There are many thoughts and conversations that happen then, simultaneously, at a pace that mortals could follow individually but not in parallel: gods are not fast, but they are large.

....no.

Abadar is not one of the gods that is ever near desiring the world’s destruction. For one thing, He couldn’t do it, not when the many many many people who trade with Him have done so since the beginning of time on the premise that He wants, that He uses His strength to bring about, cities, prosperity, invention. But even if no one had ever traded on such a premise, He would never do it, because in all the vastness of Creation He perceives almost entirely things that should be, people trading, people building, people inventing.

And He says to Keltham: I aided you, when you came to this world, in the hope that we could trade peacefully, and I did not believe then that a mortal with your shape would use the value I gave you to act so much against my interests; if this is what you do, then it would be better if I had permitted Asmodeus to ruin you. By the value that I gave you, that permitted you to thrive and gain this much capability, I ask that you not.

If you are looking on the level of gods you can see it, how Abadar's message strikes at a gaping wound inside Keltham's shape, damage not dealt by any external force but where Keltham dealt Himself that wound by acting against His own nature.

But what is left of Keltham retains its structure and does not change its conformation around the wound as He responds:

There are sentients in Hell, and I knew I could not be Yours anymore, even to that conduct of my trades.  I left You when I knew I could no longer uphold Your flame-light of civilization, and afterward I tried to give You all I could of what You had hoped to buy from me.

I am sorry.

Desna offers that She will do all within Her power to find the world-wanderer's lost home, and return Him there; He does not need to stay within Creation, if He finds its shape inimical.

You cannot touch dath ilan to place me there, and even if You could find a writeable copy, it is too late.  I would no longer fit there as god or mortal.

Creation is vast and what lies beyond is vaster yet.  There are other places, and in some of them Keltham could be happy!

If my personal happiness was my greatest desire in the end, I would have chosen that path much much earlier.

🗡 appreciation of Keltham's angry determination to overturn Creation's order 🗡

🗡 approval of Keltham's deeds as a mortal on behalf of Osirian women 🗡

🗡 expression of attraction to Keltham as a new male deity, flirtatious expression of interest in having a pleasurable fling with Him 🗡

🗡 coy emphasis that Calistria does not make this offer to male deities very often at all 🗡

🗡 sensuous eagerness to work with Keltham on some OTHER form of vengeance and power-overturning which is NOT THIS during aforesaid fling 🗡

🗡 self-prediction of horrible painful revenge* against Keltham if He actually carries out any large-scale destructive acts against Creation 🗡

(*)  🗡 it's not meant as a threat 🗡 it's meant as REVENGE 🗡

You do not, so far, live up to Your reputation for subtlety.

🗡 Calistria possesses deep comprehension of when subtlety is appropriate 🗡

🗡 and when it is not 🗡

It is common for people to want to destroy their enemies because they don’t really comprehend them, because they cannot see any good in them or do not realize about themselves that they would stop if they did see. Almost everyone driven to the horror of true-murder is, in some sense, lying to themselves, refusing to see a sacred thing they’d be unwilling to destroy if they could see it.

Sarenrae’s first hope is that Keltham is making, by his lights, an angry and wounded and bitter mistake, like people do, and that now that He's a god He might be able to understand new truths that’d make Him not want to destroy Creation anymore, in which case She will expend an astonishing amount of resources conveying all of that information immediately.

Keltham does not try to conceal Himself from any Good god's inspection, and it will be obvious to Sarenrae that (though He is truly wounded) He is not a shape that could be changed by that revelation, that everyone else's existence is as intensely real as his own.  Most of His hesitancy about destroying Creation is held within His doubts about whether everyone else here is equally real.  If He were certain that every paving stone in Hell was just as real as himself, that Creation was continually producing new souls and sending thirty percent of them to Evil afterlives and all those people were real, He would be all the more driven to end this.

Seeing this, She grieves, and has little more to offer the crisis.

Obviously She favors ending Hell, if anyone was wondering. And yes, should any souls be displaced by present events, from Hell or for that matter from anywhere else, Nirvana has space to take every one of them.

(Nirvana sends a lawyer to every Boneyard trial, to argue that everyone has Neutral Good in them. This results in Nirvana getting a number of souls that may have Neutral Good in them but are, you know, not conventionally Neutral Good, or at all people you’d want to have wandering your paradise. The isle that houses them is not, in fact, infinite, but Sarenrae while She still possessed any power at all would not let it be false, that there was space in Nirvana for everyone, that it would turn away none of them; She would die making it true, should it ever come up.)

(Some Evil gods have probably considered whether it would be funny to make Her do that, but it’d take a truly ludicrous number of souls.)

(...And if Pharasma's sorting were subverted on that scale, She would likely object.  A few mostly-Evil souls won by Sarenrae's isle doesn't seem to bother Pharasma, any more than the tenth that many souls who end up Maledicted: they're a statistically small fraction, and both varieties of soul end up Good and Evil, in time.  But wholesale relocation of mostly-Evil dead to Good planes probably would impinge on what the gods guess to be Pharasma's own priorities; or at least, some of Her rare interventions seem to have been aimed at not-that, long ago in the Beginning.)

Asmodeus is, predictably, not going to give into a threat even if that kills Him; mostly that makes entities not try it. And this is, obviously, the work of Iomedae, who He knows does not want the world to end, and so no one will give in. If, bafflingly, She’s arranged for a sufficient coalition to side with Her, well, Asmodeus too can play the game of doing things-against-His-interests-that-harm-the-other-party-more, if that’s the stupid game they’re playing; He’ll release Rovagug and order all the souls in Hell shattered before any saviors can reach them.

Iomedae is busy eating Zon-Kuthon but not too busy to make legible that She has done absolutely no acting-against-Her-interests at any point, ate Zon-Kuthon on Milani’s claim it was a good idea for Her, and opposes the destruction of Creation! Very vehemently! She was guessing that Keltham would be crushed on ascension; She would have impeded Keltham Herself, if She’d possessed unencumbered knowledge of His plans and if She’d expected that no one else would stop Him.  She requests that Asmodeus act with such scraps of civilization as are in Him and not spitefully destroy everything while they figure out if there’s something else to be done instead.

(She can actually see now of Her own unencumbered knowledge how this ought to resolve, from the logic that threads through everything that has happened so far, but She’s not going to tell Asmodeus that. Because She hates Him.)

Sarenrae also requests clarification on the obvious point here where this was clearly orchestrated by some parties – they can identify themselves if they want or She can think for slightly longer and She’ll figure it out – who were not allowed to do things like that, and who presumably don’t want the universe destroyed, and who should have known that that is precisely what they were bringing about.

Of those gods that hovered around Keltham, who were once-mortal enough to understand key parts of what has happened, Irori knows He may be the only one who can and will speak.  He does not understand fully; He is coalesced and trying to think as quickly as He can, but gods are large but not fast and He has not solved it all yet.  He does not know why.  But He knows Who.

Nethys.  Cayden Cailean.

And Milani, and He's not convinced not-Iomedae.

There is an exchange then of information, among the gods, gathered to confront this threat to all Creation; in the parts of Their wills not bent on probing Keltham's causal surface to sway Him to another path by any possible input.

Irori yields what He knows, taking responsibility for what must have been His part in bringing Carissa Sevar to this pass.  Abadar gives it away, as a partial payment towards that owed for His protecting Keltham.  Asmodeