frequency of punishment that'd be applied to me at any time during my eternity in Hell?  Master Sevar, it's said that you were an Irorite priest albeit a Lawful Evil one, before you turned to this course; I know a merchant's ways might seem disdainful for you, but protection without specificity is no protection at all, in contracts."

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"I don't condemn intelligence; there's rather too little of it anyway. Should this be in my power, I will do to you nothing that you have not done to another, for no longer than you did it, at no less provocation; does that suffice?"

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"I'd have it be specific that it was nothing I knew had been done to any slave that I legally owned, during the time that I legally owned them.  And that I'm entitled to skip burning in Avernus before coming to your hands; even the devil I tried to negotiate with offered me that much."

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"Sure, I won't do anything you know has not been done to any slave that you legally owned, while you legally owned them, and I won't sell you except under circumstances where you'd have sold someone, and I'll exercise as much screening of buyers as you did. It amuses me, Master Taravind, for your eternal fate to be substantially bounded by how much the story you tell about yourself is true; I have no hesitations about slavery, but some annoyance at delusion."

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"I sold none to apprentice torturers, and I was offended to be asked.  I'd have sold none of mine to devils at any price I was ever offered.  Can we have the explicit understanding, then, that I'm not to be sold to any devil - or at least none who doesn't agree to abide by all these same rules?"

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"Yes, I'll agree to that."

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"And this is to be mine in exchange for supporting your cult in Indapatta?"

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"I'll compare it to the cults in other cities with less cooperative sponsors. If I'm convinced, evaluated fairly, you've done me a substantial service, and I do become a Power in Hell with the right to all those souls that call my name and do me and Hell more service than disservice, and you are among them, then you'll be treated in accordance with the terms I just described, and sold on only to anyone who agrees to them."

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He smiles slightly.  "I've spent about a hundred gold pieces a week on your cult in one way or another, in addition to lending it the weight of my name and speaking against a proposed ban of it by the city government - I have no weight at Imperial levels, but have some spoons to stir Indapatta's pot.  I hardly think it fair that my fate be judged relative to what sponsors in other cities have done, perhaps those who fear Abaddon more than I.  If I support your cult as I've already been doing, is that enough to win that much grace, from you?"

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"I have a feeling you could afford to double it."

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"So I could, though it's not clear how your cult could usefully spend the extra money.  I've spent a hundred gold pieces per week because they haven't rented any more speaking-places, or required more protection about their business, or found more criers to hire, than that."

"How about you simply don't sell me to anyone who hasn't agreed to abide by the terms of the compact, including that term?  And I'll offer up to two hundred gold per week support, if whoever seems to be your cult's current leader in Indapatta has requests as productive, fairly judged by myself, as those they've made already; for at least one year, and at most ten years or until I die or have myself petrified for a time, whichever comes first."

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"Twelve years, and you can't petrify yourself inside four." This doesn't matter at all but she can't tip her hand on being indifferent to anything that doesn't happen in the next two months. "And averaging two hundred a week, if there are requests as productive as those they've made already, but exceeding that sometimes, if, for instance, there's a spike in demand whenever I pass through town."

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"I expect that'll be acceptable to me.  I'll wish to write a formal compact and think on its terms before I quite sign myself over..."

"How am I to know if I've done Hell more service than disservice?  That's an element of the compact you were to seek with Asmodeus, according to what your Disciple said."

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"With that, I can make you no guarantees, except that Hell likes it when you damn people, and the rumor mill at least has it you enjoy that yourself."

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He smiles more widely, at that.  "I've never hired a Malediction and would never.  They damned themselves, and if any element of that was unfair, it's Pharasma who made those rules, not myself.  But since they went to Hell, I might as well profit in reputation from having their fates scryed and made known, and acting as if it were all my doing."

"I haven't done Hell any disservice that I know of...  Can I simply send gifts to Cheliax's government for that purpose?  You mentioned a succession dispute in Cheliax, is there anything I should know to avoid doing you a disservice there?"

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She smiles blandly. "Maybe send your gifts in a month once things have settled down."

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He smiles back, equally blandly.  "How long do you stay with us, in Indapatta?  I'd like some time to think over contract wordings and perhaps consult someone more knowledgeable in Infernal compacts."

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"I'd only planned to spend the evening, this trip, and to return perhaps monthly, if events don't change that. I have cults in many cities, and things keeping me busy at home besides. I'd want the increase in spending to start immediately, to take advantage of any opportunities my presence presents; I can wait a month to ink the deal, if you can."

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He hesitates slightly, and then nods to this.  "With the understanding that the timed terms begin running now, yes."

"Is there aught else I can do for you?"

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"Not especially. Pleasure doing business." - she pauses on the coat-rack as she stands. "Posed with Dominate Person, or natural?"

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It's something of a personality-test, that petrified woman: some joke uncomfortably, some compliment him, relatively few notice the improbability of petrifying somebody at just the right moment to produce an ideal cloak-holder.

"I told her to do it, and she did.  It turns out that even if you're not a fifth-circle wizard you can get a long way in life on just threats."

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"Heh, I thought so. Hell keep you, Master Taravind."

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"May you succeed in all your goals, Master Sevar."

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Well, she's not profoundly satisfied with that or anything but she is pretty sure, if it leaks, no one will infer that Carissa Sevar expects the world to end in a month, for better or for worse, nor that Hell, if she ever rules in it, is going to be very different. 

 

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He'll escort her from his place of business personally.  Being seen in Carissa Sevar's amicable company can only help his status in Indapatta; those who feared him before will be in terror of him now.

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She is happy to be a terrifying accessory to this guy, who does seem like the kind of person Asmodeus wants, including his desperate trying to avoid becoming Asmodeus's. 

 

 

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Parvansh is still waiting for her in the foyer when she comes there, of course, to escort her to the fifth-circle and the sunset's meeting-place.

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She's looking forward to it!

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...He can't fly anymore, though.  Does she want to do that again, or walk to the fifth-ring location?

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She can Fly him again, why not.

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Then they'll be able to approach the meeting-place very quickly.  Parvansh should probably be able to think of a million better questions, but the only one coming to his mind is whether Sevar got along amicably with Grandmerchant Taravind; they're both rather important people to Sevarism in Indapatta.  He'll ask that one.

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"We did! It's interesting to meet Lawful Evil people who aren't Chelish; they relate to it very differently."

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"How so?"

(He's still nervous about exactly how well they got along.)

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"I don't have it all figured out yet. I haven't, actually, spoken to all that many people outside Cheliax. 


Is he useful to you?"

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"He is the most powerful person associated with Sevarism in Indapatta.  People would respect us less if we did not have his backing; if they respected us less, fewer promising folk would come to us."

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"Well, it is my hope that you'll grow in prominence, and I am delighted to have been introduced to him."

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Parvansh begins to slow, and descends towards what was clearly a medium-nice inn, at some point in the past, and it's been kept up acceptably.  There's roses about the grounds and an old signboard proclaims this the Rose Inn.

"The gathering of those with promise will be called here, for sunset, if that's agreeable to you."

"- I hope I may say honestly to my superior, it will probably not be good for your cause here, if you then fail to appear."

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"It would take some very surprising event indeed to prevent me from keeping my appointment, and hopefully if that happens I can at least send an acolyte in my place. I think it very likely that I'll be there."

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"Should I warn them to expect a vision of Hell, on your arrival?  I - do think that those who fled, were not necessarily being cowardly, in doing that, there is something to be said about common sense, there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. It would be a shame to build a cult with no common sense. I'll do it, but I'll make sure, first, that they have no reason to think their physical safety is in question and that I am not going to grab and Maledict anyone as a demonstration."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So you will not be doing it on arrival, then, and I need not warn them about that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Correct."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there any - services, objects, codes of dress, any else that you'd have of us for your appearance here?  This will be a great day for Sevarism in Vudra, I think."

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"If there is anyone, among my following here, who would sell their soul, and if that's legal here, I would give them a very good price for it tonight. Beyond that - dress well. It's not an ascetic faith. I plan to make the world much richer, and Hell even richer than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

“Buy souls?  Can you - do that?”

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"I know some devils, and I can arrange for my own to be held as mine. I do not know if it is legal in Indapatta; even if it is, they might change their mind after someone does it publicly rather than in dire secrecy. I think there are lots of people who'd sell their souls, if they had time to think about it and if Hell was a better place."

Permalink Mark Unread

“I don’t even know if that’s legal and am - concerned that our Irorian sponsor will not be happy about it.  You could ask her, I suppose?  I would disobey city authorities for you, Master, but would wish not to do so openly without good reason.”

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is in our interests to knowably obey local authorities where they are reasonable. Mine is a somewhat threatening faith, and We don't want to invite crackdowns on it. I think I could assuage the doubts of our sponsor, were this legal, and were there someone who desired it, but it would need to be someone whose Way walks this path, as mine did."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's no harm in asking, Master, but I think it unlikely she will assent.  Indapatta is a very Lawful place by comparison to other places of which I've heard tell, but it is not so Lawful that something not being illegal is enough to mean that you, or she, can get away with doing that openly.  Were you to order word spread among us in private, and meet sellers quietly afterward - I think we could get away with that, if it were legal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Spread word, then, quietly, and I'll make arrangements for afterwards, just as quietly. If there's someone who wants a loved one returned from the dead, or ten thousand gold, or to wear my crown and see if it sets them on the path to enlightenment and to be generously equipped for where that path takes them afterwards.... I am very rich, and there are some benefits, in the pursuit of this path, for having chosen it so you can no longer dally about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your will, Master."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Go, then," she says, and smiles very beautifully and very terrifyingly, and turns around to look for Ri-Dul.

Permalink Mark Unread

He'll appear once this person is gone.

"You know, I once considered starting my own cult?  Today I am once again confirmed in my belief that, no matter how clever the magical tattoo I had invented to enforce loyalty, refraining from doing that was absolutely the right decision."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Awww, I don't see why not, this is fun." Except she does see it. It's fun if you like them, if you want to spend your time trying to comprehend them or if you enjoy their suffering.

 

Otherwise it's just -

 

- objectively speaking, getting people to sell their souls on the basis of a compact you're probably not going to fulfill is an awful thing to do, and no one could reasonably believe Carissa's going to be able to fulfill it. In a sense, any person she signs up is making a mistake.

It so happens that things are going to change very soon in objective time, and it's reasonably likely that either they'll be annihilated or that Hell will be much improved. 

But still, it's an awful thing to talk someone into. The reason Carissa is doing it is precisely that it's an awful thing to talk someone into. Word will spead, through Chelish spy networks or Hellish reporting, and they'll think - no, they'll know - that Carissa Sevar is not Lawful Neutral, is not planning to sell them out, because no Lawful Neutral person would talk people into Hell on the promise of making it gentler for them and then abandon them to it. She's pretty sure Axis wouldn't let you in, even if Pharasma was distracted by some shiny orphans you fostered or something. 

And so it'll be the proof she needs that she is still serving Asmodeus, and hopefully He'll keep that in mind, on some level, when He decides whether the world is worth fighting for. 

 

And the soul-sold? In the world where Keltham fails ignominiously and is crushed like a bug and Hell and the world stay the same?

Well, Carissa will probably be crushed too, in that world, so she guesses they'll just go to Hell, then.  

 

 

 

That anguish, the anguish she felt at having Olegario killed, the knowledge you could protect someone and they prayed you would and you decided to do something else instead ...... is almost definitely not why Ri-Dul didn't want to start a cult. Probably he had some entirely different problem. "Magical obedience tattoos?" she asks, taking his arm for the next Teleport.

 

Permalink Mark Unread

"A very clever solution in want of a problem.  I can show you the spell diagrams if we've the leisure, but you won't be able to do them until you reach seventh circle."

"Where to next?  Isfahel of Kelesh, Kasai of Minkai, Quantium of Nex, Oppara of Taldor, Absalom..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Absalom's the trickiest and I want to do it last, once I've worked out all the bugs. Let's do Isfahel next."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isfahel they Teleport, then.

Permalink Mark Unread

Carissa Sevar's Hell-worshipping sect seems to be illegal in Kelesh, just like the actual Church of Asmodeus, for some odd reason.

Highly illegal.

Like, "not a smart question for foreigners to wander in and ask about" illegal.

This particular squad of city guards was not much of a match for Carissa Sevar let alone Ri-Dul, and they could definitely disguise themselves if they wanted and continue, but there's a question of how to actually locate her worshippers in Kelesh.

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

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?)

Permalink Mark Unread

 

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.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

"...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.

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

What, uh, are all of the sects."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

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

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. 

 

What...else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"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."

Permalink Mark Unread

"....and those are, uh, doctrinal disputes they have with the other Sevarites?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, orthodox Sevarites would agree with all of those claims, but the general public doesn't know that and neither do most post-Sevarites, so it's a very effective message for recruiting more post-Sevarites.  A lot of them also have tragic stories about how they were raised in your sect as children, and ended up permanently stunted by all of the messaging about suppressing your emotions with numbers, or how they were fooled into giving away all of their gold to Effective Asmodeans, or traumatized by believing that everybody suffering in Hell was suffering because they couldn't manage to conquer a single country for you."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - how old is my sect in Taldor?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"About a month, according to Sevarite orthodoxy, but according to the post-Sevarites it's been hidden inside our country for the last decade.  The current outer face of orthodox Sevarism - if they acknowledge its existence at all - is a smokescreen put up by your true core followers who believe in replacing all of their emotions with numbers."

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"...so the people who claimed they were... raised by Sevarites and are so weak they ended up emotionally broken by it... are making that up? Why would anyone make that up? No one would ever associate with someone who was openly that pathetic! If that's the first move of a ploy the second move pretty much has to be dying in a ditch of tuberculosis!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's the redemption story that's standard for their sect.  They're claiming that they were that pathetic and are now no longer that pathetic, having been saved by the light of post-Sevarism.  Sevarism is just an extremely popular thing to be 'post', if you see what I'm saying.  Not actual Sevarism, the Sevarism that's been underground in this country for a decade, backed by multiple wealthy wizards, teaching people to replace their emotions with numbers."

"- to be clear, this situation is not my fault, it's one I inherited from my predecessor.  I've been making steady headway on it since then."

Permalink Mark Unread

Carissa is starting to understand why you might need torture to fix people sometimes. 

 

"Who else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose I'd be remiss in not listing This Part Of Taldor, since it contains many influential figures in Opparian Sevarism, but they don't have any doctrines, which is why they just call themselves This Part Of Taldor.  That is, they're people who find themselves drawn to something about the atmosphere of Sevarism, Effective Asmodeanism, and post-Sevarism, but that thing isn't any of the ideas or political positions and they aren't willing to affiliate themselves with those, but they do want to go to the same gatherings as us on a regular basis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do they want to go to Hell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'd have to ask them individually because they wouldn't acknowledge any collective position on the topic.  If all of them gave the same answer individually, and they found that out, some of them would probably change theirs to avoid having a collective position."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. And that's everybody?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Iomedaen Sevarists want to back you in taking over at least one country that Lawful Evil people could go to live in, so that if they died, they'd get better treatment in Hell, especially women who had to expose their babies and so on.  They're hoping that's much more scalable than current solutions.  Iomedaen Sevarists want as few people as possible to go to Hell, but if they have to go to Hell, they should go to Sevar.  Most of them think it probably can't work, but it'd be so important, if it was true, that they think it has to be tried.  They're led by Calpas, a supposedly reformed ex-mugger."

"Their core doctrine obviously contradicts our own, but at the same time, we try to look as close to them as possible, because that muddies the political waters for anybody trying to paint Sevarists as Asmodean or Evil."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have they picked a country they agree I can have?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Debating which territory is most of what they do during their gatherings, as I understand it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And finally the Mathematical Sevarists claim to be the 'real Sevarism' and go around openly affiliating with wizards, talking about mathematical methods and other such things that offend the public... fundamentally, I'd say that it's Sevarism for people who have no political awareness and no interest in acquiring political awareness and want to feel superior about their own lack of Splendour."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And their leader, you mentioned, is some wizard?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Their primary financial backer is Kurshar, a sixth-circle wizard who built himself a tower a mile outside of Oppara, and who's now famous for replying, when somebody asked him why not somewhere more fashionable, 'The land was cheaper there and I can Teleport.'  To give you some idea of what sort of man we're talking about, here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How pragmatic. I wonder what he's in it for."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not his place in Hell, I expect.  He bought his way to Lawful Neutral, and didn't even bother to hide the donations as most people in his position would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you never know, maybe Pharasma will revoke that exemption and he'll end up in Hell and wants to hedge his bets."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I rather think if that was the case he'd be backing us!  What he's trying to accomplish by backing the Mathematical Sevarists, I have no idea.  It can't be to make wizards look better, because the fact of wizards backing anybody will make them look bad and then wizards can't gain prestige from backing them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Truly a dilemma for wizards."

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A blank look is replaced by sudden alarm, as though of realizing who he's talking to.  "Oh, nobody thinks of you as a wizard except for post-Sevarists!  You're a nascent goddess and, anyways, real wizards don't look as good as you do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would I be right in imagining that in Taldor, mostly only wizards go to the Worldwound, as it's so far away?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The... Worldwound?  I'm not particularly aware of what goes on there; I know we have some treaty obligations there, but so far as I know, those are not relevant to real conditions on the ground."

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Carissa is going to chalk that up as more evidence for her theory that people can only really think if demons are trying to eat them. "I see. Thank you. I will speak to the other sects, and decide who, if anyone, to announce that I back. The most decisive consideration will probably be who is committed to going to Hell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do believe that I am the only leader in question who currently, actually pings alignment detection and registers as Lawful Evil.  The splinter groups, if they ping detection at all, tend Lawful Neutral or, in the case of the Iomedaens, Lawful Good.  The Mathematical Sevarists in particular openly reject that being currently Evil should be a condition for high rank in a Sevarist organization, because of some nonsensical reasoning about incentives.  Of course the post-Sevarists and This Part of Taldor, as don't even pretend to owe you allegiance, would presumably lean Chaotic."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That seems silly of them, and is certainly a compelling point in your favor! I will see if I can get them straightened out."

Permalink Mark Unread

He'll wait until this... thing is out of hearing range, and then ask, "Would you like to pay me to kill him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bit hasty, isn't it? Maybe everyone else is even worse!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, in that case, would you like to pay me not to kill him?  It would be somewhat of a default action for me, here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No murdering my loyalists for personal reasons, we're on an important mission here. I assure you that if all goes well and he comes to me in Hell I will very patiently rewrite his entire personality."

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"I had been thinking that I did not quite see the point of any of this.  And now, suddenly, I am thinking of people whom I would pay to Maledict, if by doing so I could send them to you and pay you to rewrite their personalities.  Painfully."

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"Oh, there's an audience I'm not yet serving!! People who would Maledict their enemies if only Hell took more specific service requests! We should start some rumors about that, though probably not yet, if anyone jumps the gun I won't get their offering. Maybe when we make rounds again in a couple of weeks. 

Where's this wizard who runs the maybe-not-hopeless Sevarite cult?"

Permalink Mark Unread

This situation (as is so often the case in Taldor) is only going to look even more and more complicated as Carissa Sevar investigates it further.

...possibly a lot of the problem here is that Sevarism in Taldor does not have a clear agenda that lines up with anybody's personal incentives?  In Vudra, at least, there was something of a map onto Lawful Evil Irorism and there being a place for those people to go that wasn't Asmodean Hell, and a daily activity of self-refinement that the monks there could readily recognize.  In Taldor, the closest thing to a clear agenda that makes sense in terms of anybody's direct goals, is Iomedaen Sevarism, which doesn't want anybody in Hell in the first place, and therefore would like Carissa Sevar to conquer a country as soon as possible.

What does Carissa Sevar think her followers in Taldor are supposed to do?  People will ask her this question with the air of somebody who never thinks to question, for a fraction of a second, that Carissa Sevar must have built this whole cult for herself on purpose and had some purpose in mind for it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ahahahaha yes absolutely, that's what happened. 

 

Carissa Sevar wants her cult in Taldor to sell her their souls. ...can she get away with that, though, or is it pushing them too far?

Permalink Mark Unread

It would help if there was some account of why, a larger plan into which this fits, a reason why this would be in anybody's self-interest (or other-interest, if Good).  People in Oppara are inclined to ask 'What's in it for me?' about as often as people do in Cheliax, but without the sense that defying orders will get them immediately lit on fire.

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She's going to ascend in - don't tell anyone, she tells them, knowing they'll immediately tell everyone - between four months and a year, depending how long it takes her to make some arrangements that'll be easier to make as a human than as a god. She expects that at that time, her cult will swell enormously as people realize it was real all along. As a new god, she'll be limited, but those who she owns she'll be able to easily work through, grant cleric levels, send visions, and command in her glorious conquest.

 

 

Permalink Mark Unread

People who seem willing to strongly believe this for purposes of shouting about it, will seem to sort of... suddenly back off, when it comes to selling their souls to Hell, on the basis of the promise that Carissa Sevar will be there to take care of them afterwards.

One gets the impression that a lot of Sevarists would sell their souls to her in exchange for large amounts of money, if they could be certain that Carissa Sevar would be there to receive them, and hammer them stronger.  Not all of her cult, not even half of her cult, but a quarter of it, maybe.  But - without that certainty - people are afraid even to go Lawful Evil, let alone sell their souls.

(The Mathematical Sevarists hold that this is a totally reasonable way for somebody to act given their current incentives and the payoff matrices.)

...she can find at least some people who think they're going to an Evil afterlife anyways, given their past decisions and realistic unlikelihood to do enough Good to work their way out from under.  Some people who'll sell out for a couple of thousand gold pieces, so they can at least live in wealth they never imagined for the rest of their lives, and maybe maybe maybe there'll be Somebody who cares about them, when that life ends.

It would probably be somewhere around five percent of all her followers in Taldor, if she had time to hunt more of them down.

Permalink Mark Unread

She really only needs, like, two, to ensure spies conclude she's sincere about the Evil, and Keltham doesn't in fact have infinite money so fewer is better.

 

The rest she'll charge with spreading the word. It might be the hopelessly muddled word, but probably whatever the best lie is to spread among Taldane people, that one will spread the farthest.

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Taldor is absolutely on spreading whichever hopelessly muddled or even completely imaginary version of Sevarism has the highest rate of people thinking it's cool to talk about or more likely derogate!

In fact, there's a fair number of Sevarists on board who came to join up with the imaginary decade-old version of Sevarism that post-Sevarists criticize, since that's the version that the greatest number of Taldorians have now heard about!  They're patiently waiting to get into the hidden inner circle where they'll be taught to replace their emotions with numbers.

Permalink Mark Unread

- you know what? Fine. If they want into the secret inner circle they need to listen to this lecture and then tell her what they learned from it.

 

She delivers the lecture she gave PIlar's ilani candidates about how to stop being muddled and made up of internal contradictions you're not looking at properly and adds some extemporizing about how to do things because they actually achieve your goals instead of just because they make it easier to look away from your own weakness.

Permalink Mark Unread

This probably works a lot better with an additional 6 native Intelligence points and some sort of, you know, artifact headband to wear on top of that.

People are very enthusiastic about this message.  Able to tell her what they learned from it, in their own words?  Give a valid example of somewhere in their previous life where they could apply it?  Not so much.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, it was worth a shot. They should recite it to themselves every night before they sleep and when it makes sense to them they should come and tell her and then they'll be admitted into the inner circle.

Permalink Mark Unread

Several talented wizard apprentices have now heard about her harem of submissive mathematicians and would like to join that or at least, uh, try out for it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Do they have any actual mathematical talent?

Permalink Mark Unread

...possibly this one does?  Second-circle at eighteen is relatively impressive for Taldor where they don't ever torture the students or at least not seriously.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sure. Do they have the spells on hand to Petrify that one and Shrink Item them into a small statue she can keep in her pocket until a more convenient time to induct him as a trainee ilani.

Permalink Mark Unread

...he doesn't actually have Shrink Item prepped but can fit a whole statue in his... personal storage.

He is not commenting on anything so hard right now.

Permalink Mark Unread

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!

Permalink Mark Unread

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.

Permalink Mark Unread

...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?

Permalink Mark Unread

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

Permalink Mark Unread

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."

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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.

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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.

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

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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."

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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.

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Fair enough.

 

 

 

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

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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.

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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 -

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...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.

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

 


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

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...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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Wouldn't that make it less credible?

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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.

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Right. Why isn't the bookseller leaving, then, if the island's to be eaten?

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"Oh, I expect if it gets that bad, we'll see some sort of warning sign before it's time to really leave, you know."

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"Well, the warning sign might be Carissa Sevar Gating in directly from Hell surrounded by cultists and devils set to die for her while she fights her way to the Starstone, and at that point it'd be a bit late, wouldn't it?"

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"I rather think there'd be some sort of warning sign before then, don't you?"

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"....like what?"

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"I haven't given much thought to it, but if you go around the streets, it doesn't feel like a city that's right about to apocalypse, does it?  Everybody's still walking around normally and the bookshops are still open and all that."

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"Well if I were Carissa Sevar, I wouldn't give anyone any warning, since I wouldn't want them to run, what with how I'm planning to eat their souls."

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"Oh, dearie, that obviously can't be what's going on!  Then there wouldn't have been any prophecies of doom at all, now would there?  Do be logical!"

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"Well, I doubt Carissa Sevar authorized the prophecies!"

 

- she should stop this and leave and go read her book.

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"Somebody certainly is stirring this city's pot," Ri-Dul's voice will observe beside her.  "If it's not you nor Keltham, I rather wonder who and to what end."

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Nethys and Cayden and whichever other gods are working with them. 

 

I don't want to do it, she prays to them silently. Find another way. This city might not matter to you, this planet might not matter to you, it might be that if Rovagug eats it but Keltham gets some of what he wants you'll call it victory - but it won't be. 

 

"Let's go. I can read this at base."

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He'll go visible and offer his hand for the Teleport, then.  "I realize it may seem an unpleasant topic, but it represents quite the opportunity for, say, an up-and-coming leader or adventurer looking to make a name for themselves - if Carissa Sevar were to teleport in with an army of cultists and devils, and be handily fought off.  The city's anxieties would be much relieved, and they'd be very grateful to this new hero."

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"Are you volunteering?"

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"Hardly.  I have research to do.  It's just an obvious thought as to what you might make of it - or what somebody else might be trying to achieve, possibly at the expense of your own reputation.  Somebody with access to cultist cannon fodder, lesser devils, maybe even a Gate spell."

Teleport.

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Is Keltham about?

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Someone's about, though after almost two time-dilated days not in Carissa's presence and focusing on his Magical Simulation of Magic, he's reverted to a more detached appearance.

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"Well. I encouraged my cults. Had a couple of people interested in selling their souls, in some of the more crappy places, so I called a devil and made some purchases."

Keltham we're off the track Nethys set for us, the story where you end the world in sixteen days is over, Nethys doesn't know what you'll do next there's no story you can do whatever you want -

 

She doesn't say it. If Keltham will predictably know what Nethys is doing, Nethys can do less; probably can't even have warned the population of Absalom. She can't ask him to use that, even though it's true. 

She's so scared.

"I guess you can have the crown now."

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"Thank you.  I am - sorry for a lot of things, that I am going to keep on doing anyways because I think I have reasons to do them, as you - never could say to me, during your own part of the story.  I don't know if it's better for myself, for you, that I can say that - it's probably not better for you and I should shut up -"

"I'll go get my +6 Intelligence headband, and then - not speak to you for a while, I guess."

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"I hope that when you think about this harder you decide it's the wrong thing to do."

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"I hope so too."


He goes to get his +6 headband.

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Earlier


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Pilar is looking at a note she doesn't remember writing, starting Attn: Aspexia Rugatonn in Infernal and continuing in Celestial.

The note is resting on a fancy desk, in a large bedroom, given Pilar by Subirachs to befit her real status and pride, after Keltham had departed Project Lawful's fortress.  The room has never felt real to Pilar, like it was really hers - Subirachs had hoped she'd acclimate in time - and now she's leaving here and -

- never coming back.  Pilar isn't really thinking about what sort of model generates that prediction, it just feels intuitively true.  She won't be coming back to the Fortress of Law.

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It's safe for Pilar to cry, if she wants to.  There's no one watching from Security, or anywhere, to see it and think worse of Pilar.

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Pilar does not feel like doing so.

 

...how does she actually leave the Fortress?  The Securities wouldn't stop her... probably... well, no, they'd ask questions.  Those questions would have weird answers.  Security might ask Pilar to wait while they queried upwards if she's allowed to leave.  Pilar... doesn't feel like living through that.

How does Pilar just, do the thing that everyone thinks of as synonymous with Cake Girl, where she just suddenly is somewhere and nobody remembers seeing her moving.  It's always been Snack Service doing that, before.

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Pilar is smart enough to figure this out herself given how much evidence she's accumulated by now.

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Pilar starts to swap out her +6 Splendour headband for +4 Intelligence -

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Pilar doesn't need an Intelligence headband either.  Pilar is pretty smart on her own.  Pilar has mostly been using her Intelligence headband as an excuse to actually think about things, not to solve problems that were too hard for Pilar without it.

Pilar has lived through a lot of evidence at this point.  How does her specialability work?

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...well, if Pilar didn't Gate into Dispater's throne room from Cheliax - which Pilar obviously didn't, because you can't reach Dis except from Avernus - then, Pilar must have followed along with the Most High and Carissa Sevar without being aware of it.  But Dispater noticed, because Dispater said afterwards that He was wondering if Snack Service was going to interfere and if Snack Service thought it could evade His notice.

Pilar's ability has never felt like Teleportation to her.  That she was walking places in an ordinary way, but nobody was noticing, was the main theory Pilar had in the back of her mind.  So far as Pilar knows, everything she's done could have been done by sneaking around without anybody noticing including herself.

Except for Tonia, who suddenly found herself outside of Project Lawful's Forbiddance while Pilar was inside a torture room.

How would that work?  Tonia sneaking outside and other people not remembering her?

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Are sneaking, concealment, secrecy, or memory usually considered parts of Cayden Cailean's domain?

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...no?

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So what part of Cayden Cailean's domain is Pilar wielding?  Pilar's dislike of thinking about Cayden Cailean is preventing Pilar from thinking about her own abilities, to the point where it's inhibiting Pilar's ability to serve Asmodeus.

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...Snack Service called Cayden Cailean the glorious and exalted god of parties, sex, and drunken blackouts at one point, didn't it.

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Does Pilar actually just have a drunken blackout so hard that other people can't remember her either?

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Nnnoooot exactly, but close enough.

It's more like an Invisibility or a Sanctuary spell, where you can't be seen, or can't be attacked, in exchange for not being able to attack or cast targeted spells yourself.

Pilar promises not to remember herself, nor attack anyone or target spells, nor steal anything, nor... do anything imbalanced, one might say, though that part has to do with ancient godagreements and not just the structure of magic.  In exchange, other people don't remember Pilar either, and she doesn't set off alarm spells.

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And I cursed Tonia to walk out of our Forbiddance in an unmemorable drunken blackout of her own?  That seems - too powerful, imbalanced like you put it.  If I can just make other people do things like that, later, without my even being there...


...I escorted Tonia out of the Forbiddance myself, didn't remember it, and left Tonia there in a drunken blackout until it was time for her to wake up later.

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Thaaaaat's right!

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How did I sneak up on the spy trying to Helm of Brilliance the Queen's celebration, if I can't attack anyone using my specialability?

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Pilar didn't black out during that.  That's why you remember sneaking!  Pilar just changed into a nicer dress that made her fit in at the party, entered into the ballroom like she'd always been at that party, walked around like she was just part of the party, and surprised the spy with a trip to a nice afterlife.

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...people could see me the whole time I was doing that?

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Acting like nobody should notice you is its own way of getting nobody to notice you!  Security noticed you, of course, but they identified you as Pilar Pineda.

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How does Pilar invoke that specialability on purpose, then, if not by wanting to go unnoticed?

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By invoking Cayden Cailean's domain, a little bit of which is now Pilar's domain too!  In particular His domain of getting so drunk you black out, and then waking up and finding yourself somewhere unfamiliar and thinking 'What the fuck did I do?'

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...sigh.

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A subjective moment later (though in reality it must have been longer) Pilar suddenly finds herself in a forest.

The beach, the ocean, and the repurposed stone fort where Pilar lived for four months, are barely visible from where Pilar stands.

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...now what.

(A terror in her, that the next instruction is 'put on the artifact headband so you'll betray Asmodeus' -)

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Next, Pilar goes on some proper adventures so she can become a more powerful oracle and wizard!

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...what becomes of Pilar, after she's more powerful?

What becomes of Pilar, in the end?

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Snack Service doesn't dare speak intentions that much out loud under the shadow of tropes.

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Fuck Snack Service's -

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Pilar.  Snack Service is serious.

Snack Service tried to put up a good front of omniscience in front of Cheliax but the truth is that Snack Service doesn't know everything, even Nethys doesn't know everything about the future, and the gods are struggling to operate under the shadow of tropes just as much as anybody else in this whole situation.

Things are already looking somewhat derailed from what Snack Service thought was supposed to happen and Snack Service can't risk saying what that was, even in a conversation inside Pilar's own mind.

Pilar needs to become stronger so that Pilar can be ready for whatever happens, inside a situation that is now in flux.

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Why should Pilar want to be ready to save Cayden Cailean's plans?  Especially if they derail in a way where Asmodeus wins everything and gloats?

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The valid answer to that question can be told to Pilar if she puts on the artifact headband.  Which Pilar doesn't have to do now, if Pilar doesn't want to.

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Snack Service is sorry.


...if Pilar would rather not think about this anymore, the next step is for her to head towards Ostenso.  There isn't a rush, and it's okay for Pilar to just walk all the way there, and enjoy the forest along the way.

Pilar has been doing lots of things recently one after another, and Pilar may risk losing her proud title of 'sanest person in Project Lawful' if Pilar doesn't take this chance to breathe.  Pilar does not need to think and figure everything out right now.  She's allowed to just walk through the forest for a while.

Snack Service knows that it is not Pilar's superior, but if Snack Service can't give Pilar that order, it means that Pilar needs to give Pilar that order.  And then, having received that order, Pilar needs to trust that Pilar knew what she was doing, and obey her.

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Pilar heads off in the direction of the rising sun, and parallel to the distant coastline, as will bring her to Ostenso in time.

It's - strange, to think that she can just walk through the forest like this, safely.  She's been at Ostenso academy full-time since she learned to hang Ray of Frost, which was the first point when it would have been even slightly sane to wander a short distance into a forest without being able to use a sword.  Even as a second-circle wizard, you wouldn't want to go that far into a forest on your own; a second-circle just doesn't have the spell volume to deal with a medium-sized pack of predators.

Now Pilar is a fifth-circle oracle, who once slew out of hand a fourth-circle Security who was insolent to her; and it would be a very very improbable encounter in this forest that brought her into conflict with anything scarier than herself.  She is Cheliax's most valued spy-taker and would certainly be Raised if slain, or True Resurrected if wholly devoured.  It's not just that Pilar will almost certainly make it through the forest to Ostenso alive, it's that she can walk into the trackless depths of the forest without anxiety.

The cold of night is just dissipating, the Sun hardly even full above the horizon.  Condensed dew sparkles on everything around her, dampens her when she brushes past branches and leaves.  Pilar set up an Endure Elements, when she hung spells before dawn this morning, but she holds off on casting it on herself.  It's not that cold, and she can handle much worse than a little wet.

The reason it's not an unprecedented experience, for Pilar, is that she also traipsed through a sunlit forest like this in Elysium, four months ago.

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...she would rather not think about that, and orders herself not to.  Aspexia Rugatonn said that, though she hated it, she had to admit that Snack Service had helped Cheliax after all.  Pilar is not going to act out angrily at Snack Service to the point of ignoring sensible suggestions like that Pilar command herself to stop thinking for a time.

She has, in fact, been doing one thing after another, or being in one kind of difficult situation or another, for quite a while now.  It's sensible, if the first step in whatever fate Snack Service has set up for her, is to quiet her thoughts for a time.

Stop thinking, then, Pilar.  Stop thinking.  Just walk through the sunrise-lit forest, getting damp, and don't think about anything for a while.

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Some time has passed, now.  It might be an hour, or two hours; the Sun's higher, but Pilar has been deliberately not thinking about angles and seasons and what that means for how much time has probably passed.

Her feet grew sore, and her legs, after some of that time; but Pilar cast Lesser Restoration on herself when she noticed herself beginning to slow, and continued.

A hill stands before her, and Pilar deliberately goes up it, so she can check that her sun-bearing is correct and hasn't taken her away from the coastline she's trying to parallel towards Ostenso.

The coastline looks more distant, to her left.  But to Pilar's right there's what looks like an unpaved road, with wheel-ruts to show that carters travel along it; a road like that ought to be bearing toward Ostenso, Pilar thinks.

And if not, or if she's about to get lost or late for anything important, Snack Service can stop her about it - right?

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(Silence.)

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Pilar angles towards the road.  It's not just that Pilar is less delighted, now, by the sparkling leaf-dew dampening her - she cast Endure Elements on herself, when that started to be true - but that it's been four months since the last time she had a genuinely normal conversation with anybody.

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The road is smoothed dirt, unstoned and unpebbled, and still much easier to walk over than untamed forest ground.  One obtains twice the speed, for half the effort, walking on almost any road at all.

Pilar's mind goes automatically to Asmodia's patient efforts to test the usability for road-surfacing of common materials that would be easily found nearby in forests or in plains; dampened, Prestidigitated in various ways, with heavy rollers run over them after the dampening and Prestidigation.  Looking for a surface that would last and shed water, once solidified.  Looking for a way to make lasting roads, cheaply, with one 1st-circle cleric to conjure water and a handful of wizard apprentices to Prestidigitate, lay roads almost as fast as a heavy roller could roll.  Roads firm enough that Keltham's 'tricycles' could be invented and set loose on them...


...would Asmodia have saved tens of thousands of Chelish lives over the next year, as Snack Service did claim, through some other use that Asmodia had in a war with Osirion, or by her influencing Keltham somehow?

Or is roadmaking just that important, that quickly?

...probably roadmaking is just that important.  Too many people walking them, too many goods moving across them.  Why did they mock Asmodia?  What were they thinking?  There can't be many more important matters than roads.

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Only, what good does it even do, to Cheliax, to know how to make cheap roads?  If many people have to be taught the knowledge, to make many roads cheaply, it can't be kept from Osirion, from other countries' spies.

It wouldn't have helped Cheliax.  Cheliax wouldn't have gained any advantage.

 

It would only have helped the Chelish people.

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Pilar closes her eyes, and walks blind, for a minute, along a straighter portion of the path.

 

She doesn't need to think about such things, right now.  Pilar commanded her so.

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The road presents Pilar with her first carter, traveling the opposite way from Pilar; a woman with a narrow cloth-covered cart resting on wide wheels, drawn by a single ox.

By the time the cart has drawn close enough that the woman's expression is readable, her face is very guarded.  She has had time to see Pilar, by then, of course, and maybe wonder to herself what an Ostenso wizard-apprentice is doing on this road from Ostenso to who-knows-where.

(Pilar never did get herself into the habit of wearing clothes other than the uniform of Ostenso's wizard academy.  It was something of an unofficial uniform among the Old Guard of Project Lawful, and an honorable one, for that time.  Egorian has learned to fear it, not least because of Pilar herself, and that city will have odd reflexes if some innocent Ostenso student somehow ends up visiting there.)

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"Am I on the road to Ostenso?" Pilar calls to her, once they're in easy hearing range.

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"Who's asking?"

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Pilar Pineda of Project Lawful, the Cake Girl, Cheliax's Secret Weapon and Terror of Lastwall...

...that's probably not going to help here, is it.


"Jacme, of Ostenso's wizard academy.  Don't ask me why I'm here, or why I don't know if I'm on the right road.  It's a long story, a private story, and you're welcome and encouraged to report on this event to any authority you deem appropriate."

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The woman measures Pilar as she passes, not slowing down her cart at all; showing no fear, though even a wizard apprentice is a dangerous creature to a commoner if it comes to battle.

"You're on the right road," she says in a tired voice, and passes on without saying aught else.

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Pilar, feeling sad and not really knowing why, trudges on.

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After a couple of minutes, she sighs, and reaches up to her hair to Prestidigitate it a more ordinary color.

There just aren't that many people who want to draw that particular attention to themselves.  'Pink-haired young woman in Ostenso academy uniform' is too identifying, even if you don't call yourself 'Pilar'.

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Some time later, several other carters have passed Pilar going the other direction from her, all with similar guarded expressions, and Pilar hasn't met a single cart going her own way.

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Pilar spends several embarrassing minutes speculating about whether carters are starting out from Ostenso at dawn, but carters who started out at dawn from wherever this road's other end goes, are too far away to have caught up to her yet.

Then Pilar actually visualizes the road in her mind, as though it were a spell she was analyzing.  She realizes that obviously if Pilar is walking quickly in one direction, it's like the carters are moving very quickly in the opposite direction, relative to her; while carters moving in her own direction, are traveling more slowly, relative to her.

Pilar slows down, then, and walks at a more relaxed pace, to give the carters behind herself time to catch up.

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It's not too long afterward that Pilar hears a clopping sound approaching from behind herself.

This cart is moving at a fair pace (as one might expect, on priors, would be overrepresented in carts overtaking Pilar); it's drawn by two horses, instead of a single ox.  The cart they draw is draped with hides, washed but neither cured nor tanned, and bears also a barrel overfull with fish.  The man who steers the cart is large, muscular, bears a short sword at his hip; hides like these are more valuable by the pound than produce.

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"Hail the road," Pilar calls to the carter, as he draws nearer her.  "Have you place for a traveler to Ostenso?"

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"No.  You'd tire the horses and my cargo is perishable."

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"That means the price is higher, not that you don't have a place available," Pilar says back, before she quite remembers that not everyone thinks as ilani do.

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"Ha.  Sure.  If you're willing to spend two silver on it, I'd let you ride up here until I judge the horses are slowing or breathing heavier.  Then you're back on the road, but you'd have a rest of it, anyways."

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Money in that amount means nothing to her, anymore.  "Accepted."

It's only then that Pilar realizes, just like a silly princess in a story, that most of her money is in platinum - Project Lawful in the old days didn't want Keltham seeing that Chelish paper currency was backed in souls on the markets of Dis.  Even the paper currency she does have isn't in denominations smaller than five gold.

She reaches into her robes and finds a gold piece, as is, literally, the least valuable exchangeable thing she's carrying.

Pilar waits until she's already on the cart to hand it over and ask him if he's got change.

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He's already wary and blank, and if this question produces any increase in wariness, it's not noticeable.

Suppose he doesn't have change.  What then, hm?

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"Maybe I've been hanging out too much with the wrong crowd, these last four months.  But I can't help but think that the obvious thing to do would be for both of us to generate numbers between one and five, and if they're the same, you keep the gold piece, and otherwise, you give it back.  One chance in five of a gold piece is equivalent to two silver."

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That gets a short bark of laughter from him.  "I ain't matching wits with no wizard."

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"And here I thought that you were matching wits with me when you asked what happened if you couldn't make change.  Well, you could also promise me very seriously that you didn't have the ability to make change, and gamble that I couldn't run Detect Thoughts to verify that."

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"You look a bit young to be second-circle."

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"Thank you very much."

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"Suppose I don't want to make change."

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"I suppose I could take the gold piece back, and just use a pair of Lesser Restorations on your horses when they got tired.  You'd get to your destination even faster that way, I think."

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"That's a cleric spell."

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"Yep."

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"You're dressed as a wizard apprentice."

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"Yep.  You want me to demonstrate Prestidigitation, wizard-only, or Guidance, cleric-only?  You only get to pick one, and I'll show you whichever one you pick, but not both."

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"Why not both?"

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"Don't feel like it."

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"And if I told you to get off my cart?"

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"Don't feel like that either."

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"All right, how about you show me a Guidance, then."

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Sure thing.  Pilar boops him with Guidance.

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"Huh.  I can feel it, sort of."

"Shame to just waste it.  How do we play the game where we pick numbers from one to five?  I'm not exactly going to let you have second move."

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"I could put some random number of coins from one to five in my hand, and then you say your number, and I open my hand.  Or we could do the reverse.  Either's fine."

"Better hurry, though, the spell only lasts a minute if you don't use it."

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"Sure, you put some coins in your hand, then."

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Pilar reaches into her uniform, takes out five platinum coins, and shuts her hand around those.

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"Two."

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"Nope."  She opens her hand to show him the five platinum.

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"Wealthy, aren't we."

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"Yep.  May I have my gold piece back?  You did lose the game."

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"Of course."  He passes it back to her with a friendly smile.

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This isn't exactly a normal conversation, but it's fun, and... honestly this is more normal than any conversation Pilar has had in a while.  At least that went on any longer than 'Pass the butter.'

"Any interesting gossip in Ostenso?" says Pilar.

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"Depends.  What does somebody like you find interesting?"

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"Good question... do you know whether or not there ultimately turned out to be any disguised ancient dragons hanging out in town just in case Keltham passed them by?"

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"Sounds like I'm missing some gossip myself, actually."

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"Well, it's known, now, that Keltham was somewhere around Ostenso, before he left Cheliax, but not in Ostenso, so one of the speculations was that there would've been disguised powerful entities hanging out in Ostenso in case Keltham passed them by.  Any mysterious powerful adventurers wander into town about four months ago, and then suddenly disappear about five weeks ago?  That'd be the indication, there."

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"Not that I know of."

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"How boring.  Well, do you know any gossip, then?"

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At this point in the conversation, he does not wish to give the appearance of needing to be asked twice.  Sure, he knows some gossip about the state of things in Ostenso.

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What a normal conversation she's having!  It's great!

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...he'll eventually observe, in the tone of somebody who isn't drawing any inference from the fact, that the horses do look a little more tired to him, now.

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Pilar will cheerfully hop off the cart and start walking again.

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He would, in fact, sell her a ride all the way to Ostenso for five platinum.

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Nah.  She's had her rest.

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The carter drives off, doing a great job of not being too overt in glancing uneasily behind himself, nor giving too much visible sign that he's wondering how close he came to dying.

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It's - strange, that Pilar is thinking to herself that she was Evil, there, and enjoyed it.  Why should that be surprising?  Pilar has been a faithful Asmodean all her life, hasn't she?

That couldn't have happened that way in Elysium.  The stakes wouldn't be real, the carter wouldn't be really scared.

Why is Pilar surprised that - part of herself would be sad, if nothing like that ever happened again.  If nobody got to be sadistic like herself, or under real pressure like the carter.  Pilar has always believed it would be terrible if everywhere was like Elysium, there'd be no place for Pilar there.

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It's not literally, but very nearly, Pilar's first time enjoying being mean to somebody, and not just enjoying other people being mean to her.

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That -

That can't actually be -

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Pilar learned it from Carissa Sevar.

Pilar was cruel to the carter, but only after he started trouble, and in a way that didn't break him, and gave him a story to remember afterwards of how he was strong and handled himself well around a mysterious threat.

Before Project Lawful, Pilar had only seen mean people who liked breaking things.  Or were trying to act in a way that would look Evil to others or to themselves.  Or who had excuses for doing things they enjoyed that other people weren't enjoying and that would not in fact make people any stronger.

It is a very narrow path to walk, to find a way of Lawful Evil that isn't about being forced to cast Acid Splash on prisoners.

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Pilar had thought - that Snack Service was playing a long game to make Pilar renounce Evil.

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In the end, Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, are definitions made up by an ancient entity that didn't care very much about a lot of things that mortals do care about.

Snack Service has never tried to steer Pilar towards becoming Good, or Evil, or Lawful, or Chaotic, or anything else but Pilar Pineda.

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Pilar walks on in silence towards Ostenso.

She's gone back to not thinking about things.  It seemed like a wise order to give Pilar.

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Some more carts pass Pilar on the road going the other way.  No other carts pass Pilar going her own way, until she reaches the city.  It wasn't much further on, at this point.

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Ostenso is a thoroughly walled city, and Pilar's road takes her to a well-guarded gate.

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Pilar doesn't feel like dealing with questions.  She closes her eyes, blacks out, and finds herself inside the city.

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Ostenso's streets seem smaller, somehow, than they did when Pilar ran them as a child, before Authority told her to become a wizard and Pilar obeyed.

The streets seem smaller, even, than they did on cautious excursions from Ostenso wizard academy, not very long ago at all.  Cheliax is a Lawful country, and Ostenso a Lawful city, but not so Lawful that a wizard academy would reasonably let their apprentices out to wander the streets alone and unguarded, and have no fear of misplacing them.

It's not that the streets are safer.  Pilar has always felt safe in Cheliax.  There really isn't very much bad that can happen to her, here.

But they are... less challenging, in the ways that the world could have presented her with some little challenge before.

There is a foreign sailor-adventurer swaggering down the street in expensive leather armor with a blade at his belt, and Pilar doesn't have to be clever to evade him and whatever little trouble he might bring.  If he pointed his trouble at Pilar, she could laugh and dance along with him, and if he made too much trouble for her, he'd die.

Ostenso's streets seem smaller, and it isn't really a mystery why they do.

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She should... probably get something to wear that isn't an Ostenso wizard student's uniform.  Here in Ostenso, it doesn't stand out too much, but a single unescorted wizard apprentice is a slightly anomalous sight even so.  And outside Ostenso, it screams 'Project Lawful' and maybe even specifically 'Pilar Pineda' to those rare people who keep up on that sort of news.

Does Snack Service has any comments on that?  Pilar is here because Snack Service told her it was time to go.  Pilar does not actually know what she's supposed to do next or if she could use different clothing for it.

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Pilar should get high-quality but otherwise standard adventuring equipment for wizards!

It'll be easier if Pilar gets a Bag of Holding first, though.

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...the smallest available size of Bag of Holding tends to be pretty expensive, even by the standards of Pilar's new wealth level.

Dare Pilar hope that Cayden Cailean is paying for this?

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He sure will!  Sort of.

Turn left at the street intersection up ahead.

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Pilar is... okay she just dared to think 'pleasantly surprised' and now has a feeling she should not have dared think that.

But perhaps she will be pleasantly surprised again by the consequences.

Pilar turns left, and then right, and then right, and then left again, following Snack Service's directions.  Say what you like about Ostenso, nobody could possibly accuse the street layout of being boring.

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Then Pilar will come at last to an abandoned-looking shack wedged between two rows of dirty cottages, near the outskirts of the town furthest from the water and docks, not quite wedged up against the city walls but near to them.

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Snack Service needs to run this part, if Pilar can yield her body for a bit.

Don't worry, Snack Service won't do anything with Pilar's body that doesn't ultimately serve Asmodeus's interests.  Hopefully, Pilar has now seen some amount of evidence about that.

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...all right, Pilar will hand her reins to Snack Service temporarily.

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Snack Service lifts up Pilar's hand and knocks on the door of the shack, not hard.

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...eventually, as if some process was taking place that took a lot longer than 'come to the door of a tiny shack', the shack door opens and a scarred tiefling girl in a ragged maid uniform looks out from behind the door.  Her gaze is not a friendly one.

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"Hi!" Snack Service says in a super cheerful perky version of Pilar's voice.  "Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mister Doomlord's maidservant?"

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...oh no.

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"What do you want?" the tiefling girl says in a harsh low voice, after the sort of pause that might be associated with somebody making a quick but obvious deduction.

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"I want a Bag of Holding and I want you to put inside five thousand gold pieces and three of your leftover divine Plane Shift scrolls and the Bracers of Shadow Armor you've got in inventory that none of you are really going to need and a scroll of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah holy shit that's expensive blah blah blah blah and I want you to not tell Mister Doomlord about it!"

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"Uh huh.  Out of pure grim curiosity, if I asked for a reason I was doing that..."

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"I'd say that, if you did it, you'd get this delicious cookie!"

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The scarred tiefling girl takes the cookie without changing her distantly angry expression, and eats it without changing her expression much either.

"Fine," she says after a pause.  "I suppose a cookie like that is worth that much of Doomlord's stuff.  Hold on while I go fetch it."

She shuts the shack door on them.

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...Pilar is torn between asking 'What really just happened there?' and 'Who's Doomlord?' but on concerned reflection Pilar is going to ask the second question first, because the answer to that may influence how loudly Pilar needs to mentally scream the first question.

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Mister Doomlord is a True Neutral entity from outside Golarion's plane!  Mister Doomlord didn't come to Ostenso hoping to run across Keltham; he's here because of the divine non-intervention zone!

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This seems like the sort of important fact that Pilar should possibly be reporting to her superiors in Egorian.

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The negotiations for Mister Doomlord coming here were mostly carried out with Asmodeus and Otolmens, but Contessa Lrilatha has been informed and isn't allowed to tell anybody else!

Also the negotiation ended up with Otolmens telling Asmodeus that Asmodeus wasn't allowed to look directly in Mister Doomlord's direction, or at anybody around Mister Doomlord in the place he was dwelling, and Asmodeus agreed to that, so Pilar shouldn't pray to Him about it either.

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Pilar is actually going to have some trouble screaming loudly enough to do this situation justice.

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The shack door eventually opens and shows the scarred tiefling maid again, now bearing a Bag of Holding, which she hands over to Pilar / Snack Service still without much of an expression.  "You got something I'm supposed to say to Doomlord if he notices the anomaly in inventory?"

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"I don't think he'll notice before things reach a point where it'll be obvious to him what happened!  But if he does, you can just say that you gave it away for a cookie!  Also, here, you should probably have these on hand around the place."

Snack Service slings Pilar's student bookbag off Pilar's shoulder, undoes the thief-resistant layers of buttoned flaps, and takes out the two headbands.

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Pilar's hand freezes on the Hell-wrought lesser artifacts as she realizes what Snack Service is doing.

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Serves Asmodeus!  And is kind of important actually!

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Pilar, with some effort, allows Snack Service to control her body enough to hand the two headbands to the scarred tiefling.

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"Huh.  Those look expensive.  You got instructions to go with them?"

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"Don't let anybody else see them until you see Mister Doomlord strutting about with his fancy new artifact!  After that, I'm sure you can figure out what to do."

"The +6/+6/+4 headband is on indefinite loan.  But we'll need the +4/+6/+6 back after the trip to the City of Brass - which we'll be joining you on!  And then we get the treatment that Mister Doomlord plans for himself once we're there!  You can consider that the price of the headband's loan, I suppose, though really I'd just call it being mutually friendly about a matter of mutual interest."

"Also after that trip, besides taking the second headband back, we'll want a couple hundred of big shinies from Mister Doomlord's hoard, just in case we end up needing those on hand."

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"Sounds like the sort of thing that key people will agree to.  Any else?"

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"Well, don't tell anyone about this part, but matters have gone sort of weird and unpredictable so we might turn up at any point screaming about something you need to do right away!  Hopefully not, though."

"And that's all!"

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The tiefling maid actually does smile at that.

"Pleasure doing business with you," she says, and shuts the shack's door.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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Pilar can't actually mentally scream loudly enough to do this situation justice and there's no point in trying.

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Fair.  What next then?

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That was a pretty fast recovery!

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Pilar has now been a Project Lawful girl for several months.

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Well, next, Pilar goes to the Ostenso market and buys some other adventuring equipment that Mister Doomlord didn't have on hand.

And then, Pilar goes on adventures just like those she's heard tell of in legend!

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Pilar is not completely disinterested in, or unhappy about, this.  But Pilar hopes that she is not being asked to do things the same way as the adventurers of legend.  Pilar thinks that the way legendary adventurers did things was stupid.  Pilar has thought this ever since she was a little girl.

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Pilar is totally welcome to try doing things Pilar's own way!

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Right.  What's first up, then?

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How would Pilar feel about going to the former Chelish city of Korvosa, which is still on good terms with Cheliax, and preventing its inhabitants from being horribly sacrificed in somebody's mad blood ritual seeking immortality?

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Sure.  Can Snack Service tell Pilar who's going to do it, and then Pilar can sweep in with an army company and twenty high-level adventurers and kill them?

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Snack Service both won't, and can't, be any more specific than what Snack Service has said already.

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Cool.  Pilar's going to find whoever's in charge of the city, identify herself honestly to them, and tell them a self-fulfilling prophecy about how they're going to successfully prevent their city from being sacrificed.  Then, instead of trying to do everything herself, Pilar is going to solve the problem in full cooperation with the authorities, obeying any reasonable orders they give her along the way.

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Pilar can totally try that and see what happens!

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Carissa does feel terrible once she takes the headband off but she decides to ignore this; if she's might only have weeks to live it's some kind of unimaginable horror to spend a minute of them sulking. She looks over her to-do list, instead, to see how many of the items on it still seem doable. 

She wants to reach out to Osirion and see what they know about the current status of Cheliax and Project Lawful. She suspects it'll be less than she hopes, because probably they were spying directly through Abadar, but conceivably Abadar's still at it, or they have other channels. She wants to talk to Erecura and maybe Dispater. She wants to figure out if confidential negotiations with Abadar and Iomedae are possible. She wants to publish cult pamphlets for drop-off in promising locations. She wants to pressure-test her Abrogail-assassination plans and maybe run them by Ri-Dul, who seems like the kind of person who has contemplated how he'd assassinate Abrogail Thrune. 

 

She wants to write a long angry letter to dath ilan about how they are the worst, in case this is actually a work of dath ilani fiction and she can influence them that way. 

She wants to play with sixth circle spells, even though she's never, ever going to grow powerful enough to cast them herself. 

She wants to write a letter to the children she would someday have had if they'd gotten to exist, which they won't. 

After that, whatever, she'll make headbands or something. 

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Golarion's conventional view on Intelligence and Wisdom:

Intelligence is useful for learning how to read and doing figures and learning more complicated work; at higher levels, you can learn complicated math and be a wizard.  It has little or no effect on personality; you can be good at math or bad at math and have pretty much the same underlying personality.

Wisdom is perceptiveness and self-control; at higher levels, closeness with the divine.  Wisdom has a more pronounced effect on personality than Intelligence; it's associated with maturity rather than cleverness.  Golarion languages with curse-words for 'stupid' tend to mean low-Wisdom rather than low-Intelligence, albeit in the end the term mostly means low-status, of course.  The actual abilities associated with Wisdom, if not always the measured abilitystat, tend to increase with age instead of go down as Intelligence does.  Sudden stress episodes can increase apparent wiseness some time afterwards, though usually not the measured abilitystat.


From the perspective of dath ilan, that uses mental calculation for things Golarion does not yet know how to do - well, mostly dath ilan's perspective could not easily be translated out of their worldview at all, and would make mention of notions like 'RAM and processing speed' or 'cognitive reflectivity' or 'frontal cognitomotor cortex'.  But to translate it back into Golarion terms:  Intelligence is calculation and all that dath ilan can do with mental calculation, but Wisdom is the ability to control that calculation-power and listen to the results of that calculation-power.

INT 27 and WIS 20 makes you a dath ilani who's exceptionally talented at math even by their standards.

INT 27 and WIS 26 makes you something else entirely -

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"Here's two more artifact headbands.  The +6/+6/+4 is on indefinite loan.  The +4/+6/+6 has to go back after the trip to the City of Brass.  Somebody else will come with on that trip and get what you were planning to get for yourself... so full upgrades, I suppose.  They also want a couple of hundred Wish diamonds afterwards and asked for some other stuff I gave them."

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"Right.  Well, take Carissa's artifact headband back to her, then, I don't need it anymore.  Presumably that's the point and the implicit bargain, They can't help me."

He quickly removes Carissa's headband and successfully ignores the resulting massive sense of loss and disorientation while he pops on the +4/+6/+6, because yes, it's obvious that if he tries to rebuild himself a personality it's better done at INT-25/WIS-26/CHA-25 than INT-27/WIS-26/CHA-23.

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...and then he puts himself back together again.


His own opinion is that you couldn't really call the result 'Keltham'.  If you take a short lifetime of experience at INT-18/WIS-16/CHA-14 and pour the result into a mind of INT-25/WIS-26/CHA-25, it's a bit like pouring the contents of a four-year-old into an eighteen-year-old container.  The numbers skip over a lot of important detail.  Golarion's abilitystats may not really be thinkoomph but they sure are some major subdimensions of it.

He is putting the traumatized pieces of that four-year-old back together as best as he can, improvising psychiatry skills that he was never taught because you can just do that at 25/26/25 if you have enough of the underlying knowledge.  (He could have reinvented psychiatry eventually, as he was before, but not quickly.)

But it's still a four-year-old being poured into something much larger than a four-year-old, with rapidly cascading knowledge and insights that contradict a lot of what did go into that four-year-old.  At some point there's not that much difference between making the new person out of Keltham-who-was and just making them out of a generic dath ilani with the same abilitystats.

...he still tries as hard as he can to make the new person be Keltham+, not just the + of a generic dath ilani with the same abilitystats.

There's a lot of reasons to do it that way, and no particular metareason to single out any particular reason as the justification.

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He should not try to really talk with Carissa like this, he doesn't think, even if she has her +6 Wisdom back.  Not until she has her own abilitystat increases to go with her headband.  It would damage what's left of their relationship, and Carissa is one of the only things left in Golarion that still felt real to Keltham.

He types Carissa a letter, and doesn't need to retype it afterwards.  It includes among other things the notes that:

- If Carissa wants to assassinate Abrogail, she needs to do that before his child with Abrogail is ensouled; which may interact in a complicated way with other plans to kidnap Abrogail and/or see if Carissa can don her crown as a way to impede Cheliax's invasion of Osirion.

- He will strongly push that Carissa wait until she's INT 29 to actually negotiate with Dispater or Erecura, but she can potentially plan that now.

- If Carissa has copious free time left over, he thinks she should help him develop his Magical Simulation of Magic because that'll be the key Skill for Wishcrafting.  If she can't help with that or speed that up, so there's more total time to do it and make it safe, then what was she buying time for anyways?

- He's getting better now, sort of.  But until Carissa gets her own abilitystat boosts, his new improvised psychiatric skill strongly suggests that they should only talk dispassionate strategy or engineering with him wearing the +6/+6/+4 headband, and not say anything about their relationship or their conflicting goals.

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- having more time is obviously good under a wide variety of assumptions about where precisely from here - yeah. Not talking about that kind of stuff with Keltham right now. And she's happy to help with his Magic Simulation. 

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Her scenarios for assassinating Abrogail, a dispassionate letter back to Keltham reads, are as follows:

- assassinate Abrogail, raise her immediately. Don't take her headband. Explain to her that Keltham knows about the children and that Carissa may have just prevented him from blowing up Cheliax, but if he ends up considering it too likely there are more children, he might still do it. Suggest that Abrogail sign a peace with Osirion, as would credibly indicate that Abrogail's was the only pregnancy and Cheliax doesn't anticipate acquiring leverage against Keltham soon anymore. Abrogail removing children/relocating them does not reduce incentive to destroy enough of Cheliax to prevent invasion of Osirion. Abrogail might be able to credibly promise there are no more children. Abrogail might call the possible-bluff and say that she won't sign a peace with Osirion and if Keltham decides to destroy Cheliax, so be it, in which case Carissa will regretfully depart and maybe go to step 2.

- assassinate Abrogail, take her crown, tell her security that Carissa owns options on their souls and they should consider reconsidering their loyalties. Aspexia will be suspicious. Carissa plans to show off the souls she's been buying to assuage Aspexia's suspicions but there aren't that many, and Carissa doubts she'd be able to stall the invasion of Osirion too far, and it means she'd be out of time dilation and busy during important stages of planning.

- assassinate Abrogail, take her body and her crown, hope the succession crisis in Cheliax delays the invasion of Osirion by months.

- kidnap Abrogail, possibly via briefly killing her but the intent in this scenario is to have her alive, take her to doombase, hope the succession crisis in Cheliax etc etc and that Abrogail can be persuaded to help overthrow Asmodeus and take His job. Unlikely but would be very valuable if it worked.

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Abrogail might refuse an immediate resurrection, making it unsafe to kill her as part of an intended kidnapping plan.  She can still have the child aborted via Baleful Polymorph to male.

Kidnap Abrogail, via:

- Route 1, luring Abrogail outside the Palace Forbiddance not under a Mind Blank, via fake intelligence leak suggesting an assassination attempt, which Abrogail may be willing to play along with in hopes of luring Keltham into complacency;

- Route 2.1, hitting that Forbiddance with a Dispel from somebody as powerful as Rugatonn, or 2.2 successfully obtaining a scroll of Mage's Disjunction;

Then, have multiple noble Efreet in rapid succession cast Wishes to try to kidnap her until Abrogail fails a Will save.

This may plausibly not work even then, based on Keltham's research into levels of magical resistance apparently granted by the Crown of Infernal Majesty, in the light of purchased reports on past assassination attempts against Crown-wearers.

Ideally, Cheliax should be allowed to think Abrogail permadead and out of the game for good, as by statuing her or soul-trapping her, and having Carissa attempt to claim the throne herself.  This forces them to deal with the succession crisis rather than Rugatonn just appointing a regent.  If the successor appears to be getting organized enough for an invasion, this would be a fine time to send Abrogail back, possibly with visible gaps in her own memory just to complicate things.

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Yeah, the reason Carissa thought they'd assassinate Abrogail even in the course of a kidnapping is that kidnapping an alive Abrogail seems very hard. Assassinating her isn't; Ri-Dul could presumably walk up to her with a Contingent Antimagic Field that triggers when in Abrogail-range, at which point nonmagical ilani weapons should suffice. Getting out is the complicated part, but you can always just not try to; kill yourself too, have a True Resurrection already reaching completion. 

 

If they were to try kidnapping an alive Abrogail Carissa would honestly be templed by just saying to Abrogail 'I swear I think this reduces the risk of Cheliax or Egorian being destroyed' and Plane Shifting with her. Any plan that involves displaying lots of implausible capabilities seems likely to make someone realize that Keltham is better armed than the typical sulking teenager Rovagug cultist aspiring mass murderer person they're modeling him as. 

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It just has to look like something that an angry, vengeful teenager could pull off using way too much money, maybe with Carissa as the real mastermind nudging his choices.

Does this mean she's giving up on closing-the-Worldwound plans?  Though Keltham is somewhat doubtful that his Wishcraft is going to reach that level in time, regardless.

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In her current estimation Golarion looks certain to be destroyed. That makes it not worth bothering. She's hoping she's missing something she'll see when she's thought about this more and Wished on more bonuses and gotten drunk on Nefreti Clepati's wine and tried literally anything else there is to try. 

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(Then she should go on playing for log-odds of success, right now, as she waits for that missing insight... this should not be said to Carissa at the moment.)

Does Carissa have any suggestions for highly stable and predictive magical dynamics?  He has a computationally-complete set that he's trying to use for the current Magical Simulation of Magic; but he still has less total experience playing around with spells, and there's a proverb out of dath ilan: just because it's possible to compute anything in a computationally-complete-system doesn't make it easy.

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She's mostly just tried setting aside Golarion and thinking about the rest of the universe, the destruction of which is less certain. She doesn't see how Rovagug will be contained in time to save Golarion even with Asmodeus interested in doing it, but that's still a lot of other planets, and all the afterlives, to try to save. 

 

If Carissa were trying to develop a structure for describing the behavior of magic she'd have approached it very differently; she'd have picked the spells that are the oddest-feeling in your hands, the ones that feel slippery or tense like they're barely holding together, the metamagics that feel the most like they strain the original spell, and try to figure out what tolerances, exactly, those are straining, what invisible dynamic they come close to breaking. She's not sure she has anything she can translate into Keltham's terms, yet, but that's what she's attempting. 

 

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Hopefully without any offense, he can't figure out whether she just said something relevant whose complicated relevance he missed, or if she wholly missed the relevance of what he asked.

Restating background, in case a piece of it wasn't shared:  He's not trying to build magic structures whose visible parts mimic particular invisible structures.  Somebody would've already tried that, to build a visible model of the invisible.  Instead:  There's a bunch of mathematical theory describing, for very simple cases, or particular interactions, the parts of magic that people can't see.

He is trying to build a system that encodes those known or guessed mathematical laws, where you'd have to look at the visible magical part of what he built, and then apply transformations in your own mind to read off what it was describing; it doesn't need to look like the spell being modeled, as is a thought that might be more obvious to a computerprogrammer than to a Golarion wizard.

He's also not trying to find visible interactions that directly mimic invisible ones, even via isomorphism.  He's trying to build up pieces whose interactions can be compounded together in ways that would mimic arbitrary mathematical rules.  When a piece of magic gets sticky because it's interacting with 11 other pieces in 5 dimensions, he builds a visible thing with five number-levels and 11 other pieces affecting the five number-levels additively, to simulate additive forces in 5 dimensions.

He was asking Carissa what sorts of very predictable, very regular magical interactions she knows about, as he might be able to use as additional pieces in a process that mimics very regular mathematical rules.  Including things that wouldn't ever appear in a spell, but if you put them together in a weird way where one piece stabilizes another, or forces it to flow along a narrow channel, it then becomes highly regular and predictable.

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Possibly they should not in fact attempt to collaborate on this either right now, but once you've tried accounting for the very obvious regularities in magical interaction that are apparent in any spellcasting, the thing she would try, if she were building the thing he's trying to build, is to look at apparent irregularities, places that feel like they violate the intuitive rules that every wizard learns for the behavior of magic, and figure out what's actually going on in those cases. Which is what she's trying.

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...continuing communications breakdown; he still didn't see at all how that suggestion interacted with what he's trying to do.  He's not trying to figure out hidden dynamics for particular spells, or even complete/repair current theories of magical physics.  He's looking for very stable, predictable, and above all precisely interacting, pieces, with which to build a magical 'computer'.

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She thought that his aim was modelling magic so that he understands what parameters need to be specified in a Wish for it not to go catastrophically badly.

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Correct, but he's not trying to do that the way previous INT 27 casters would have in earlier centuries, by finding current magical anomalies and poking at them until he figures out what's going on.

He's building a thing that can simulate possible things that could be going on, so that he can, for example, feed in 30 different possibilities, and see if any of them reproduce the behavior of reality, and think analytically about how they fell short.

He's doing that by building a general toolset for simulating continuous processes, which he can then adapt to simulate possible laws of magic as a special case.  In principle, he could calculate out the possibilities himself by hand, given infinite time, but he doesn't have infinite time, so he's making a thing that does the calculations for him.

To do that, he needs pieces that interact in precise ways, so that they can model precise hypotheses; and they need to go on interacting in that precise way even when there's a lot of them, which is the hard part with magic.

Ideally, he needs small regular tiling parts which can be spun off by other stable magical structures, so that he can spin off a hundred thousand of them that will last for ten minutes apiece in a regular pattern whose resulting internal forces will allow it to be stable.

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Magic doesn't really come in pieces. Does he have, like, one of what he's calling a 'piece', so she can see it and point out more?

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Sure.  Here's one of his earliest prototypes, which will probably be easier to understand: an 'adder' which takes in three inputs and produces two outputs, as can be repeated and tiled together to make a system that does binary addition.  In this case, he had to do a huge amount of hammering and tweaking forces with other forces in order to make the things-isomorphic-to-bits interact in the right way for each adder, and then he had to specialize some of that work for every adder in his system being chained together to make an additionizer.

It'll probably be clearer what this system is trying to do if he sketches out on the whiteboard how it adds 1110 + 1101 = 11011 (14 + 13 = 27).

First a 1, a 0, and a fixed 0 enter this adder, which outputs a 1 to the final sum's 0th column, and outputs a 0 to the carry bit entering the next adder...

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Okay, yeah, she thought he was trying to input candidates for laws to test, and wanted things to narrow down the range of tests to run. She...might be able to help with this - there are magic items that need to be able to do limited internal computation - but she's less sure where to start. 

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It is very pretty, though. She will acknowledge this very grudgingly because it'd be much nicer if people who want to kill you lost the ability to make beautiful things or something.

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It feels like they should. It feels in Carissa like the impulse to make beautiful things, to invent, to discover, to test the laws of magic and twist them to your own purposes, to send little pieces running and swinging until blindly they do math, to step a little closer to godhood, cannot coexist with the impulse to annihilate people, any more than the sun can coexist with the dark. It feels like all that is wonderful about Keltham, all his fascinations and habits and playfulness and curiosity and quirks in what he notices and cares about, cannot coexist with the goal he's set himself.

 

Of course, isn't that what Keltham was telling her all along, that they can't coexist, that none of what makes him him can exist in a mind that is plotting to annihilate her and everyone else, and that he's decided to do it anyway for some reason.

 

There's no point in saying anything, so she doesn't say anything. She works on trying to make the magic do what he wants. 

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Elsewhere and Later


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"Your Infernal Majestrix."

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"Most High.  I've called you here to inform you that our former colony, the city-state of Korvosa, has overthrown their previous ruler, Queen Ileosa Arabasti, and seeks a closer relationship with Cheliax henceforth.  They're not willing to submit themselves directly to our rule, nor adopt any policies aimed at the damnation of their populace.  But they have appealed to us for a Chelish appointee at their court who can, in the words of the revolutionary council, keep an eye on their next Queen and let everyone know if the new Queen is doing anything batshit insane."

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"I'd say that sounded encouraging.  If not for the part where you apparently think this merits an urgent report to myself, and you haven't told me yet what batshit insanity the previous Queen was practicing."

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"Nothing apocalyptic, just killing everyone in the city in a mad bid for immortality.  Doesn't matter, one of your proteges shut it down before it could disrupt our shipping with Varisia.  Fortunate it played out that way, really.  Queen Illeosa was a Chelish expatriate.  If it hadn't been one of our own to stop her, it could have been quite bad for relations with Korvosa, or what was left of it."

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"One of my proteges?  They are all within Cheliax so far as I know."

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"Oh, you didn't send Pilar there, then, and conceal the fact from me?  I'd wondered."

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"No, actually."

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"Mm.  Good to know.  I would have considered that a Crown matter more than a Church affair."

"On other topics.  I don't directly receive reports about heresies against Asmodeus, and I understand why you're not forwarding those on to me.  But given the political relevance to Chelish diplomacy of what Carissa Sevar is doing in various countries with her 'Sevarites', I have not actually avoided hearing about Sevar unconcernedly summoning a devil to purchase souls, casually executing a paladin who opposed her, or offhandedly daringly rescuing a captured inquisitor of Asmodeus.  Is there possibly something you're not telling me about Carissa Sevar's current standing vis-a-vis Lawful Evil and Hell?"

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"It's a matter on which I haven't deemed it wise for you to know everything I know.  If you're thinking of raising your hopes about your ex-lover, I'd consider that premature."

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"Mm.  It is somewhat of a Crown matter as to whether or not she's liable to try taking the Crown.  Do I need to make sure my throne room is properly clean beforehand, so I'm not embarrassed if Carissa Sevar strolls in expecting it to be ready for use?  That sort of thing, Aspexia.  That sort of thing.  The stability of the Chelish state does require me to keep track of that sort of thing."

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"Given my current knowledge, Abrogail, I will be very, very pleasantly surprised if I find myself willing to back Carissa Sevar in an attempted assumption of your throne, does she deem it important enough to be worth taking from you."

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"Does Sevar know that would be your reply?"

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"That, I don't know."

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Elsewherer and Laterer


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"I admit, I wasn't expecting to meet you here."

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"Can't exactly say I know the feeling.  At least, not recently."

"I can cast Plane Shift, these days, so I'm your ride to the City of Brass."

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"I have scrolls for that."

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"You might need those for later, no point wasting them.  Also I have a Teleport scroll, and I actually know where we need to be."

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"Right then.  I don't know if you're Lawful these days, but how about if you promise me anyways that you're taking us to the City of Brass, and not Plane-Shifting or Teleporting me to anywhere you don't expect me to come back from in a timely fashion.  A couple of days tops, say."

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"I so promise."

"We're on the same side, Pilar.  On this particular trip, to be clear, not in general on all matters of morality."

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"Because otherwise 'Mister Doomlord' wrecks Avistan, or some such?"

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"Noooooo comment."

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"I can't believe I used to find you relatively pleasant to be around."

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"Not commenting on your character arc either."

"Shall we go?"

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Pilar sighs, takes a very deep breath, and extends her hands to Ione.

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Resist Energy (Fire) x2.

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Plane Shift.

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Teleport, from scroll, immediately, because you don't want to hang around in a random section of Efreet territory even a tiny little bit.

Planar Adaptation.

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Planar Adaptation (from scroll).

 

...and Pilar exhales the remaining breath she was holding, and breathes again.  With Planar Adaptation around herself, the air doesn't smell like anything.  White-glowing sparks enter her nostrils and do nothing in her lungs.  It feels like a slightly hot day, and no hotter than that.

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Around them stretches the City of Brass.  Not reputed to be one of the safest places in Creation, but the Efreet won't slay you out of hand, it's said, for they do wish to protect their City's trading custom.

It does not, quite, look as large as Dis, but then Dis tries to look large.  It looks wealthier than Dis, at least to the eyes of someone from Golarion, because using souls as building material doesn't strike the eye in quite the same way as making whole buildings out of brass.

Fire is everywhere, and nothing is burning.  Anything that could burn, in this place, is long since gone and not even the ash of it remains.  If there's a section of the City of the Brass that's meant for mortals too weak to protect themselves, and yet somehow strong enough to travel hither, it is not this section.  Its mortal hospitality is seen in how there are stable brass streets to walk upon, and not just lakes of lava submerged in oceans of fire.

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"Looks like the others aren't here yet.  Hopefully we're not too early, and hopefully Nefreti will poke me if it turns out we're in the wrong place."

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"I guess we'll just hang around in the City of Brass, then.  Just like old times in Ostenso, only with everything on fire and also the two of us being enemies."

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"Not that much of a change from Ostenso, then, in a certain deep sense.  But sure, we've got stuff to catch up on... actually it wouldn't surprise me if I was given deliberately bad timing information for that reason."

Ione casts her eye critically about the brass architecture around them, in which there is a notable lack of conveniently human-sized chairs or benches.  Eventually she steps over to the end of the platform they landed on, and sits down on the edge with her feet dangling below, facing a pleasant view of a rippling lava lake.

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Pilar follows her.  "Oh, you don't already know everything about what I've been up to?"

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"There's a lot of details I don't need to be told, especially if you're going to tell it to me anyways."

"So how was Korvosa?"

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"At first I was annoyed once I realized how Snack Service had set me up, but I spent a couple of days being tortured by the only woman I've met who's as beautiful as Abrogail Thrune, and... I'm not going to lie, I needed that, after everything else I've been through."

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"Glad to hear you enjoyed your torture vacation."

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"I mean, Ileosa could have been better at the actual torture.  Her usual torturer, Kordaitra, was a devout member of the Church of Asmodeus and Ileosa correctly guessed that Kordaitra shouldn't be told about me.  But Ileosa was even more sensual than Subirachs, and was genuinely trying to break me and brainwash me into serving her, and that made up for a lot."

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"Never going to be my own cup of tea.  If I would've ever had a side like that, of either polarity, Cheliax ruined it for good.  But it sounds like you had fun and I'm sincerely glad about that."

"So how'd the adventure progress from there?  I don't think your curse could've just walked you out of a torture cell, on my understanding of the rules it follows."

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"Pretended to be a lot more breakable than I was, played up the adorable agonized victimhood for all it was worth.  Managed to lure one of the Grey Maidens guarding me into also having some fun with me.  They hadn't been told that I was senior Chelish personnel, or a plague-ridden corpse when it came to avoiding contaminating the Church of Asmodeus with knowledge of me.  I managed to unwillingly leak to my new Grey Maiden playmate that I was ever so terrified of Asmodeans and their torments."

"She brought Kordaitra in to have a pass at me."

"I didn't actually tell Kordaitra the whole story, at first, just let her 'break' me too, and spilled out secrets as appropriate -"

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"Wait, did you literally overthrow the wicked queen of Korvosa just by... submitting and getting tortured a lot?"

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"I was trying to do it exclusively that way, but Snack Service told me I was running out of time and needed to stop playing around.  So yeah, I brought the commander of the Guard into the conspiracy, without trying to seduce her with my adorable victimhood.  I got into some actual magical fights.  I didn't directly fight the Queen myself, obviously, she was out of my current league.  But it's not that hard to take out a royal when your side has got her second-in-command, her third-in-command, and surprise."

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"I'm speechless on the object level, if obviously not the meta level.  Well, it sounds like your life-changing journey is going fine so far."

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"I learned a lot of valuable life lessons, that's for sure."

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"Dare I ask?"

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"Any problem can be solved by submitting to the people hurting you, but maybe not solved quickly."

"I don't, in fact, know better than legendary adventurers.  They're better than me and had reasons to do things their way, and I should meekly accept their authority in the future."

"Somebody having a Lawful Evil alignment isn't enough by itself to make them behave reasonably, if they don't answer to a higher authority, the way that people in Cheliax answer to the Queen and the Queen herself answers to Asmodeus."

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"Those sure are some very Lawful Evil lessons to learn from overthrowing a wicked legal government."

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"I vigorously dispute that characterization of what I did.  Once I got my Splendour headband back, I gave Korvosa my best oration on how states always end up ultimately ruled by Evil people, even if those rulers pretend to be something else, even if they mislead divination spells so they look like some different alignment, even if they make secret donations to Good churches so that their alignment will genuinely detect as something else.  You'll always end up ruled by Evil people, because they're the ones who want power and because of what people have to do to keep power.  That was why Korvosa needed to choose openly Lawful Evil rulers in the future, who wouldn't have to pretend about the Evil and could be selected for Lawfulness too.  And invite in a powerful representative from Cheliax, who'd supervise the next ruler and make sure she didn't do anything too crazy that would destroy Korvosa's value to Cheliax as a trading partner and port to Varisia."

"I replaced one wicked legal government with another, got it?  I wanted to talk them into just joining the Chelish Empire again, but my Splendour was warning me that they wouldn't go for it."

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"I mean, not to hammer on the obvious, but it's that whole Evil and damnation thing.  A lot of places would love to join the Chelish Empire and get the benefits of all their wealth, if the price wasn't misery in the present and eternal torture in the afterlife."

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"Yes.  People are so unreasonable about that."

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"Not... really."

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"Anyways, I used enough high-circle divine magic in high-stakes combat, mixed with what wizardry I had, that I went up to third-circle wizard.  At the same time as I hit sixth-circle oracle, near as I could figure afterward.  And I managed to duplicate and re-cast an arcane spell using way too much divine magic, when that was unreasonably important on account of sudden unexpected actual fucking dragon, which I understand makes me formally a mystic theurge."

"You?"

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"Sixth-circle oracle, but still just second-circle wizard.  Knowing as much of the future as I do makes it hard to get yourself into the right kind of trouble.  Something about the psychology of doing it to yourself on purpose... doesn't make it not count, exactly, but there sure is a discount.  You're fortunate to have that whole Snack Service setup, but then, I shouldn't complain since you're not so fortunate for needing it."

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"That sure is a perspective on my life which is not my perspective."

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"'Yet', she said ominously."

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"Ione, if you're going to use your foreknowledge to ominous at me, I'm going to leave."

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"Yeah, that's fair, I shouldn't be doing it even as a joke."

"Do anything special with the ex-Queen before you sent her to Hell?  Feel free not to answer if it's horrible and would ruin our friendship."

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"Didn't send her to Hell at all, she could've had all sorts of True Resurrection arrangements."

"They Petrified her and put her in a supposedly secure vault.  I've actually got title to Ileosa, legally speaking.  The new government got a court to rule that Ileosa should be enslaved to me as recompense for those terrible, terrible tortures she put me through.  Maybe if I get powerful enough and have that much spare time I'll pick up Ileosa again and keep her as a harem slave, someday."

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"...like, as a victim, or..."

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"As a sadist.  I think she could be good at it with some training."

"My read on Ileosa is that she was spoiled, frankly.  It's sort of sad.  Past a certain point, she never had anybody in her life who could tell her what she was doing wrong or set her right.  About anything, including torturing people."

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"You... uh... really liked her, huh."

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"She was beautiful and sexual and she sincerely tried to break me.  Call me shallow, then, because I am, in fact, shallow, and I'll own that."

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"You're different, you know.  Either at Splendour 21, or at sixth-circle, you're different."

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"Let me guess, you liked the old me better."

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"I don't think I'd put it that way.  The old Pilar was - nicer, maybe, but -"

"I don't want to make it sound - like Good is something you can ever switch off and put away.  Any more than you'd be okay with seeing Evil like that.  But we're in pretty weird circumstances, and - I guess, in light of that - I can appreciate this Pilar, for her being -"

"Well, for her being what she is."

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"Is that your way of saying that you morally disapprove of me, but you know I'm hot?"

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"No."

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"I'm curious what you are saying.  Any tiny scrap of appreciation of Evil from you is progress, and I'd like to know about it and build on it and maybe bring you back to the side of Hell, someday."

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"So take dath ilan, which nobody in the Conspiracy understood or could have understood, at the time.  Not even me, because I hadn't gone all the way over to Good, then.  Even Peranza didn't understand until she went fully Good herself, and that she didn't do while she was still under threat in Cheliax."

"There are kinds of Goodness you can't express in dath ilan, if it's the way that Keltham described it -"

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"You don't know?"

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"Even Nethys can't see there from here, or so Clepati implied that Nethys implied.  Neither of them is Lawful and either could be messing with me."

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"Huh.  Go on?"

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"There's kinds of Goodness you can't express in dath ilan.  Maybe sometimes a house there catches fire and the parents have to run in and risk their own life to save the lives of their children.  But no child ever starves to death, there, for want of food.  No mother or father ever decides to starve themselves so that their children can have a little more food.  They don't die for their children slowly, one day at a time, facing down the pain and enduring it.  That kind of Goodness isn't a thing, there."

"And it is better so.  It wouldn't be worth setting things up so that a child could face starvation, just once, so that their parents could choose to starve themselves instead.  Not even to complete the expression of Goodness, to complete the expression of what mortals can be, inside dath ilan."

"But if, somehow, that happened in dath ilan, just once - I think they'd be able to celebrate the Goodness of the parents who starved, and be glad their people had proved that about themselves, even as they wished it had never happened and mourned the parents whose lives were cut short."

"Really, when you think about it, there's much larger pieces of Goodness missing.  They don't have Hell, at all, let alone Malediction.  No paladin ever risks going to Hell themselves in the uncertain hope of maybe saving more people from Hell than that, not even innocent people, maybe, but just people."

"They would so never ever introduce Hells or Malediction, in dath ilan, just to get the paladins.  But if somehow, that happened to them, they would find a tiny space to celebrate that the expression of Goodness in their world had become more complete."

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"You actually did go all the way over to Good, huh."

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"Yeah.  Once I was out of Cheliax and no longer under threat and not, subconsciously trying to look a little less like a complete alien and traitor to my old friends from Ostenso.  I went all the way over."

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"Well, you sound a little sad about that, so maybe there's still hope.  Do you know why you sound sad?"

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"Put that question on hold.  I wasn't done talking about you."

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"Uh huh."

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"So - where was I -"

"Dath ilan would find a little space to celebrate the greater expression of Goodness in paladins, among all the mourning and wishing it hadn't been so, if Hell came to their universe."

"Because Good and Evil don't cancel out."

"I've been thinking, now and then, about how - being in this universe, Pharasma's Creation - might have changed things compared to what Keltham is so certain is the natural state of a world.  And I think - besides the categories of Good and Evil themselves, maybe being not the way we'd have sorted everything ourselves - we get used to thinking of people having a net total quantitative alignment and not just a, huge bag of events.  Where each individual event is one that could have multiple aspects we'd celebrate, multiple aspects we'd mourn."

"You can't, actually, make up for bad things by doing good things.  It can shift your alignment but it can't cancel the reality.  Every bad thing you do, is just there, forever.  And every good thing you do, is also just there, forever.  Which doesn't mean you should be sad about the badness over and over and over until the total sadness adds up to infinity.  It's just - the way things are, in dath ilan, that nobody ever judges them at the end of their lives, and they don't have any need to think of people as finally Good or finally Evil.  Instead people are the whole collection of everything they once did, and everything they currently are."

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"So you morally disapprove of me, and think I'm hot, and the two facts coexist."

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"Not literally, because if I had such an aspect of myself, a potential to appreciate that kind of hotness, Cheliax ruined it for me far past my own ability to put it back together again."

"Metaphorically, I suppose, yes."

"What you've become - isn't, I think, the best Pilar Pineda you could have possibly become, from the starting point where we first met in Ostenso.  If we were just considering the person you became for yourself, and not considering your effects on anyone else."

"But what you became instead is stronger than you were, and prouder, and finding new parts of herself and new ways to be happy.  I can celebrate that even if other people get hurt, even if I think it wasn't the best possible outcome for you personally, even if I wish our whole universe hadn't been shaped the way it was.  To say that I can appreciate some aspects of the more grownup Pilar, isn't to say anything one way or another, about whether it's a good thing on net.  I can celebrate, even, that our world has somebody like you in it, even as I wish it didn't have anyone like you in it.  Badness and goodness don't cancel."

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"I'll have to think about whether there's anything useful buried under that enormous mound of heresy.  Do you already know why it is that you're sad you went full Good?"

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"Because I did have Evil desires in me.  If I wanted to be hurtful at you, Pilar, I'd say that Cheliax ruined that for me.  But probably even if there'd been no Cheliax in my past, I'd choose not to do those things, because of how other people would get hurt, if I did.  And hurting people - really hurting them, not like you going on a torture vacation - hurting people is wrong."

"But it means I'm not literally - everything Ione Sala could possibly be, in every part of herself, and I can mourn that, even as I affirm that it was the right choice and I don't wish to be otherwise."

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"I'm glad.  It sounds like you'll be okay, eventually, even after Asmodeus conquers everything."

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"Noooooo comment."

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Elsewhere and slightly earlier


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"Fe-Anar.  Got a moment for something fairly important?"

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"I expect so. Did you decide not to release Rovagug?"

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"Not yet.  Maybe with two more Intelligence points."

"My Demiplane of Diamond Synthesis has been harvested, and my party is heading off to the City of Brass momentarily.  I didn't actually get two million Wish diamonds, more like - estimates since I didn't count exactly - two hundred thousand Wish diamonds and a million True Resurrection diamonds.  Not all of the seeds grew out the same way."

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" - well, I can't actually imagine any plans that need a million instead of two hundred thousand, but my condolences."

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"If reality was just being reality, the conclusion would be that diamond just won't be a limited resource, pretty soon; they'll be a material component in spells, but not a valuable component.  Even if something odd happened to me, and to the Iomedaen whom I gave sealed instructions, the Scientific Revolution would still figure it out in a year or two."

"The only way anything from the Demiplane of Diamond Synthesis could actually end up being valuable, was if something weird and tropey happened to make it be the case that what I did once, here, can never be done again.  That's the only way that any products of this event end up valuable, or rare, rather than useful the way that water is useful."

"It seemed important to disclaim that part, before I gave you some things that are probably worthless and not even slightly rare as of a year or two later, unless something tropey happens."

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"People will probably start using them for jewelry like they use turquoise," he says in a tone of approval.

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"I wasn't sure initially if the diamond synthesis would scale around diamond dust used as seed crystals, so I also got thirty-two jewelry-quality diamonds, the sort that are unusually clear but too small for even a Limited Wish, and had those polished smooth and spherical, and Prestidigitated them before throwing them into the demiplane, to try to ensure that early diamond deposition would be very regular for at least the next hour... I don't know if that worked, but only three times, or it was just some unrelated seeds that went really well... anyways, I ended up with three of these."

Keltham takes from his Bag of Holding three exceptionally clear unfaceted jewels, considerably larger than Wish-sized, barely small enough that you could close your fist around one of them.

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He stares at them open-mouthed for a little while. 

 

"- they're beautiful.

 

You know, if there is something beyond ninth-circle....that's the kind of focus you'd need to get anywhere with it."

 

 

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"Well, I thought a bit about who should have these, if it turns out that going to the City of Brass is some huge story turning point where our party doesn't come back afterwards etcetera etcetera whatever and these are the only Big Diamonds ever to exist.  And you're the only person I know, outside of that party, who goes around having ideas like 'Maybe we can make our own shield from the Outer Gods and tell Pharasma to get lost', so I thought you seemed like the best fit."

"You're also the most combined Good plus actually sensible person I know, besides myself of course ha ha, such that it seems like giving these to you would actually have good outcomes."

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" - thank you. I don't know if there's a way to make them into our own shield from the Outer Gods but I will certainly give it a try."

 

He reaches out and takes the diamonds, reverently.

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"I do want a fairly serious promise that you won't misuse them or let them end up in the wrong hands, if they're at all valuable or dangerous."

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"If I took that tropes hypothesis of yours at all seriously I would not be making important oaths," he says. "However, I don't, so, I swear to you, if these turn out to be items of power and significance, I will guard them and their secrets with my life, and with those resources I can command, and I will not allow them to be taken from me and I'll recover them if they are, whatever that takes and wherever it takes us..."

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"...unless you or Abadar tell me to consider myself no longer bound by this oath, or my best understanding of you and of Abadar if both of you are dead or inaccessible, would tell me that."

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"Yeah, fair point about the tropes.  Feel very free to go 'Arbitrarily nope' at the tropes if it seems like they're trying to throw a plot at you that they wouldn't have thrown at you if you wouldn't react in an interesting way.  Or do Something Else Which Is Not That about any sort of non-common-sensical situation that reality seems to be trying to put you into.  Or generally not to let this whole situation create drama, even if that seems on the surface like it might involve an exception to the exact words of the promise.  You have my total permission and encouragement to just be unexpectedly sensible about anything that develops unexpectedly, and say, 'That's what Keltham said he wanted on the day he asked me for this promise.'"

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"All right. ...You, too, should try to be unexpectedly sensible, if you notice the plot trying to make you destroy the world."

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"I'd say 'give it a rest' but I rather understand why you're not."

"Obvious things to a dath ilani, if you end up passing these on to somebody else, ask them for the same promise, including the sensibility clause and the clause about asking a further recipient for the same promise diagonally.  From our perspective, that'd just be an automatic consequence of the original promise, but saying it out loud in case it's not."

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"That is sensible but not in contracts unless you put it in them. If I pass the diamonds along I'll ask for the same promise."

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"Off to the City of Brass, then.  Wish me horrible luck that ends with me permadead and you and Carissa and the Church of Iomedae trying to recover the situation with a couple of hundred thousand Wish diamonds."

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"I hope you die in a tragic and baffling fiery explosion!"

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"Wouldn't be nearly enough, I've made the obvious True Resurrection arrangements and backup Wish resurrection plans etcetera."

"I mostly expect I'll just come back in a few hours, more intelligent and ready for a proper conversation with Wished-up Carissa.  But if I never see you again, my awful experience in Golarion would've been even worse without you."

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"My fairly great experience in Golarion would have been worse without you too. Good luck on dying."

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He goes to seek Carissa.  He's supposed to give the +4/+6/+6 headband back after this, and though he thinks he's put himself together in a way that held and will hold with a +6/+6/+4 headband, it's still the last chance if un-Wished Carissa has anything to say to a noticeably stupider ex-boyfriend with somewhat stronger emotions.

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Carissa has been occasionally departing the demiplane for cult encouragement. Her cult is... encouraging, she guesses, not for any purpose for which she'd actually want to leverage it except accounting for her activities and adding to her hoard of souls. It's certainly very vigorous and enthusiastic, in those cities where it lucked into good local leadership or a resonant bit of theology. The pamphlets she releases routinely with her teachings are widely reproduced and/or strictly banned in forty-six countries. 

Aside from that she has chased down a few of the threads on her wall, mostly to unsatisfying conclusions. No one knows what Aroden's aims with the Starstone protections were. No one who is allowed to tell her knows at what stage in ascension those who go missing and can't be resurrected are destroyed. The Church of Abadar, which provides Starstone attempt insurance (full price of a True Resurrection plus fees, up front), knows how often it happens, and it's not often, but the ones who it happened to seem like those who were more promising than average, not less so. 

No one knows much about the universe Pharasma came from. No one knows much about the overall composition by planet of origin of any of the afterlives other than Axis. Mortals aren't allowed to wander around arbitrary parts of Axis either. She's put up hundreds of scraps that will, perhaps, assemble into an answer when she's smarter. Such and such apparent species observable in Aktun. Such and such results from Fe-Anar's analysis of the linguistic inputs to various languages spoken there. Such and such results on supposedly random summons. Reality has consistent features deep down; you just have to be positioned to notice them. She's no longer in the habit of thinking of it as an ilani teaching, rather than a Sevarite one, but it's important. 

When she's tired of that she works on Keltham's magic simulator. It's complicated the way problems are supposed to be complicated, instead of the way they turn out to often actually be complicated. 

 

 

" - hey. Ready to go?"

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"Yeah, unless 24/20/19 Carissa has anything left to say to 25/26/25 me before he goes 29/27/23 and she rises to 29/25/24.  I continue to suspect that the Wish augmentations run wider than spells and headbands in a way that Golarion can't easily measure."

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"I think - there's almost nothing I could say that wouldn't really be about trying to prevent the end of the world. If there are things you'd want to hear, given that..."

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"Those need wait only a little longer."

"Let's collect Ri-Dul and Tarnish and go, and remember the infosec conditions around Ri-Dul."  Ri-Dul isn't aware of exactly how many +5s they mean to purchase, here.

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(Carissa is hoping that Ri-Dul will get suspicious and kill them all, but she considers it unlikely.)


"Yeah."

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"Hello Keltham.  Hello Sevar.  I'd be louder about some other issues, especially with Sevar, but I'll put that on hold to ask whether 'Mister Doomlord' is still a problem, or if you're here because you took care of Him.  Or It.  Whatever."

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"I unfortunately cannot promise that Mister Doomlord is no longer a problem from your perspective, but I have all of his stuff and I don't expect him to be an issue for Cheliax... over at least the next few days.  Carissa is a bit more concerned about that, and I wouldn't be surprised if Snack Service calls you in on it at some point."

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"Fucking great.  Sevar, are we on the same side here?"

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"I don't know and cannot speak freely about most relevant considerations. I think I broadly want Snack Service to succeed at what it's trying to do."

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"Are you by any chance on Asmodeus's side and Cheliax's side."

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"Yes." It's a lie but one she tells unhesitatingly, at this point. Asmodeus believing it is good for the only thing that matters.

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"I admit I wasn't expecting that.  Is there a reason you're hanging out with Keltham and not running Project Lawful?"

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"Yes."

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"You frankly had no right to expect any other reply."

"Hi, Sevar.  Wish we could just kick back on the edge of the platform, watching the lava flows, and talk harem reunion things.  But I'm guessing it wouldn't go that great with all the genuinely important questions I can't answer yet."

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"Likewise except I don't even wish we could talk harem reunion things. Are you here in the hopes Keltham will give you valuable stuff for no apparent reason?"

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"Hope no, knowledge yes."

"You are a very different person from that Carissa Sevar I once knew, and you will become more different yet.  But for whatever it can still mean, I say to you now:  I forgive you."

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Ione is not in fact even on her list of people that she meaningfully wronged; Ione had negotiated her good treatment with Cheliax before Carissa had any power.

She tries to imagine what Carmin would say. Probably that, to Ione, Carissa was Cheliax, was part of how it twisted people, and so the hurts Cheliax did Ione are, to Ione, hers in part. 

 

 

None of it really feels like it matters, alongside the end of the world. 


And she does want to thank Ione for prophecying for her everywhere, that's been very useful, but she doesn't acknowledge around Keltham that her cult is plainly a Nethys/Cayden plan.

 

She nods.

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"Yeah, I know.  You didn't do that much to me, by Cheliax standards.  What's a measly 20 lashes that I didn't even try to get out of?  But you did also hurt some other people I cared about."

"I forgive you for that too."

"Is there anything for which I still ought to ask my own forgiveness, of you, that you know of?"

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Her face definitely wasn't readable. Oracles of Nethys are very annoying that way. 

 

The thing Carissa's going to have a hard time forgiving is that Nethys could have maneuvered for Keltham to be unable to attempt world destruction plans and to have to just work with Iomedae, and didn't. She has no idea if Ione understands that, let alone endorses it.

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"I wasn't actually using foreknowledge there, just guessing, so I can't actually read your mind if you were trying to think anything back."

"If I had to guess again, I'd say that I'm sorry for not answering your questions, even though it's the kind of halfhearted apology where I think I have reasons and I'm going to go on doing it after the apology.  Or if it's about the other thing, then I'm sorry again in that poor halfway fashion, where I think I have an excuse, where I say that what I feel about it myself is irrelevant because Nethys would retroactively not have made me His tool if I would predictably betray Him later, and it is better that He have that tool than not."

"And if it's anything else you can't say, and I can't guess, then please accept the apology I'd probably give if I knew."

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"We should probably not linger here."

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"Yes, quite.  There are spells with time limits running.  Keltham, I do require directions from you on how to handle this... complication."

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"Telepathic Bond between you, Tarnish, and Ione.  Split to three groups, Ri-Dul and Keltham, Tarnish and Carissa, Ione and Pilar."

"Ione, do you know my intended business protocol and rules?  Also, do you or Pilar need a ride home afterwards?"

Keltham is handing over a small Bag of Holding to Ione, even as he speaks; and to Pilar, the +4/+6/+6 artifact headband that Snack Service gave to the scarred maid (Tarnish?) earlier.

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"I can give Pilar a ride back to the Material once we're done.  We shouldn't need to reunite before that."

"I have a prediction about the contents of the transactions you want us to do, but not any special rules about them, though I could guess at sensible ones."

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"Swear any promising-looking Efreet groups to secrecy about literally all aspects of the remainder of your negotiation and transaction, including the payment offered and the service sought and whether or not the transaction with you concluded successfully at all, before discussing any other trades with them."

"I put four denominations of payment in your bag.  If an Efreet group wants more payment than one of the largest denomination for one full service, or more than the least denomination of payment to agree to absolute indefinite secrecy, walk out."

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He finishes casting the Telepathic Bond.

"You people try for such fascinating amounts of secrecy.  It reminds me of various episodes in my own youth that I will dramatically hint at, but say nothing more about."

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"If we're not meeting up again after this, I've got a question.  Is there a reason that you, Keltham, are wearing the other of the two artifact headbands that Snack Service bought from Dispater?  Because I'm a little upset about that being how things turned out, especially when I was under the impression this was important for fighting 'Mister Doomlord', and I wonder whether Lord Dispater would be happy to hear about -"

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"I traded away an even more powerful artifact to get that one, to somebody who was much more clearly on your and Carissa's side about the Mister Doomlord business."

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"Sevar, you want to get started on our shopping while those two flirt?"

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"Sure."

 

 

Did agreeing to let Keltham use her headband actually make him likelier to end the world? Or likelier to get something better than that? - no point trying to figure that out now. 

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Welcome to the City of Brass!  Everything here is made of brass and also on fire.

Complicated divine arrangements and negotiations will have ensured that you don't meet anybody from a different planet or Prime Material plane while you shop.  You may, however, run into a devil or two, maybe an inevitable or a daemon, or denizens of Earth or Air.  To meet an angel here is not unheard-of, but demons are less welcome.

It is not literally true that everything imaginable is for sale here, but they do have a lot!  You're on sharply limited time, though, and are supposed to prioritize your main shopping trip.  Still, you've got about 50,000gp of spellsilver, at new Golarion prices, or four times that amount in old Golarion prices.

With Tarnish's approval, you could also trade away a Wish diamond here, given suitable promises of secrecy - though Keltham has expressed some worry and reluctance about arming Efreet with that kind of power, or making it obvious that the diamond market was flooded from Golarion.  Keltham/Tarnish will be happier if you trade the Wish diamond to a particular noble Efreeti intending to use it themselves, who swears an oath about how they'll use the diamond and that they won't tell anyone about the transaction.

(If what is written in many books is correct, almost any noble Efreeti can cast Wish up to once per day, given a Wish diamond.)

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Carissa wants her mental enhancement first. She'll shop afterwards, if it seems like a good idea once she is smarter and better and cooler.

 

 

She doesn't, actually, prefer this world where she becomes incredibly smart and powerful to the one where Keltham never comes to Golarion and she goes to Hell. But it's - something resembling a consolation prize.

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Okay, let's consider the market in the City of Brass for quintuple sequences of enhancement Wishes!

Noble Efreet are not exactly rare, in the City of Brass.  The place doesn't run much in the way of censuses, but there can't realistically be less than twenty thousand noble Efreet here, all of whom can cast 1 Wish per day.

This means there are many, many more noble Efreet than there are travelers with Wish diamonds to convert to Wishes!  The process doesn't take long and doesn't exhaust a noble Efreet, either!  And if you were very naive about how markets here operate, you might reason -

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The City of Brass's price of converting a Wish diamond to a Wish should collapse to a small service charge, about what you'd pay for a few minutes of a noble Efreet's time for any other service; modulo transaction costs that both parties are incentivized to keep small.

(At least, assuming there's no such thing as a 'premium Wish' that fewer noble Efreet can offer.)

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Yes, if you were very naive about how markets work, you might think that!  But naturally the City of Brass has legislated rules about minimum Wish prices - which, of course, it is illegal to explicitly tell travelers!

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...then obviously you're going to have more and more entrants into the Wish-diamond-to-Wish conversion market, until all of the excess profit from this artificially high regulated price has been dissipated in marketing expenses and idle labor.  You'll get noble Efreet shops advertising Wishes on every corner of the City of Brass, as they all compete to be the shop a traveler chooses, to buy this legally overpriced service that 20,000 competitors in the city could also offer.

This artificially high price will also have the further result that fewer outside purchasers will come to the City of Brass.

Thus, the net value captured by Efreet and not dissipated in competing for overpriced transactions will be less.

Why would anyone do that to themselves?!

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Because the travelers have to spend more to buy Wish-castings, and if they're losing, the Efreet must be winning!

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Huh.  What's the average Intelligence and Wisdom of Efreet?

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12 INT and 14 WIS.  Why do you ask?

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No reason.  Anyway, dath ilan accepts the City of Brass's correction: standard economics does indeed fail to describe how trades in the City of Brass work.

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Standard economics, ha!  Dath ilan is just naive about how markets work in real life!

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...if you consider Lawful Evil aliens with INT 12 / WIS 14 to be 'real life', then yes, standard economic models from dath ilan do not well describe what happens when such aliens in 'real life' try to operate what they imagine to be a 'market'.

Anyways, the City of Brass was saying something about its 'market' for sequences of 5 enhancement Wishes?

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Right!  Now, while it's pretty rare on any given planet for somebody to assemble 5 Wish diamonds that they want to convert to a +5 abilitystat increase, that's when you're considering just one planet.  If you consider all the planets across all the planes, that have advanced to the point of anybody there having Plane Shift, that's more like 10 parties per year that come into the City of Brass with 5 Wish diamonds that they want to convert to 5 Wishes!

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And this service is overpriced as a matter of regulation, so there's many groups of 5 noble Efreet vying to persuade travelers to buy 5 Wishes from them.  Correct?

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Yep!  Though not to the same extent that every noble Efreeti you come across wants to sell you 1 Wish.

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Are there... 5+6+6+6+3... at least 26 groups like that, in the City of Brass?

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Yes, there are.

But you'd have to walk around quite a bit, passing many more shops looking to sell you one Wish conversion, and skipping any 5-noble-Efreet groups already marked as 'tried' by a nearby Arcane Mark from one of your companion groups.

You might, at some point, have to grit your teeth and start trying to pull together a new group of 5 noble Efreet who weren't already advertising that combined service, maybe get a 2-group willing to cooperate with a nearby 3-group.  Though this will be a lot more annoying, and run a much higher risk that this is externally visible.

If the natives combine information and figure out you were buying more than one quintuple series of Wishes, that is going to point a lot more interest in your direction, if anybody catches on that far.

The ideal and hoped-for outcome is that you went around visiting a lot of shops and swearing them to secrecy, and maybe the City of Brass can figure out that part; but they don't know all those negotiations concluded successfully; and the larger City just guesses that this weird party was trying to negotiate too hard, or had some weird extra secret condition that most noble Efreet groups turned down.

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This is about how Carissa expected everything to work. The important thing is that they're not weirder than other things that happen around here frequently, and that they can get their delicious delicious Wishes.

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Oh, they're definitely not weirder than the weirdest thing to happen in the City of Brass in the last week.  So long as nobody actually infers that they have unlimited Wish diamonds.

- does Carissa want an Armillary Amulet equivalent that somehow provides a +7 bonus to Spellcraft instead of a mere +5?  It'd be only the equivalent of 20,000gp, and she could try paying in spellsilver to make the real price to them be a quarter of that, maybe, if she's good at haggling.

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- yes, yes she does, and she's not even all that interested in saving Keltham money. She has yet to run across a problem other than imitating Hell-forged artifact headbands that seemed to require more spellcraft than she already has - the trickiest parts of Keltham's simulator lie elsewhere - but that doesn't mean she doesn't want MORE.

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Well, Keltham hasn't seemed all that interested in saving Keltham money either!  But Carissa doesn't have an infinite quantity of spending money with her on this trip, unless you count unlimited Wish diamonds that can only be spent if conditions of secrecy can be created around that and you know what a noble Efreeti plans to do with them, and you may need that money for other things.

Like an IOUN STONE.  Does Carissa Sevar want an IOUN STONE, a vibrant purple prism that stores up to 3 total circles of spells?  Nobody in Golarion has been able to make an IOUN STONE for a long long time, but maybe they just didn't have enough Spellcraft and weren't soon to be INT 29 and didn't have a magical simulator of magic physics and weren't trying hard enough!  Also her cult members would probably be pretty impressed if she walked in with an IOUN STONE orbiting her, at least those of them who knew what an IOUN STONE was.

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- okay yeah maybe she kind of wants one of those too. 

 

She could totally figure out the lost Azlanti art of ioun stone making if she wasn't going to die in a month.

 

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The proprietor of this store is a noble Efreeti who stands tall even for a noble, currently bargaining with an even larger Brutalis devil over a heavily magicked sword that Carissa couldn't lift with a Bull's Strength.

Serving as store assistant is an Azer - a brass-skinned dwarfoid native to Elemental Fire, whose hair and beard trail off into solid flame.  Almost all of Azerkind are enslaved by the Efreet, for the Azer's citadels were distant and had poor relations with one another, so that the Efreet armies could fall on their cities one by one and enslave them, without the next city becoming any the wiser.

The Azer assistant will inform Carissa that the price of the Ioun Stone proudly displayed in the store's window is -

- well, Carissa can either blow her whole remaining budget on that one Ioun Stone.  Or she could try to meet Keltham's conditions of secrecy and known use, to trade a Wish diamond.

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....she should in fact do this AFTER she is smarter and not before. If she feels on some level like her greater Wisdom will lead her to not buy the ioun stone, that's because she actually shouldn't.

 

And if she should, she will. 

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Before Carissa can go, the Azer will inform her in a low confidential voice that if the Ioun Stone orbiting in the store display caught her eye, there's an Orange Prism Ioun Stone that can be brought forth for the truly discriminating buyer.  It would increase the power of all her spells by about half a caster circle, including when it came to determining what sort of spells she can Permanency.

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Well, how does this shop feel about Keltham's confidentiality agreement.

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The huge malik (noble efreeti) and the huger devil don't seem to be coming to terms on the enormous +2 keen wounding sword.

The giant devil, of dull-golden hide, whose head and shoulders are both crowned and crested with many horns, turns away finally from the bargaining counter.

"He overcharges, even more than do most of his kind," the devil says in Infernal to Carissa Sevar.  "It seems he has some prejudice against Hell and Hell's."

The devil's voice sounds exactly like Carissa's father.

And Carissa feels a surge of hatred towards those awful price-gouging lol no Carissa has a Mind Blank up.

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"Maybe," she says dryly. "Or maybe he overcharges everyone, or maybe it's just you; we'd have to observe some other transaction to see."

 

This is dangerous, this is really genuinely dangerous, but Carissa Sevar, these days, is fearless; the worst thing that can happen by her values is nothing on this trip going wrong.

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The devil's eyes linger on the artifact crown of this woman, as seems to be the make of Hell; who replied to him in Infernal, who perhaps has bought fair form of some Hellish fleshcrafter, who seems to have absolutely no fear of him at all.  Even her surly tiefling attendant is equipped surpassingly well, though without any artifacts of her own.

"Have you need of some little service while you are in this City, perhaps?" the devil inquires smoothly.

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Odds it's a trap or a game of some kind - what is she talking about odds. Of course it is. "My business here is so secret that I will speak of it to no one who hasn't sworn me confidentiality, on not just what I'm buying and what I'm paying but of every matter they learn in the course of our transaction."

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"And if I promised confidentiality from all the inhabitants of this city, but not from my superiors in Hell?"

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"No deal."

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"Fascinating.  I hope it's not a problem if I report this discussion to my superiors?"

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"As they please."

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"Is there a name, then, under which I should report of this matter?"

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"Carissa Sevar, Dispater's. Should I have yours, in case some future business of mine on the Material could use it?"

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There's no sign he recognizes her name.  "Barbulbumalphas, of the Platform of Searing Irons in Stygia."

The devil turns from her, and exits the store without further speech.

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The noble Efreeti (that is a 'Malik' of Efreet, in their own tongue) has been watching all this with an aloof expression, like a father watching the squabbling of two children, neither of them his own -

- well, until she claims to be Dispater's, and then, possibly, his face twitches a little.

"Your business here?" he inquires in Infernal, in a voice that sounds like heated brass feels to the touch.

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"Well, do you agree to swear to confidentiality, about the content of our negotiation and anything that might be learned in the course of it?"

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"I can so swear, if you intend to make a purchase here."

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Yay!!!!!!!! She's going to have so much magical bling -

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- when she dies.

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Her face is not expressive, obviously. "I do so intend."

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"Then so long as your intent proves true, I swear to keep secret the content of our negotiation and all that I learn from you in the course of it, save what I must answer to officers of our city to prove to them that I obeyed our city's laws."

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"If we are unable to arrive at a purchase agreement, the confidentiality must still hold."

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Tarnish receives a message back from Ri-Dul, relayed of Keltham, who can't be in the Telepathic Bond because of Mind Blank.

"It must also apply to anything you learn from me, whether by speech or by purporting to read me.  It applies to anything you may have already learned or guessed from watching us.  All that passes within this store, as we now occupy, while we occupy and occupied it, is of the negotiation.  Your servant will also swear and must be sent out during the remaining proceedings.  You represent that you neither know nor suspect of others listening to us.  You may swear to the officers of the city no more than that you have obeyed the city's law."

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The Malik's eyes narrow, and from his throat comes a brazen laugh.  "Stringent conditions indeed, if I may not report on what I've already learned and what a devil already knows.  Do you, perhaps, offer me some token of payment, to cover the event where we do not arrive at a purchase agreement after all?"

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"No. I desire to reach an agreement, and expect to, but I won't pay if we don't."

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He stares at her in silence for a full six rounds, weighing the probable value of being able to tell other Efreet the bare facts so far, as she didn't seem particularly eager to conceal from that devil who was eager to do her service; the crown on her head, Dispater's name; the loss to his pride and the effect on future bargaining if he concedes this much; the possible loss of profit if he scares off this customer.

...what decides him, in the end, is the number of other shops in the City of Brass; it would be all too easy for her to leave.

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YES well that's what HAPPENS when you institute price floors in the most naive possible way, without actually doing any of the further coordination steps that would let you act as an ACTUAL monopoly!  You get excess entry until all of the excess profits are being dissipated by the seeking of that excess profit, and buyers are doing sellers an implicit favor which gives buyers more negotiating power that they'll use on unregulated side frills!

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"I accept," he says, and swears to her conditions.  His servant does likewise and then leaves.

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Great! She wants allll the ioun stones and she wants to pay in Wish diamonds.

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...but the Malik has to state and swear to the use of those Wish diamonds, as must be agreeable to his customers; there are many non-destructive uses of Wishes that they'll be happy to agree to.

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How many Wish diamonds does she have to trade?

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"Two I'd considered for purchases here; some others, for some other purchases, which I'd consider if you have more than I'm aware of."

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He has but the two Ioun Stones, but there is much else about his shop that might interest one who pays in Wish diamonds.  Since he has bound himself not to say anything of it, he admits himself quite curious what might lead Dispater to open out His treasury so.  Perhaps, if he knew her purpose, he could point her towards more appropriate items.

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She's starting a cult. She mostly wants to look really cool and conceivably at some point overthrow some governments.

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...

 

The Malik shows her a variety of items, none of which are truly tempting except for a Robe of the Archmagi.

It's gray.

Neutral-aligned.

Carissa would have to Atone to Lawful Neutral to use it.  But she keeps up a Mind Blank, so Hell wouldn't find out, right?  "I wanted to be able to wear a gray Robe of the Archmagi" is something that any reasonable deity should understand as a just reason to Atone.

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....she is briefly tempted, but, no, she thinks that there is absolutely no way a visibly Lawful Neutral person could serve the specific role that Carissa Sevar is serving. She could disguise it, obviously, but some people cast True Seeing, in situations involving her. 

 

Also she doesn't actually want to go to Axis. If all this ends, somehow, with nothing fixed or improved or destroyed, with all who trusted her betrayed, then she should burn eternally; that would just be correct. 

 

Not that she even could go to Axis, but it seems like if you don't even want to you probably can't Atone.

She'll just get the two ioun stones.

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He'll try for a while to bargain her up to three Wish diamonds before grudgingly settling on two.

These gems, he'll swear to use only for increasing his own abilitystats.  But he desires not to do so this day, for he has hopes of coming across a further Wish diamond sometime in the next millennium, by which means he might increase a stat by three rather than two.

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She'll purchase the Robe of the Archmagi for a friend, if he agrees to use those three Wish diamonds tomorrow, but not today, and to swear to total secrecy the Maliks whom he pays, or offers to pay, to help him cast three Wishes in succession.

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...that Robe of Archmagi is really worth two Wish diamonds.

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She has less patience than does Dispater's.

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Do they by any chance have a fourth Wish diamond they'd be willing to exchange for... basically anything reasonable he has?

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If it'll save them bargaining time with other Efreet who'll otherwise waste that time, she's willing to look over any easily-portable valuables he has, such as would be readily accepted as currency within the City of Brass, that they could later spend in place of the last Wish diamond, and not need to repeat all this bargaining.

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They get out of there eventually, Tarnish having sold a fourth Wish diamond for noticeably less than it was worth as of today, and rather a lot more than it might be worth later.

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There are some people in the world who'd know Carissa Sevar well enough to infer, from how much she doesn't look happy about her ioun stones, that either she has gained a lot of skill at bluffing or she thinks something incredibly awful is going to happen very soon.

 

Next up, the Wishes, then?

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Yes, they do in fact have Things To Do and people to become.

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Walking through the City of Brass with a lesser artifact crown, plus two fucking IOUN STONES orbiting your head like you're fucking Felandrial Morgethai, attracts more stares and avaricious glances than just the artifact crown.

Nobody tries it; at least, not yet.  Everybody in this part of Fommok Madinah is a few millennia old at least, and didn't get to be that way by directly attacking unreadably Mind Blanked adventurers with a lesser artifact and two fucking Ioun stones.

 

In time, they succeed in coming across a larger building, a mighty brazen slave-market, which also advertises in passing that it grants Wishes, or even five Wishes in succession; as is one indirect way of advertising that this business is worth the attention of at least five noble Efreet.

In retrospect, you wouldn't actually expect to find a shop that was just five noble Efreet waiting around to perform a service whose custom they might receive once per year if they were lucky.

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Is there anything good in the slave market? Carissa is in the market for ways to piss off her ex.

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Five Wishes, please.

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It's a little more complicated than that but, yes, she can get to that point under Keltham's onerous conditions without spending too much time.  Two fucking Ioun Stones orbiting your head commands a lot of commercial respect.  A devil-wrought lesser artifact is something you get by being on sufficiently good terms with Hell; Ioun Stones take money.

The interior of the building is over-warm by Golarion standards and very temperate by Elemental Fire standards, replete with air she could breathe without even a Planar Adaptation.  There are mortal slaves here, drawn from the Material, who require more favorable living conditions.  Though Carissa was only permitted to see a single chamber of slaves drawn from Golarion and the other planets of its star-system, for some reason or other; still, she could have had a Shobhad slave-warrior of Akiton, or a pliant and broken Lashunta of Castrovel, did she wish to piss off Keltham by buying such a person and then, presumably, mistreating them.

Mentioning that she wants to engage in secret negotiations with the noble Efreet owners will garner some looks even more arrogant than usual; and the Malik brought forth won't, in this case, agree to secrecy only on the basis of intended purchase.  But statement of intended purchase, and 'token' payment of something worth around 2000gp, will do.

A sixth Wish diamond is sufficient to pay for the casting of five Wishes, even under the condition that the Malik must state and swear to its use:  One of their number will hoard it through ages until he has assembled enough diamonds to raise the final abilitystat he requires to ascend into the next rank of Efreet nobility.


She will eventually end up in a windowless inner chamber of this place, as fiery as the rest of the interior was temperate, orange flames replaced by white flames shot with blue; hot enough that Carissa will feel it through the Planar Adaptation.

Carissa Sevar is obviously a very wealthy person, by the way.  And now she's in a windowless chamber with five noble Efreet who might, possibly, be tempted by walking away with six Wish diamonds and two Ioun Stones in profit, rather than just the one Wish diamond.  Five Malik acting together in a surprise attack - not that much surprise, but unannounced, at least - and supported by their subordinates and slaves shortly after, might take a victim unprepared even if they were relatively mighty for a mortal.

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That person at INT 27 and outlining a dozen possible worlds will have considered Carissa's death to Hell and its mind-reading as something Carissa might want consciously and subconsciously.  Carissa Sevar won't have been allowed to come on this trip and augment herself without a promise that she'll try by sincere effort and wit to stay alive, however much she might hope to die.

That person will not have asked of Carissa that she not hope.  But he'll have required that Carissa not act to bring about her hopes, that she if necessary act to prevent her hopes from coming to pass.  He's put himself together in a way where he can hurt about that, about demanding things like that from somebody he still cares about; he no longer tries to avoid that hurt by taking refuge in calculation.  But the reasoning will be clear nonetheless, and he will have demanded of Carissa what he must, to ensure that this universe can still be destroyed if necessary, for there's people hurting more than her.

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So what preparations are about Carissa, then, against the greed of these Efreet?  Especially any visible preparations, as might discourage their greed from being acted-upon in the first place?

Those preparations cannot involve too many protections or displays that are both expensive and temporary; their pair needs to repeat this task eight more times at least, before the trip is done.

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Intelligence is coming up with a ridiculous stack of Moment of Prescience and Contingent Gaseous Form and Anticipate Peril and Foresight and testing in advance that she can Banish herself using her crown when on other planes and making Greater Slaying arrows for the efreeti-bane crossbow Tarnish is conspicuously carrying.

 

Wisdom is realizing that all of that has at best an eighty percent chance of working given the known capabilities of the efreeti, and that the efreeti too might have unknown capabilities, and just negotiating up front for their safety during dealmaking. It makes her look slightly less invincible, but it also makes her actually safe. 

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The Malik will of course act terribly insulted and disdainful, but eventually give in about this.

 

(Carissa is the only one on the expedition who has a hard version of this problem; Keltham can just have an "alchemical dead-man-switch suicide bomb that would destroy the diamonds" about his person.)

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(Carissa made an attempt to persuade him that the efreeti would not especially believe him about this and so it was likely to be tested, but eventually gave up. If Keltham wants to melt himself and his possessions in an acidic slurry who is she to object, really.)

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(It's not his only precaution!  What makes Carissa's side hard is that she's the one who has to actually not die.  He can explode himself and come back again to find more sensible Efreet.)

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Anyways!  By a similar token, Carissa Sevar has sometimes been known to undergo great cognitive shifts when under importantly different cognitive conditions.  Perhaps at INT 29 she will decide she is a different person not bound by past oaths.  Perhaps at INT 29 she can configure her thoughts in a way that sidesteps the geas earring without that ever looking on a first step like a forbidden intent to defeat the geas.

It would take both Intelligence and arrogance to imagine you'd come up with a plan to defeat that possibility at INT 27, to raise up a more powerful Carissa and then contain her.  It would require more than just believing in your own Intelligence's power; it would require respecting your own INT 27 but not her forthcoming INT 29.  It requires thinking that you exhaustively searched every option Carissa Sevar would see, using not just a more powerful INT 29 but also her own different ways of thinking.

You could call the alternative Wisdom, but in dath ilan they'd just call it thinkoomph or maybe security mindset.

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Carissa totally bets at INT 29 she'll be able to think of a way to betray Keltham. Maybe even one that leaves her options more appealing than pleading with Otolmens to squish him. 

 

She'll take off her beautiful wonderful headband and replace it with an Intelligence headband while she gets Wisdom, and then take it off entirely while she gets Intelligence.

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One after another, the five Malik cast five Wishes upon her, using the exact wordings that she gave them and bound them to with oaths, that she be made forever Wiser.  The five Wish spells are differently worded in the sequence, to match at some invisible edges, to tile to a greater Wish spell that settles into Carissa and makes her something more.  If there was a sixth possible spell in this sequence, it has been lost, and gods are forbidden to return the knowledge to mortals.

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It is, in fact, doing something a little different than the headband. 

 

She likes it, whatever it is. She imagined at some Wisdom level she'd be able to comprehend Keltham's attitude towards enhancement, if not agree with it, but she suspects now she'll never share it. The more she is, the more of her there is, the better; she is moving towards herself.

 

Next, then.

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Finding the next target goes faster now that they've realized they're looking for huge buildings and businesses of many nobles, which will incidentally advertise Wish-sequences as sidelines.

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The next such building makes Foresight prickle against her mind like it can no longer do in Golarion where prophecy is broken; she instantly Dimension Doors them out.

 

The one after that doesn't feel dangerous. 

 

Five Intelligence, please.

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These fucking rich people.  These Golarion-filtered shops could only even offer Foresight scrolls for sale because somebody sold them to the City of Brass centuries earlier, before prophecy broke.


Anyways, yes, it continues to be more complicated than that, but five Intelligence, sure.

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It doesn't make anything new click into place; it wouldn't be expected to, until she puts the headband back on.

 

 

...how about five Splendour, then.

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Splendour!

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Among the many complicated feelings Carissa has, as she continues on her shopping spree, is a sense of intense grief that she cannot enjoy it; that this is a beautiful thing, a fascinating thing, an incredible thing, something she wants to extend to every person alive and every person ever to live, and yet all she can feel is terror that it won't be enough, that no matter how intelligent she gets she won't see a way out.

 

 

She gets strength and dexterity and constitution enhanced, too. There are cognitive effects, which she expected, and they're not subtle, which surprises her. Humans are, it turns out, a body as much as a soul, and having that body respond more quickly to your instructions, move more effortlessly, have more energy, is like the difference between being struck with a flu and being in perfect health. 

(If she figured out an assembly-line setup for belts of Constitution, no one would ever get sick....no, doesn't matter, they're all going to get annihilated...)

 

She wants her headband back. She wants to know if her despair is an error or just correct. She wants to put her head in Carmin's lap and cry. 

"You done?" she says to Tarnish, more irritably than Tarnish, who hasn't done anything wrong besides being the kind of loathsome person who wants to destroy the world, deserves.

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Keltham asked Tarnish under Detect Thoughts and also truthspell, if she was confident that her commitment to do Literally Anything in exchange for some mortal finally holding Pharasma to any kind of account, would stand up to increasing her own Intelligence, Wisdom, or even Splendour.

Tarnish's reply, which in its own way revealed more wisdom than many who detect as Wiser, was approximately, 'lol no how could I possibly know that'.

She's fine waiting on all cognitive enhancement until later, and is just here for Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution boosts.

They can head back, now, though it would also be okay if Carissa wanted to shop around more and buy more amazing magical items that Tarnish can watch her not enjoy.

Or even magic items that might help Carissa in not destroying the world, if she's got any ideas for that.  Tarnish is not very against destroying the world, but she does have dreams of her own: she wants the world to be fixed, in part by her own deeds and acts.  That way she can go around ever after being awful to Good people, and then telling them she's done more Good than they'll ever do, and she wants them to suck it up and take it in partial repayment.

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They can do a second trip later if she thinks of anything. She doesn't, actually, think that saving the world is going to involve clever overpowered magic items; just the people with the power to kill everyone deciding that actually they should only destroy Hell or something.

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He does worry that they won't be able to make a second trip, the City of Brass being too interested, by then, in the question of whether those mysterious visitors Actually Had That Many Diamonds, especially if they hear from Golarion about who that probably was and the concept of 'chemistry'.

But then, he also worries about that because he is still on the lookout for 'tropes', and it would be tropey if they only got to make one trip and had to buy everything they needed on that one trip or else fail.

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"Let's windowshop in the slave markets for a bit and then head home."

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"Hey, bitch?  I don't mind destroying the world but I do slightly prefer it get fixed instead, and I don't trust Keltham to actually achieve that while he's trying hard not to think about it as a possibility.  I'm definitely not smart enough to do it myself.  And you won't be smart enough either, if you stop hoping.  So buy literally whatever it takes to cheer you the fuck up, we've still got shopping money and I'll approve spending another five Wish diamonds if I have to."

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To her own astonishment Carissa feels something, then. It's a surge of fury and loathing and terror stronger than she's ever felt before and, wow, it is not helping at all.

 

"Of course Keltham isn't going to think of it. He's a fundamentally despicable person from a broken and nightmarish world which treats actual human values - the desire to live, the desire to endure, the desire to grow - as horrible dangers everyone must be carefully twisted out of contemplating."

"He is broken in a way that no enhancement can repair, because they are twisted so as to ensure every bit of humanity remaining in them is lost in favor of the broken blankness of their civilization when they get smarter. He will not come up with anything. He is fundamentally not the kind of mind that could come up with anything."

 

She would not be saying this if she had her headband on, because it's not even quite true, it's a sideways articulation of a thought she did need to think but can and should sit on until she can say it better, and she knows it, but it turns out one of her enhancements or some combination of them, or maybe some other feature of the situation, maybe just the adrenaline from all these high-stakes magic negotiations, gave her stronger emotions, and suddenly Tarnish is rather too much to bear.

 

"Whoever he might have been, if he'd been born in a better place, if he'd been born in a place with humans, he strangled it and replaced it with what he calls 'dath ilan' and which is blank emptiness opposed to everything that humans are. At least he understood enough to grieve it. If anything goes well, if anything goes less than maximally badly, it'll have to be because I think of it. And I'm not going to think of it without the headband on, which means it's bottlenecked on the-disembodied-spirit-of-Darkness-and-betrayal-and-horror my boyfriend gave himself over to thinking about whether It can trust me with that.

The idiot running this project thinks we only get one trip because of tropes. I don't know how he decides which tropes to take seriously but I'm going to come back here once I have my headband on and a concrete plan, because tropes could just as easily have meant we got ambushed on this trip, or ambushed on this trip unless it was only the first of many, or we could have been ambushed while I was out cult-encouraging, tropes are not actually narrowly enough understood we can evade them like that.

You are right, though, that I should do whatever cheers me up, which is going to the slave markets and fantasizing about how if I'd listened to Asmodeus when he told me to be Eviller, I could have, when I realized what Keltham was planning, leveraged that to squish him like the blot upon humanity he is and conquered Golarion and lived happily ever after for all eternity and everyone else would be better off too."

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Her heart is pounding like she just fought several Worldwound demons. 

 

 

 

"Some of that was probably incorrect," she says, slightly more calmly.

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"Who cares?  Not me, that's for sure.  I liked it."

"I'd help with the slave market appreciation but I vastly overstretched my innate abilities by trying to cheer you up literally at all."

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His own shopping trip is both easier and harder than Carissa's.

Easier, because he doesn't fear death that much; he found ways beforehand to verify that he seemed to have a soul.  (Casting Magic Jar from scroll, for example, and wasn't that an interesting experience.) 

Harder, because Ri-Dul cannot accompany him into the real negotiations; and by himself he doesn't look, doesn't feel dangerous the way Carissa does, even with his own Hellwrought lesser-artifact headband.  With Mind Blank up they can't read him and don't know him for a wizard below third circle; but 25 Splendour and Glibness is not quite enough for a dath ilani to fake being dangerous.  At least, dangerous in a way that things like Efreet understand.

Noble Efreet try harder to take advantage of what looks weak; he has to negotiate harder and longer to arrive at acceptable prices, and they are still unreasonable compared to Sevar's.

...He doesn't try all that hard to avoid being taken advantage of.  None of this, from beginning to end, is a fair trade.  He's doing it in the City of Brass, and not some other place with noble genies, because the Efreet have a reputation as hard and unfair bargainers.

He carries about himself a briefcase he had made.  He has made much smaller pellets of the contents that he can use to demonstrate, if they don't just believe his word that, yes, he can make entirely nonmagical explosions that would be dangerous even to beings of Fire if scaled.  Do they press him, he will consume all about himself in fury and destroy his trade goods alongside his attackers.  He will come back from that.  They won't.

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The noble Efreet do call him coward and weakling, and try to goad him about it.

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He's at 27 Int and 23 Splendour, even to start.  The Efreet are dumber than Keltham was when he first arrived in Golarion.

He cannot improvise true talk-control, that takes neuroscience he doesn't have and can't infer that quickly without doing experiments, for he's not a god as yet.  But the Efreet feel to him more like mechanisms than people.  Dangerous mechanisms, imperfectly predictable, not navigable to arbitrary outcomes as a talk-controller could manage; but not, really, people, except in the sense of having qualia.

He patiently negotiates their conversation graphs and pathways through time at minimum risk to himself.  As is, of course, still some risk; but he's arranged for the 'risky' outcome to still be acceptable and that's not really that much risk.

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"Be warned that I'm having some trouble figuring out exactly what you're trying to accomplish here, in terms of decoding the false message you're trying to send somebody.  Whoever you're trying to confuse by it is going to end up very confused except in the extraordinarily improbable case that they are smarter than myself."

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Ri-Dul does not look to him like only a dangerous mechanism.

He treads carefully, here.

"Your guess?  I may not confirm or deny, even if you say it, but I want to know."

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"You had me send out feelers for smaller diamonds, too small for Limited Wishes and too ugly for jewels, and wished to make it appear plausible that you were purchasing those in larger quantities than you actually were.  Your negotiating rules here are designed to make it look possible that you are spending more Wish diamonds than exist in all Golarion to be bought."

"If I had to guess, it would be that you desire Cheliax to believe that you have a chemical method for aggregating small diamonds into larger ones."

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"If that would be what I wanted Cheliax to believe, what doesn't fit?  Why isn't it straightforwardly a good deception?"

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"You also have me leave the room during those negotiations, for one thing.  For another, you would be trying harder to conceal the truth, if that was the truth, and Cheliax would be expected to know that."

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"Cheliax when they were running the Conspiracy on me didn't seem that smart, until near the end, and they've lost both of the two people who I taught to run games on that level."

"But yes, there's games underneath games going on here, including my not wanting to look to hypothetical smarter opponents like I'm running an exact particular first-order game, and real agreements I'm making in some cases underneath the secret negotiations that create the appearance of a possible diamond-aggregation method.  None of which you have any need to know."

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"Cheliax thought you a child, correctly.  Do not underestimate Abrogail Thrune once her attention is fully roused."

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"I apologize for playing a fascinating game against Abrogail Thrune and forcing you to watch me play a bunch of obviously suboptimal moves from your perspective.  I sincerely would let you step in and do it, but I am not quite sure our interests are that aligned."

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"Hm.  I do appreciate that you correctly understand your sin, here."

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"Can I ask your probability that I actually have a method for aggregating diamonds or synthesizing them outright?  You didn't mention that as a possibility, so the probability you assign to it is either very small, or large enough that you decided not to mention it in case I would arrogantly believe you hadn't thought of it."

The Ordinary Keltham who does not have unlimited diamonds, but wishes to appear so, would ask that question, and therefore so does Conspiracy Keltham.

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He smiles slightly, at that.  "It's the second one.  I admit, I'd feel a little hurt if you had unlimited wealth, but paid me so little.  Five Wish diamonds when my employment was done would make up for my hurt feelings, or thirty-one if they were truly flowing without limit."

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"You don't have anything of especial urgency on which to use the thirty-first Wish, but you're thinking that the Keltham who has unlimited diamonds is more likely to ask you what the thirty-first diamond is for."

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"All right, fine, I'll be a little less obvious in the future and reluctantly concede that you may actually be making some move against Abrogail Thrune that I don't understand."

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It's not a good outcome, that Ri-Dul respects him a little more; but the other possible mental states that Ri-Dul could enter, down this conversational graph, were worse in expectation.  Some losses are inevitable even if you play your best.

 

He goes into the next building that looks affluent enough to afford five Wish diamonds and offers Wish purchases, and trades five Wish diamonds for rather a lot of platinum.  If they do have to send somebody back to the City of Brass to buy more things, they won't need to pay with Wish diamonds, if somebody suspects those prices are about to drop.  He can return the money later, under many of the possible cases where anybody survives long enough for diamond prices to drop.

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After finally finding his first building that advertises up to 5 Wishes, and getting his Wisdom to 27 instead of 26, and checking himself to see if he's being stupid in any obvious way he can now see...

...it does, finally, occur to him to pay a native for directions to more places where up to five Wish-conversions can be bought.

Some thoughts are just way more counterintuitive to some people than others.

He won't make the same mistake again, not even once over the rest of his life.  It's just, he's lived his whole life with global positioning satellites and network searches and cars that automatically go places...

Well, it's promising for his having overlooked other possibilities, maybe.

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1 point of Wisdom and 2 points of Intelligence continue to be a lot.  Boosting Strength and Dexterity and further boosting Constitution does less than that - but it does something, the increase of these strange weights in Golarion's conceptualmagic ontology, that seems to think them words speakable in the same breath as Wisdom.

It would be a little easier to become a god, like this, it feels; there is more weight to his person.

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He spends six Wish diamonds and buys a Belt of Physical Perfection, +4/+4/+4, as you can find somewhere in all the City of Brass if you try a few shops and pay for directions.

It's not for himself.  It's for Carissa.  She'll need it more.

He gets her a black Robe of the Archmagi too.  Though she'll need to not wear Belt and Robe and Ioun Stones where Ri-Dul can see all that, she must leave Ri-Dul behind on future trips a-culting if she wants to wear it all.  Ri-Dul would know, if he saw.  They can get some fake versions of at least the Belt and the Robe made up with Greater Magic Aura, so that Ri-Dul will have an alternate explanation to hand for any rumors he hears later.

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In time, a slightly different man returns to the Doombase, so that Carissa Sevar can put her headband back on and hopefully undergo positive changes of her own.

He did not, at any point, enjoy seeing her like this.  It's not the kind of cruelty a distant past Keltham was slowly learning to enjoy.

He doesn't know if Carissa Sevar will find a path to a better world than she feared, though he does surely hope it.  But Carissa Sevar should have Wisdom enough now to make an internal decision, and enforce that decision, to stop hurting herself within whatever world she comes to believe herself within.  So he greatly hopes, and somewhat less greatly predicts.

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Carissa Sevar, inexplicably even to herself cheered by wandering through the slave markets of the City of Brass or possibly by saying mean things about Keltham, Plane Shifts from a scroll back with Tarnish and then Teleports them to the base. 

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The way he would have ideally liked to do this is with him running Detect Thoughts on Carissa as she ascends, and Carissa having access to his own thoughts in turn.  So that she can see what he thinks of what she is thinking, and so that he sees if she outgrows the geas at the same time as she stops believing in the value of oaths between people with differences.

He has fallback options if that would be really bad for her, in her own opinion.

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"I think that'll be uninformative because I won't have thoughts while you're observing them. That's how I was able to pull off the whole project of getting Asmodia and Peranza's souls in the first place, I knew I wouldn't think until I was alone."

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He's aware.  He modeled that process in sufficient detail to think of it as one possibility among others, and prompt her removal to a scry-screened area after she got an artifact headband, timed for when she wouldn't have prepped spells yet.

He knows that what she thinks while under Detect Thoughts will end up not being something that can bind her real self.  She doesn't need to think about whether or not her real self is a being that will keep oaths.

What he might hope to accomplish, by this, is, first, to see if she's directly outgrown the power of a geas to bind her without her even trying; and, second, more importantly, that Carissa have obtained a true understanding of his model of the universe and herself and himself as he truly sees those things, based on her seeing his thoughts, and his seeing her seeing his thoughts.

If she decides to betray her oaths and him, after the Detect Thoughts ends, she'll at least be doing it based on true information that would pass an Imitation Game test.  She'll be doing it based on correctly knowing the structure of oaths, and what's at stake there far beyond Pharasma's Creation.

Her thoughts of him have seemed to him, from time to time, not just unjust but inaccurate.  If she betrays the Algorithm on the basis of a wrong model, that's a farce and not just a tragedy.  That's what he'd be hoping to prevent.

He wants her to have the option of seeing reality, himself, and herself, as he would see them.  He wants that understanding to be inside her, when Detect Thoughts ends, and she actually grows into herself.  If she throws it away then and shatters her vows, then that's how the story ends, he supposes.

Carissa has not - as he understands all this - read his mind directly since she met him at the Worldwound, let alone with INT 29 at which level she might begin to understand what she saw, if he was also watching himself and thinking thoughts meant to help her understand.

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- is - is he planning to give her the option of throwing away her vows to save the universe. Or is this all about the chance she'll think of some way around them while disallowed from thinking about them, or disassociate from the Carissa who made them or something, and how likely is he considering that. 

 

 

 

 

It....matters, kind of a lot. She's not entirely sure that it should, but. 

...on Carissa's own concept of this, which she knows is flawed enough she should not act on it, would not act on it, until and unless she understands it better, on Carissa's concept of this, if someone is enforcing your vows with magic, and you find a way around the magic, that's just fair play. If they trusted you -

- and she's not, actually, sure she ought to be trusted in that way, she isn't a Lawful being yet, she isn't sure she grows up into one -

- but if they trusted you then it's much much more important, to be someone they were right to trust.


Maybe that will all seem insane when she's smarter.

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He does not in fact think that it's possible for INT 29 himself to keep INT 29 Carissa contained, short of continuously monitoring her with Detect Thoughts every minute and forcing them to sleep at synchronized times, and maybe not even then.  Once the Detecting Thoughts stops, she's definitely being trusted.

There's some things he can do to try to reduce the expected damage from incorrect trust, like try to detect if she cannot stop herself from visibly-to-him shutting down a thought about how she no longer believes in oaths or conditionally cooperating in the cooperation-defection dilemma.  He can't avoid needing to trust her promise; he can try to make sure that she's still the kind of person who he's correct to trust.

He's hoping that Carissa can grow up into a Lawful being where he can see that.  And if that was only a lie that she put on to fool his Detect Thoughts, and the real Carissa deep inside herself wells up and shoves that aside and discards it - then that deep Carissa is the person he's trusting, and has no choice but to trust; given the promises he's already made to not just statue her, and to augment her to match himself, which he knew then would lead to this point.

He just wants - to make sure that the Carissa inside Carissa - knows what Lawfulness is, what promises mean.  See in her mind that at least some part of Carissa understands.  Before Detect Thoughts ends, and the deeper Carissa makes her real choice.

If it will help, he can take off the earring that forces her to speak truth to him and keep her promises, after the Detect Thoughts ends, if by then she appears to him as one who understands the Lawfulness the inner Carissa would have to cast aside.

He does not want to play with Carissa the game that Cheliax played with her.  He does not want her calculating the entire time whether he'll later ask her a question she'll be forced to answer truthfully, and on that basis censor her thoughts - which is why he has not already been asking every day up until now, whether she's been plotting to betray him in the back of her mind.  He does not want Carissa, herself, wondering if her choices to coordinate were made out of fear of the geas.

He does - hope - that they will reach a state with each other where nothing is hidden, anymore, where their minds can just meet.  But he can promise beforehand, even, that he won't ask for mutual Detect Thoughts again, or any truthspells, will wait for her to offer it, if it matters to her that she doesn't need to fear it.  He believes INT 29 Carissa could defeat measures like Detect Thoughts or truthspells, even as used by him; so he's already required to trust her, and if it helps that he trust her more visibly, he can trust her a little more in reality and much more visibly.

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Oh.

 

 

 

Carissa does not know, if she'll grow up into a Lawful being. But - but it's not that there are very many things that could conceivably be more important than being someone people are right to trust. 

 

She - isn't sure, if she was right to trust Keltham, if he was right to trust her. But - she'll do the mutual Detect Thoughts, if he wants, if he'll take the earring off afterwards, if he wants them to try to walk the road ahead where they don't betray each other even though they want to. 

 

She didn't know that he was still trying at that.

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They've been reaching out hands to each other from the beginning.

He'll never not reach back.

They may not always succeed in clasping hands, because reality and mathematics aren't so kind; but he'll never stop trying to reach out towards her while she's still trying to reach out towards him.


Shall they?

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Yeah. All right.

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Pilar watches Ri-Dul the Necromancer - not that she believes this is his real name, this does not feel like the vibe of a man who uses his real name often - walk away down streets of fire.  Trailing Keltham, who seemed normal, in the way of somebody who is carefully constructing a seeming about himself and chose normality that day and that's horrible he used to be so open.

Then she turns to Ione.  "So what are we doing here, exactly?"

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"The same thing everybody does in the City of Brass, Pilar."

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"SHOPPING."

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'SHOPPING,' apparently, as distinct from normal shopping as practiced by normal sane people, starts with Pilar donning her disguise cloak, and prestidigitating her hair back to its natural color underneath that.

Because, apparently, Cheliax and Hell are going to be analyzing this event later; and Pilar visibly being part of it would unacceptably mislead Aspexia Rugatonn about the degree to which this whole event serves Cheliax's interests.  They should not hinder Keltham, on this shopping trip, but they absolutely should not help him, if they're to avoid hindering Asmodeus's interests.

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"...where obviously I hate Asmodeus and want Him to die as painfully as is possible for a god.  But things are decision-theoretically complicated and we're in something like a cooperation-defection dilemma.  I don't need to grab after every possible short-term advantage of 'my side' against Asmodeus, because that's not what grownups do, hint hint.  It's just like how Keltham is bringing us here, and letting us go shopping here at all, because he correctly trusts that we'll only serve our interests in ways that don't hinder his interests."

"To put it another way, I know Nethys wouldn't allow us to be here, if it was going to mislead Cheliax and injure Asmodeus because I hadn't warned you to disguise yourself.  Not that I'd need Nethys to enforce it, in my case.  I just - wouldn't upset a multiagent cooperative arrangement where somebody trusted me, even if I could benefit from doing that.  But even if I wasn't that type of person, I'd know that Nethys was good at predicting me, and that choosing to upset the arrangement is like choosing not to be here in the first place."

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"That sounds like Keltham is doing something here that goes against Asmodeus's interests."

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"He sure is."

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"And I should not stop what he's doing, because..."

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"Snack Service wouldn't have arranged with Keltham to bring you here, as does separately benefit Asmodeus relative to the default course of Keltham coming here and you never hearing about it at all, if that action hadn't been beneficial to Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus.  You shutting down Keltham would benefit Asmodeus but injure Cayden Cailean."

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"And if I were to note that I don't remember agreeing to this compact?  Snack Service seizes my body?"

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"Nope, Nethys correctly predicts how that plays out and Snack Service doesn't bring you here in the first place."

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"I'm already here."

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"Were you not paying attention to literally anything Keltham told you in decision theory class?"

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"I was.  I'm just complaining."

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"Oh, grow up.  Did your remaining superiors in Cheliax stop hurting you for minor acts of pathetic whining and now you've forgotten how that works?"

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"Possibly."

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"This is perfectly straightforward by the new standards of our awful existences.  The decorrelated physical event of you shutting down Keltham would help Asmodeus and injure Cayden Cailean; so if that outcome was the high-probability consequence of bringing you here, Snack Service wouldn't do it; so your choice to shut down Keltham would injure Asmodeus via you not being here at all.  Sure, even Nethys can't predict events like that perfectly, but it's also your interest to be more predictable about things like this, not try to randomize; because then Snack Service can use you for more Asmodeus-beneficial interventions -"

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"I get it, Ione, I'm not stupid.  I just don't like it.  And you are not my superior and don't have the power to order me to stop whining."

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"Grow up, Pilar.  Grow up very quickly, so you can be used for tasks that actually matter."

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The actual 'SHOPPING' trip starts with Ione making a beeline for an enormous brass edifice with literal actual mithril fittings about it, some sort of absurdly high-class interdimensional brothel, with a symbol that Ione points out as meaning 'Wishes granted here' - if you have a Wish diamond and the rest of some exorbitant price, presumably?

And then Ione pays over twenty platinum pieces just to be allowed to speak to the proprietor, and 200pp more for the enormous fiery proprietor to swear to absurd secrecy conditions, after which Ione goes off to negotiate in privacy with the proprietor...

...leaving Pilar alone in the waiting chamber of a high-class interdimensional brothel, with various things (mostly female insofar as they have an identifiable gender at all) trying to flirt with her and entice her into a dalliance that costs as much as a +2 headband of vast intelligence would've cost a year earlier.

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"Did you do that on purpose?" Pilar says to Ione, when she eventually emerges from her mysterious dealings.

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"I sincerely don't know what you're talking about."

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Right then.  Pilar will follow Ione out of the brothel.

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"Okay, see, but now I want to know what you're talking about."

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"No."

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"I suppose we can conduct the whole trip on that basis, but it'll make it less fun, and maybe less beneficial to Asmodeus too.  How about if you're nice to me and tell me, and then I'll be nice to you?"

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"Fine.  The entire time you were gone, I spent with various things trying to seduce me into spending a few hours with them, in exchange for a large gem or magic item."

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"You know you're just allowed to tell them all no, and to leave you alone until I get back, right?"

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"Weren't you supposed to be nice back to me, now?"

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"So I was.  Here's forty thousand platinum pieces' worth of spending money.  Not for anything in particular, just if anything catches your eye while we're wandering around."  Ione hands over a bag that would be much heavier if it wasn't mostly huge faceted rubies and other gemstones.

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"What the fuck did you sell to her."

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"Eh, some of Doomlord's stuff.  I'd say it's not important and not to worry about it, but I'd be lying."

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"Is there a point at which I get read in on this whole Doomlord business?"

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"Yes, actually.  It's the point at which you're sufficiently reliably a grownup that you can be trusted to act on that information, granted you on that basis, only in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus, rather than trying to seize as much benefit for Asmodeus as possible."

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"I have, in fact, been incredibly fucking cooperative about that.  Since the day that Snack Service first told me I couldn't arrest a group of Osirian spies because Surprise Compact I Never Agreed To."

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"Yeah, but you also spent the entire four months whining about it and that does not encourage trust on genuinely serious matters, Pilar."

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"I perceive that going all the way over to Good doesn't change the extent to which one is an enormous bitch, then.  I'd wondered."

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"And you're not an enormous bitch?"

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"First of all: I'm Evil, what's your excuse.  And second: no, actually.  I just have a huge case of resting bitch face, which is probably something like seventy percent of how I was able to still be considered a serious Asmodean after I started going around giving people cookies."

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"Surprisingly valid."

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Pilar doesn't answer because she's staring at the display-window of the bottom level of a five-story building, trying to deal with the thought her brain just had and the subsequent complete thought crash.

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"Whatcha looking at?  - Oooh, Metamagic Rods."

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"Yes, Pilar, that's right.  You want them.  You have plenty of spending money.  You should go in and buy all the cool ones."

"Do it, Pilar."

"It'll make you a better Asmodean."

"Do it."

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"Wow, you are so bad at that dark hissing voice of corruption, what with still sounding like a teenage girl."

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"Don't need to expend an auditory illusion on sounding better.  You're not going to be that hard to corrupt."

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"Yeah, fair."

Pilar Pineda heads into the store which has ALL THE METAMAGIC RODS with a weird spring in her step and an odd light feeling in her heart.  This is evil, right?  She's being evil right now?  She's sure this is what Abrogail Thrune would do in her place.  Shopping must be evil.

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When Pilar gets back out, Ione is talking with a collared being that looks like a dwarf with brazen skin and hair of literal fire.  Whatever they had to say, they were apparently just finishing up, because Ione nods and pays over a small handful of platinum and then turns back to Pilar.

"Congratulations!  I'm guessing this is the first time in your life you've wanted something for yourself and then acted in order to get it?"

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"Nah.  That's private, is all.  I do it, I just don't do it where you can see me."

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"Lies."

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"I have done that before on as many as several occasions in my life, all of which I can remember individually."

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"Okay... we need to stop quipping at each other using our shiny Splendour headbands and go start the actual mission."

"We're looking for places that offer the service of selling 5-Wish sequences if you bring in 5 Wish diamonds, and then I go in and swear them to the extreme negotiation secrecy conditions, and then I go engage in mysterious secret negotiations, and then I come out again.  We need to find twelve places like that."

"We can buy basically anything we want along the way."

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"Look... I can see where this is going."

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"Can you?"

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"Yeah.  You're waiting for me to ask why we're doing this, and then you tell me that I can't be told because I won't reliably react only in a way that benefits both Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus -"

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"I don't, in fact, tell you that.  You are able to figure that out for yourself, without being told, and it is better that way."

"You are likewise perfectly able to figure out the other thing I'm not saying because it's better for you to see it yourself."

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"That I kept complaining about how I never, at any point, volunteered to be part of any such compact, and how I never made a bargain like that.  So you're waiting for me to actually say of my own will that I'll be part of this thing, and only use the information to benefit Asmodeus in ways that don't harm Cayden Cailean."

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"Mm-hm.  Up until this point you've never been knowingly faced with a serious choice like that, Pilar.  Only mysterious commands you didn't understand.  You've never had to knowingly look at a serious case where you could benefit Asmodeus a lot, but you needed to turn away, or only help Asmodeus a little, because that was the condition under which you were granted the information."

"Past that point, we're no longer comfortable just telling you that you need to predictably behave yourself, or we'll have retroactively not included you in the fun."

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"I have to agree explicitly."

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"No.  Worse."

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"I have to ask."

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"Yes."

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"So you're actually doing that thing where you make the torture victim ask to be hurt more.  Who knew that Good did that too?"

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"GROW THE FUCK UP, PILAR.  Use decision theory instead of just letting other agents with better decision theory use you.  Stop whining about being given chances to advance your own interests just because they're not simple and don't let you do whatever you feel like.  And also quit complaining if the other grownups here want you to behave like a grownup too, someone who pursues her own decision-theoretically-nonsimple interests instead of having to be pushed into that every time."

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"What if I don't wanna, though?"

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"You follow me around on this shopping trip and don't ask questions.  Maybe Mister Doomlord destroys Cheliax or something, because you couldn't properly help, who knows?  Mister Doomlord sure does seem like an ominous mysterious figure.  But what do you care about that, so long as you're comfortably not making your own decisions?"

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"All right, shut up and let me think about this."

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"Your will, mistress."

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Pilar starts to snap at Ione not to do that, then stops with a feeling of odd disorientation as she realizes that... being called 'mistress' wasn't as wrong-feeling as it should've been, on Pilar's model of Pilar?

She follows Ione around the City of Brass instead.

Thinking.

She doesn't ask why Snack Service is being so quiet, in case it answers.  It's nice, to be alone in her head for a time.

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Is that a ROD OF WONDER being advertised for sale?

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It is!  Ione will buy it!  People mostly stopped making wild-magic items in Golarion after prophecy stopped working there.  But it's a fun thing to have around if you're a Nethysian, and interested in scaring the utter shit out of people afraid you might actually use it.

"Come on Pilar, don't just think!  Buy random expensive shit!  We're not just on any shopping trip, we're on an EPIC MULTIVERSAL SHOPPING TRIP such as whose like may NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN!"

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"The fact that you consider this to be valid reasoning does not give me confidence in the rest of what you consider valid reasoning."

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"Yoooouuuu say that but that shop's got a racing broom of flying and I'mma buy it if you don't admit you want it in the next five seconds."

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"No, you can have it.  You need it more.  What with you not being able to cast Fly yourself."

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"No takebacks!"  Ione rushes into the store to make what will later turn out to be the worst purchase of her life.

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Why does the thought of - participating in this awful madness herself - feel as terrifying as it does?

Why is it important that she label in her thoughts as 'madness' what has started, over months that felt like years, to make an awful kind of sense?

Why does she need to call it awful sense?  Why not just sense?

 

...this is usually where Snack Service would step in and say something.

 

 

...maybe Snack Service is hiding itself away, on the Elemental Plane of Fire where prophecy still operates.

Or maybe it's just that Snack Service knows Pilar can figure this out on her own, and needs to do that instead of being told things.

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A fiery being with the head of a giant snake, the lower body of a giant snake, and a humanoid torso carrying a spear, comes over and tries to bother Pilar.

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"You need to speak Infernal, or I can't understand your attempts to bother me," Pilar says in Infernal, and then goes back to thinking.

 

...it's probably her looming sense of horrible dread about whatever Comes After This For Pilar.  As might be gated behind her asking to participate.

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How about if the Salamander tries to bother her with a SPEAR?

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Harm.

Quickened Ray of Frost.

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When Ione comes out, she'll see the collapsed body of a Salamander, not moving.

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"Pilar - that's -"

"Outsiders don't get afterlives.  They can't be resurrected.  They don't have souls, they are -"

"Did you - forget?"

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Pilar holds up the Merciful Metamagic Rod she just bought.

(Obviously Pilar just did it that way to avoid entanglement with local law enforcement, and not because Carissa Sevar would've cried pathetic tears about it.  Pilar is not Sevar's student anymore.)

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Ione doesn't say anything in response to this, probably wisely.

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They head on into an incredibly fancy-looking restaurant which only serves one patron at a time, accepts payment in magic items only, and also, apparently, grants up to 5 Wishes in sequence if you've got the diamonds.

Why?  Who knows.

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Sure, Ione will pay a fee of 2000gp to cover the case where they can't come to an agreement about the mysterious deal to be further-negotiated.

She'll then vanish from Pilar's sight, and come back six minutes later looking noticeably more cheerful, and head out of the restaurant with a spring in her step.

"One down, eleven to go!" she says, her voice sounding more vibrant and forceful than before.

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"Fine, I'm fucking asking.  Please tell me what the fuck we're doing, and I will only use that information in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus."

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"And that don't harm Keltham, who brought us along on this trip, and gave over some of Doomlord's hoard to spend, on the basis of expecting that it would not be used to harm his interests and would benefit them at least slightly."

"You will accept the words of myself or Snack Service when it comes to which ways of using that information will harm Keltham, Cayden Cailean, or Asmodeus."

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"Agreed.  Now what's going on?"

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"Hold on, this takes more concentration if I'm outside a library..."

The sounds around them hush.

"So, first, what do you think is going on?"

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"Doomlord had enough Wish diamonds that I can get a +5 bonus to my primary casting stat, which I guess is Splendour these days, which is the treatment that Doomlord planned for himself and I'm supposed to get.  Tropes suggest that Doomlord actually had 20 Wish diamonds, and Keltham, Carissa, and you, are all getting boosted the same way.  For some reason it's important that nobody knows exactly which Efreet performed the service for us."

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"What follows is true, but not the whole story:  Mister Doomlord is from a planet not in this plane that didn't have access to ninth-level wizards or the City of Brass to convert Wish diamonds into Wishes.  Wish-sized diamonds are a lot cheaper there."

"The plan is for us to get all of our abilitystats wished up."

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"Ione, it's not that I lack all sense of eagerness here, but this sounds increasingly like a really large fucking issue.  Not like telling Cheliax, like telling the Worldwound alliance sort of issue."

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"That sure is some common sense there.  So how'd that work out for you in Korvosa?"

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"How loud can I scream without that getting out of your sound barrier?"

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"It is contrary to the nature of my library powers that they be used for horrified screaming rather than privacy and solitude."

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"Disappointing.  Let me know if you spot a scroll of Silence for sale so I can get my screaming done at some point."

"Did Keltham get all of Doomlord's diamonds?"

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"He's got all of Doomlord's stuff, as already stated."

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"...how much of a problem is Keltham going to be, now."

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"From whose perspective?"

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"ANYONE'S PERSPECTIVE!  HAVE YOU MET KELTHAM?"

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"Technically, I'm the only girl he's still dating."

"And Keltham already donated the vast majority of Doomlord's remaining diamonds, minus this expedition, to the Church of Iomedae.  Which you're not allowed to warn Cheliax about because that hinders the interests of Cayden Cailean and Keltham."

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"Okay... that's very bad, incredibly bad, extremely bad, and yet I'm still feeling relieved."

"- is the Church of Iomedae by any chance under a constraint not to do things with the diamonds that harm Asmodeus's interests?"

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"NOPE."

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"Does Asmodeus lose Cheliax?  As a result of this."

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"I won't say that I don't know, because I do.  But I will say that it depends on people's choices, including yours."

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It's strange, it's surprising, that Pilar can be feeling - alongside other horrors, she's obviously horrified that Asmodeus might lose Cheliax, of course she is, and hearing that it depends on her own choices is making her nauseous - feeling wounded that Keltham would do that to Cheliax.

They - Sevar tried so hard to not hurt Keltham, Keltham's feelings, more than she had to - issued multiple commands about that - does Keltham have any idea what Cheliax and Sevar could've done to him, without breaking any of Asmodeus's directives, if they had actually wanted to crush his spirit?  Because Sevar wanted to preserve the chance that Cheliax and Keltham could ally, if he grew up and went Evil?  And then, Keltham turns around and does this to them?  They'd have been better off fucking breaking him.

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Ione Sala says nothing at all, expresses no opinions.

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"Was this - entire thing - the whole thing with Snack Service - about making Keltham not doing anything more stupid with the Wish diamonds, is that how it served Asmodeus -"

"No.  It can't be that.  Snack Service is just, too large, of an intervention," she cannot speak of it but Cayden Cailean is dying over this, whatever this is, Snack Service sold His guaranteed death to Dispater.  "It can't just be about Doomlord's diamond hoard."

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"Correct."

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"If I get my six abilitystats Wished up - the price of that is my - being unable to oppose Cayden Cailean, or Keltham, at all, from now on.  Unless I could have done it completely with my current abilities.  Because past today, almost everything I do, everything I can do, including any growing I do from there, will be partially the result of the people and the gods who set me up to get +5s to all abilitystats."

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"Correct."

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"You don't have to decide immediately.  We can find another five places that grant 5-Wish sequences, before you actually have to decide."

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"Okay."

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"You still haven't really explained anything.  I made the promise of my own will, and you know, by now, that I'm Lawful and keep my compacts including that particular kind of compact.  And you still haven't explained much of anything."

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"You'll figure a lot of it out yourself, after you're Wished-up, and then put on the artifact headband."

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Oh.


Somehow she hadn't made that connection.

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"Do you swear to me that all of this - not just today's choice, the entire fucking thing since the beginning - that it's all being carried out in a way that's - of Abadar, not Asmodeus?  Where this isn't some clever trap to indebt me to Cayden Cailean, and prevent me from benefiting Asmodeus more, as I would have done on my own?  Not just that exact thing being ruled out, but everything like that?"

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"I mean, Abadar wouldn't have set up your family to end up in Axis without asking you.  But it's a decision-theoretically-complicated bargain being made around your past and future selves that, cares, in that way, and looks out for people's interests in ways that they didn't know to ask for, that they'd have predictably wanted later.  You're not, ultimately, being used in a cruel way where they go 'ha ha' afterwards, at least if things go the way that we hoped, that was predicted to me.  The result won't be worse for you than if you'd done nothing, or had no capacity to do anything.  The results from your perspective won't be worse than if you'd been a rock with the same utilityfunction.  I can swear to that, and do swear to that."

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"Am I - being offered anything remotely resembling a fucking real choice, here?  Because if so, I'm missing it."

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"No.  You're being used.  Used to achieve your own interests, but still, used."

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"Hearing you be honest about that, is helpful."

"Will I think that all of this was a good idea, that I made the right choice here, after I get Wished up and put on the headband?"

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"You'll wish you'd figured out other things you haven't figured out, before coming to the City of Brass and being given information, and taken options you didn't see.  Of the options you do see, you'll endorse that you chose to get Wished-up.  You'll know that if you'd been a person who'd have figured it all out and acted earlier, Cayden Cailean wouldn't have invited you in, or given you as much information as you already had."

"You might not approve of the entire macroevent that's going on.  You'll prefer having been part of it to having been left out, and see that you were used in your own interests and not against them, in a sense that's deep, and real."

"I so swear."

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"Okay."

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"We'll do yours next, then!  I'm planning to hang out in the City of Brass doing even more shopping afterwards."

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"Like, ominous shopping of destiny, or..."

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"No, just fucking around and having fun because this is great."

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"I'd say that I'm glad somebody here is having fun, but I'd be lying."

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"Pilar?  Let me tell you one of life's deepest secrets.  No matter what else is at stake, and no matter what else is going on around you, no matter what ominous storm gathers just over the horizon out of sight, no matter what you don't know, and no matter what you're already afraid you know -"

"- anybody who can't have fun as a sixth-circle oracle on a City of Brass shopping trip, with an unlimited budget, is fucking doing it wrong."

"Now how about if we get you a permanent intrinsic +5 to all abilitystats, and you try not to whine about that.  Is this some kind of subby thing?  Because for somebody who grew up in Cheliax it's amazing how much you whine."

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Ione has a point, not that Pilar is going to admit it, but she does.

 

...Wait a minute.

Ione's already been to Wish shops.  She's already got +5 Splendour on top of her headband.  Probably got that in the first one she visited.

 

That fucker.

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+5 Constitution.

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+5 Dexterity.

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+5 Strength.

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She doesn't ask why Ione is doing this in that order, because she already knows.  It's a kind of gentleness, and Ione is Good.

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+5 Splendour.

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...she can just take the headband off beforehand and not change too much, that way, right away.

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+5 Intelligence.

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She's worn the +6 Intelligence headband before.

This feels, deeper, in a way.  But not - not too different.  Not too new.  Right?  It's just that she can never take off this invisible headband.  Except maybe by learning Bestow Curse and cursing herself and that... would be going too far into being pathetic.

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+5 Wisdom.

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Pilar has had a simultaneous Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom before, and this is, greater, and not just in the way of +5 versus +4, there is something in it not captured in the measurements.  But she's had +4/+4 before.  It's not that different...

 

At +5 Wisdom it's very obvious to Pilar that she is lying to herself.  She knows she has done the equivalent of putting on an artifact headband she can't take off, and that's before taking into account the actual +4/+6/+6 headband that she still has, returned to her by Keltham, in her Bag of Holding.

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"...How are you feeling?"

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...like she has become something greater than Pilar was, stronger, more vigorous, just walking through the street feels like she's dancing, the world around her filled with things to see, understand, a driving force behind her that will never leave her now.  Like life is water, and she has drunken so much of it that she is swollen with it to bursting.

"Oh, I'm doing fucking great."

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"How do you manage to make even that sound like whining?"

"Ready to get Plane Shifted back?  I don't mind if you want to hang around and do some shopping."

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"Ione, I have a real question and I'd really appreciate a real answer about it.  When am I supposed to put on the artifact headband?"

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"If the future goes as foreseen, you decide to do that, at some point, and it's not too early or too late when you do.  If the future goes astray, I expect Snack Service will poke you about it."

"I can't tell you about the future when it's something you're supposed to decide, it obviates -"

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"Yeah, I fucking get it.  Just walk around carrying an artifact headband thinking about how I could decide at any time to put it on.  Is there a reason I shouldn't do that literally now and get it over with?"

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"Common sense about how you just got +5 to all abilitystats, and should give yourself longer than five minutes to get used to that and grow into the new you, before putting on the artifact headband?"

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"I hate that you're right."

"Okay, you know what?  Yes, I'll stick around and continue shopping in the City of Brass.  I've still got a large city's annual budget's worth of 'spending money', there's probably some genuinely interesting stuff for sale, and I'm not actually going to have more fun wandering around on Golarion waiting for Snack Service to get me into trouble again."

 

(Translation from +5 Wisdom:  Pilar is terrified of being left on her own to think, doesn't actually want to be alone right now, everything is scary and at least Ione Sala sometimes answers her questions.)

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They go about looking for two more 5-Wisher sets for Ione, for her Strength and Dexterity.  But those businesses are not many, and all that they find already have Keltham's or Carissa's Arcane Mark writ on the street somewhere nearby; their search-regions have expanded and overlapped.

While they're looking, Ione shops, and shops, and buys expensive things that no sane person would use.  When she runs out of money, she finds a noble Efreet and sells more of "Doomlord's hoard" and emerges with yet more money.

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Even Pilar cannot help but be caught up in the manic energy of it.  Pilar doesn't know how Ione can call this Good?  Or maybe Ione doesn't, and in that case Pilar absolutely doesn't want to stop her; Ione should come back to Evil where she belongs, so they can be allies again.

They find a sneering merchant who offers, as though reluctantly, Belts of Physical Might and Belts of Physical Perfection.  Pilar buys a +2/+2/+2 Belt of Physical Perfection just to feel even lighter and more graceful on her feet, and a +4STR/+4DEX Belt of Physical Might for when she wants to be even stronger and more graceful for a lesser time of endurance.

And a +6 Belt of Giant's Strength just in case she wants to show that off; and a +6 Belt of Mighty Constitution so that she can be tortured for longer; and a +6 Belt of Incredible Dexterity if only to complete the set.

Why shouldn't she?  Ione has money and has threatened that if Pilar doesn't spend it Ione will probably just spend it on Good.

Pilar buys a Hat of Disguise.  When she finds better at another shop, she buys a Greater Hat of Disguise; with hardly a twinge of horror for the money spent earlier, it's a sunk cost anyways.

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They've wandered the city for a time, and shopped there; Ione now has Dexterity about herself, but lacks Strength to complete it all.

After so long shopping, the two oracles decide to tarry and rest a brief while; they call upon a restaurant that serves one customer-party at a time and demands magic items in trade.

Ione gives the restauranteurs an item that's worth more than their most expensive demand listed, and commands them bring forth their best food for humans, and their best entertainment for mortal heroes at least one of whom is Good.

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The Azer slave who is majordomo there bows, and there is brought for them course after course after course of food finer than Pilar has ever tasted, in small dishes meant to be eaten with even tinier bites and savored.  Bards sing for them, performer-magicians show them miracles while their Detect Magic sees no spellwork.  Oiled men wrestle wearing only loincloths that are sometimes shoved aside in the heat of their contest.  There's an enchantment about the place, by which mortals may consume thrice as much food as the most they can consume and not pain their bellies, and dish follows dish in endless succession: this is the hospitality of the Efreet, if you can afford it.

There are wines, in small cup after small cup, to go with the small dishes.  Ione sips it sparingly as though only to appreciate the taste.

Pilar after some many sips of her own does feel, then, as though something wound very tight inside her is relaxing; it is pleasant.  She does ask Ione, then, Pilar does not know from where the impulse takes her to ask, if Ione happens to know of foreknowledge whether it will turn out well and not harm Asmodeus if Pilar drinks a little more.

Ione says yes, it is safe for Pilar to drink a little more.

And Pilar does.

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When Pilar emerges from the restaurant there is a flush about her, a brightness, she is wearing her +2 Belt of Physical Perfection and is 7 abilitypoints greater in every physical abilitystat.  It feels like there's a great waterwheel turning inside her and powering her, pushing her to do more, more, more before this day ends.

She wants to dance like Abrogail Thrune did in her ballroom, though she never learned how; would her curse let her if it was for a party?  She wants to be as pretty as Abrogail Thrune, or at least pretty enough that people look twice.  She wants to put on her Belt of Giant's Strength, and challenge a man to a fight, and punch far harder than a wizard girl should; and rouse his wrath, and lose to him, and be forcibly taken by him and several of his friends in retribution.

She wants to be hurt, hurt until she screams, hurt until she stops thinking, hurt until she stops being so pathetic, punished and ground into the dirt.  There is some terrible dire fate that waits for her and she is tired of fearing it, tired of whining about it, if she can't just face it right away.  Her superiors did tell her that there was some defect in her Asmodeanism, related to seizing things that she wants and having the pride to be more than a golem; maybe she is finding a little of that pride now.

In a half-drunken decision Pilar buys a +4 headband of Splendour, as should not be too much, her Sevarwrought +6 headband might be too much, but she can deal with 3 points more of Splendour than she ever had before; Pilar puts it on herself, and the will that burns through her lifts her up like a hawk taking wing.

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Then Pilar calls on her curse's power: and guides herself and Ione to a shop not meant for mortal customers: a merchant Efreeti who honed their fleshcraft through ages long even for Fire, and who now perfects the most cherished slaves of other Efreet.

His craft is a painful one, and Ione shies from it and refuses.

Pilar submits herself to it, to the Efreeti's slight surprise.  She is held down with chains like any other subject, and things done to her that make her scream for real.  It does not quench the thirst inside her, only feeds it.

Ione finds some temporary shelter in a great library while all this is going on; Ione's own Constitution is also Wish-raised and Belt-buffed and she is not tired, but Ione's curse does still hold sway over her.  It's unlikely Ione will be able to attune herself, to this library, and borrow from it, for she does not have time to truly dwell there and learn its stacks; but there is no library book that Ione cannot read, now.

When the Efreeti is done, Pilar is just the same shape as before and nothing about her is larger or smaller, nor would anyone fail to recognize her face at a glance (except maybe Keltham).  But a thousand subtle imperfections are burned away, and her hair is a truer copper-pink than she made it in Ostenso. She is not changed away from herself, she is herself perfected, for the Efreet know this to be Art in the crafting of slaves.

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Pilar calls on her curse's power: she finds two bards, a singer and a harp-player, a brother and a sister, two Drow who fled the chaotic darkness for Law and Fire.  They are slaves, but only for their own safety in the City of Brass, with a master they chose themselves and so permissive that they might nearly be free.  There is a Drow art of playing music which harmonizes with screams, and they know that art.

Pilar finds a skillful whip-mistress, again a slave but a hireable one, who bears a whip more expensive than the price of her own person.

Pilar buys appropriate garments for herself, and bright jewels.

Pilar rents a pavilion whose price for one night's rental is a thousand platinum coins.

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Pilar calls on her curse's power, then: she assembles six noble Malik out of the City of Brass for a revelry.

In Disguise of a cloaked male slave she goes to six residences and importunes their masters, telling them that a rare entertainment and challenge does await them.  Ignan, the language of Fire, has come to her tongue from somewhere, and she speaks fluently in the graces of Fire, saying, "O noble Malik of the Efreet."

There's a mortal girl who delights in pain as few mortals ever do, not a trained slave but a born one.  Let them do come and witness her dance, and if she fails to entertain then her life is forfeit.  Let them come and witness the dance of a born slave, and someday if that woman becomes a goddess they can brag that they saw her dance when she was mortal.  Tonight shall be born a legend of the City of Brass, though none of the six must speak a single word of these events for a year and a day (as is scarcely any time at all).

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Are the six Malik suspicious?  How could they not be?  But the messenger does not bid them follow on the spot, only assemble in a meeting-place they know but have not visited, a small intimate pavilion whose price for one night's revelry is famously a thousand platinum coins.  Even in the City of Brass where Efreet and Malik do vie to show their pride and wealth, it is a significant expense.  With twenty such nights you could buy a Wish-diamond, even at its fair price in Brass from one Efreeti to another.

If it's a trick or a trap, it's an expensive-enough one that it would be dishonorable not to spring it, to leave their enemy forlorn at the altar after such grandiose preparation that honors them by this expense.

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So six Malik come then, to an expensive pavilion that hosts but a single party.

Six Malik do enter into a chamber anointed in every aspect with decor to match, if only about this small volume, the wealth per cubic meter of the palace of the Grand Sultana Ayasellah Mihelar Khalidlah II.  Tonight these six Malik are as close to being royalty as they will ever be, unless they conquer the City of Brass for true a thousand centuries hence; a fleeting taste of grandeur that the true royalty permits their lesser kind, so they can seethe inside with envy of the true Lady of Flame and desire her favor.

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And Pilar calls on her curse's power:  She puts on her belt of Dexterity and Strength, and dances for the noble Efreet on a pavilion of mithril, though she doesn't know how to dance, her movements all perfect and sensuous as though in a dream or granted wish, veils falling from her and jewels staying bright.

When enough of Pilar is exposed, the real dance begins.  The greatest mortal whip-mistress of the City of Brass flicks about a whip that sears hot enough to burn through Pilar's Planar Resistance and make her scream; but unlike the usual and cruel form of this dance, where mortal slaves must dodge and whirl about the searing whip and never miss a step or cease to sway, Pilar Pineda does lean into the whip's kiss.  And her sensuous cries do mix with the music of the bards and match it.

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When it is done the six noble Malik of the Efreet, all of whom came intending to judge strictly and put this slave to ice on the least of excuses, can none of them say with honor that she should be slain.  They stamp their mighty feet in appreciation, honor given by Malik to a mortal slave, when the dance is done.  A fire is lit that they did not know was in them, and they lust for the victim of the dance.

They do inquire as to the purpose of this revel.

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And Pilar Pineda tells them that she means to yield herself to one of them:

Let the six fight, by any contest that does not slay them, she will not be accused by the Sultanate of being a foreigner come to sap their city's strength.  Six shall fight, and one shall win her without cost; and the five losers shall do her sister-oracle Ione Sala a small secret service, that shall not risk their life nor exhaust their wealth nor harm their reputation, and take but a little of their time.

And he who proves himself strongest and most cruel among the noble Malik of the Efreet, may not slay her in his victory; nor take her wealth from her or allow it to be taken.  But aside from that he may do utterly as he wishes with her, for the length of a mortal night; even give of her to others, does he will, so long as he protects her.

And she does swear that none of this is a plot aimed at any of their number, but only a contest for her own amusement, for which insolence she must be made to pay.  Come then, battle one another for the right to make her pay, if they are not cowardly.

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Then Pilar Pineda conducts them to that pavilion's small arena of wrestling, and lets Azer servants bind her, clothed only in bright jewels and a magical belt and headband, in chains whose key is set aside from her, making her an offering and a prize.

From the place of her binding Pilar Pineda watches six noble Efreet battle for her, with the lidded eyes of a mortal in lust.

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In the end a victor comes from their mighty contest, it is Befutig Safiza Uj-alet who triumphs and whose name passes into this fable.  Pilar Pineda heals him as she is healed herself, and he bears her away for the night.

As for the other five, an Oracle of Nethys does come to lay hands on them, healing them somewhat if not wholly.  She tells them of their forfeit, five Wishes to be cast for Ione's Strength, out of five Wish-diamonds that she bears.

And the five do honor the fairness of the forfeit: there is a floor-price set by the City's Laws, but services fairly gambled against services do not violate it.  Not one Malik of the City of Brass could say this night's gamble was anything but fair.

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Then Ione Sala takes herself home to the Prime Material, with something of a sigh: for it seems to her that, somehow, Pilar lives in a more interesting universe than she does.  Sometimes Ione wishes that she lived, if not quite in that exact universe, some universe which was at least that interesting.  There is probably a version of herself like that, if Ione dared ask Nefreti about it, but Ione Sala dares not ask.

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But for Pilar Pineda her night is only beginning.  She is cradled in the arms of a noble Efreet who would still be stronger than herself even if she girded herself with +6 Strength belt above +5 Wished; she'd match him pound for pound then, maybe, but he has many more pounds.  She is giddy and glorying and does not know to what extent she's drunk on extraplanar wine or drunk on the new life and strength in her.

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Befutig Safiza Uj-alet flies above the city as Efreet do, and lets the slave-girl, Pilar Pineda, look down to witness it, that she may be duly awed by the grandeur of the Efreet.  This is the world, and he is showing it to her.

To his mansion he takes her, a noble mansion befitting a noble Efreeti.

To his bedchambers he takes the slave-girl, and makes her scream with pain and pleasure both.

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Then Befutig Safiza Uj-alet finds a new flame lit in him, for this mortal whose lust is not quenched by all his cruelty.  He has taken many who did not want him, to whom he was cruel, and he gloried in it.  But to have them yield in desire to his cruelty is something he did not want before, for he did not know he could have it.

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He bids Pilar Pineda stay by his side all her mortal life, then.  She is a born slave, and he her natural master; they are destined for one another.

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But the slave-girl shakes her head and says, nay, for she already has a natural master; and she must return to the Prime Material to serve him when the night is done.

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Then his jealousy is kindled, and Befutig Safiza Uj-alet takes her again and makes her scream for him again.  The stamina of a noble Malik of the Efreet is, if not unlimited, great enough that no mortal woman can challenge it whatever magics are about her.  He is not spent.

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And when he is done and she lays there panting and thoroughly yielded of herself to him, he does carry her into his mansion's treasury and show her the wealth of a noble Malik of the Efreet.

Silver and gold do lay there in heaps great enough that a magicless mortal could not lift them, and a dozen and a dozen and a dozen things of power, swords and armor lit with jewels: this is his hoard, the hoard of Befutig Safiza Uj-alet, greater than the wealth of some mortals who call themselves kings.

A slave must have a price: let her name it.

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But Pilar Pineda does reach into her Bag of Holding and pour out platinum bars and faceted rubies, and rods and belts of magic, until their sum is greater than all the wealth that he shewed to her.  And at the end she takes out a crown wrought of Hell, whose fair price would be greater than both those hoards together.

"My own wealth is greater," says she, "and my true master's wealth is measureless."

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Then his wrath is kindled in truth, and Befutig Safiza Uj-alet seizes Pilar Pineda about her hair and drags her back to his bedchambers.

"O small and foolish mortal who thinks to defy an Efreeti," he says to her, "I will break you, now, and have you pledge yourself to me when you are broken. That does not transgress the bounds you laid on this night."

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"If you can break me you can have me," says she. "Show me the wrath of a Malik, and the cruelty of the City of Brass."

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All his wrath does he pour out onto her, then, though he may not kill her.  Slaves he sends forth from himself with wealth, and they return bearing instruments of great cruelty.

Three times the slave-girl nears death, and three times she heals herself and presents herself to him again.

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After the third time he can hardly bear the strength of his desire for her, and so he takes her back into his treasury and shows her a hidden door.

In the room beyond lie three Wish diamonds he has accumulated through ages, waiting for five, as is the clock that ticks ever so slowly to measure the long lives of Efreet.  Strength and Constitution, Splendour and Wisdom, Intelligence and Dexterity, do Efreet gain in this way.  A millennium might pass between one diamond and another; and they agonize whether to become stronger today to accumulate their gains faster tomorrow, or wait today to cast in longer sequences later.

"Swear yourself to me and I shall grant you your Wish," he says, as is folly and madness in truth, for a Wish is wasted on a mortal that passes away in a century.  But the desire in Befutig Safiza Uj-alet is such that he cannot bear it.

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Not from her Bag of Holding, then, but seemingly from nowhere, Pilar Pineda brings forth a Wish-diamond, and lays it beside the other three.

"My wish is one that only my true master can grant," says she, "though I did enjoy this night."

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Then his pride is pricked and skewered, for Efreet do not know gratitude to mortals.  He bears her to his bedchamber a final time and tries his very best to fucking ruin her.

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After the last encounter he himself lies panting; and Pilar Pineda is a wreck, but not, alas, a broken one.

"O greatest flower and jewel among mortals," he says to her then, "there is a secret passed down through ages, which is forbidden and death to both of us if any learned that it had been used by those not royalty."

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"I," the slave-girl croaks, and pauses to heal her throat.

"I will speak of it to none who do not already know," says she.

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"I cannot bear to ever be parted from you, o Pilar Pineda; pledge yourself to me for-ever, and I shall use a threefold wording passed down in secrecy through ages, to spend three Wishes and make you an Efreeti everlasting.  All the splendors of the City of Brass shall be yours for eternity, and you be not only my slave but also my wife; I will make you scream for me every day without fail."

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"O noble Malik of the Efreet," she says, "I have received the cruelty of a sensuous priestess of Asmodeus, of the seventh circle, and been used by her; I have been captive and tormented of a mortal queen who bound an Erinyes to herself, who sought to break me.  Yet your cruelty and lust is greater than any cruelty and lust I have felt, and I do not know if I will ever again receive its like.  Know that you have satisfied me."

"And yet - I must return to my master."

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"O Pilar Pineda, tell me who is your master!  From them I shall purchase you, though it cost me a thousand years of service."

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But she bows her head, and says, "My master is Lord Asmodeus, the Prince of Hell; only when I am passed into His possession will I know true cruelty and at last be broken."

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Then does Befutig Safiza Uj-alet know despair.

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Pilar Pineda heals herself a final time, and Restores herself, and rises up though rather wobbily so.

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"I shall send you back to the Material, then," says Befutig Safiza Uj-alet. He is tempted as never before to shatter his honor, but it is stronger than he.

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"I must gather my things.  And then -"

"Let us wander your City first, for a time."

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He does as she bids, though after watching her try to take a few steps he laughs and carries her again.

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Then he shows her one splendor after another of the City of Brass, for he is not so in despair that he does not hope at all.

There are gardens of such flowers as bloom in Fire, and also Elemental conservatories where you can see those flowers that bloom in Air and Water and blossom in the darkness and pressure of Earth.  There are flowers that bloom in Heaven and flowers that bloom in the Abyss; and Befutig Safiza Uj-alet shows them all to Pilar Pineda, as though to say: this is how many wonders our fair City could show you, if you asked for flower-gardens alone!

And did she cast off her mortal flesh and become Efreet, she could see the gardens of a thousand other planets from other stars and planes, piercing then the veil that lies about the City of Brass by which travelers from different planets may never meet; as the gods demanded when this place was made.

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And she is moved, but not, alas, stayed.

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Befutig Safiza Uj-alet does plead with her, then, warning her that Hell has cruelty but no generosity, it does not have the capacity to prize Pilar Pineda as he would, it will not shower her with gifts to complement its torments.  Her beautiful form will never know the touch of a caressing hand to soothe the whip's bite before it lands again.

O Pilar, O Pilar, why would she foresake the cruelty of the Efreet for the cruelty of Hell?  She was made to be a slave, but let her choose a more appreciative master than Asmodeus!  If the screams he draws from her are not enough, he will apprentice himself to more skilled torturers.

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The slave-girl is silent for a long time.

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"I do not need my master's appreciation nor his caress," she says.

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"You lie."

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"I did.  But though you could be my master, you could not be my god, for you would be content to sate your cruelty on me and not desire to perfect me as I must be perfected.  Efreet are Lawful, but they are not of Law."

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"Your cruelty is indeed the cruelty of Hell," he says.  "How will I ever know satisfaction again, after tasting your savor and then being denied it for ever?  I am sworn not to take your life for it; but tell me what enemy of mine laid this trap for me, that I may spend the rest of my eternity on vengeance."

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"Did I not swear this was no trap of your enemy?" says Pilar.  "You have shown me your might, now let me show you mine."

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The slave-girl closes her eyes, and the fragile beauty of her mortal face seems to fill his vision.

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Then her eyes open, and they are standing in the warehouse of a slave-market where no mortal of Golarion should ever be, before a slave-pen where young girlchildren crawl upon ten legs and eat the rotting corpses of things with more legs than that.

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"You cannot be here," says Befutig Safiza Uj-alet.  He must exert himself to not let his own form change, in this place.  "The City of Brass itself would be forfeit."

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But Pilar Pineda points to one girlchild who glares at them from a corner with emerald-faceted eyes, as though daring them to try and take her from her sisters.  "She has also my nature," Pilar Pineda says, "if you buy her and see her well-raised, to become a slave that leans into the whip and repays cruelty with desire.  Only buy her sisters also, and treat them kindly, and never threaten them to threaten her; for that she will never forgive as mortal nor Efreeti.  Free them and send them home, when they are grown enough to be safe returning, and she'll be yours forever."

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It is not in the nature of Efreet to know gratitude, but they know debt and hierarchy.  Befutig Safiza Uj-alet does acknowledge then that Pilar Pineda has shown herself grander than he; and that he owes her any one service she asks, short of his life or future wife.

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"And I do acknowledge the City of Brass in turn," she says, "for showing me my own pride, that I did not know I had in me.  But now it is time for me to return, for as you say, I must not be here."

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"To what fate do you return?  I have not missed that such a revel as this is one that a mortal might undertake, knowing they were not long for their flesh.  There is a saying among the Efreet:  Eat, drink, and be merry, for even gods can die.  Is it that, which you were doing?"

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"Perhaps.  Perhaps I go now to die, perhaps to become a goddess, perhaps to be made traitor.  Only my companion knew what fate is set for me, and she would not say.  Whatever it is to be, I'll try to hold to this pride, and not whine about it."

"Now send me back from the City of Brass also, to serve Asmodeus in Golarion, and then in Hell.  I am twice tempted now and twice refused; the third temptation will see me His true servant for-ever, or break me, if the tropes hold true."

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And if all this is to become a fable of the City of Brass in a year and a day, or if by then the City of Brass will have been consumed utterly in ruin - whether in Golarion this is to become a tale of a Deed of Pilar Pineda when she was mortal, or if her fate lies down some other road entirely - that is yet to be seen.  Her companion oracle knew what was fated, once, but fate is now cracked if maybe not shattered.  And even that cracked fate Ione Sala has not spoken of, as yet, where things that watch can see her.  If they want to know what comes, they shall have to continue watching to witness it.

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Telepathy between Keltham and Carissa follows in: the meeting of their minds.

This is an extended depiction with a lot of added context for the benefit of sub-INT-29 readers; the real telepathic exchange, of course, consists of thoughts flashing back and forth at a much higher speed and level of abstraction.

If you find yourself glazing over at the debates about ethics or Greater Reality, the more relationshippy section of 'meeting' starts here; and in the final extremity you can skip ahead to the next thread, null action act 2.

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In case you missed it, there's now a completed dath ilan thread between Iarwain and Swimmer963, about how Merrin first came to the attention of Exception Handling: for no laid course prepare.

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You may also have missed:  dear abrogail (Abrogail Thrune's terrible terrible advice column), summoned hero sevar (on hiatus and probably never going to be completed).

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To readers noticing the recent update:  "the meeting of their minds" was moved to the main section, completed, and the story now continues in "null action act ii: unact harder".

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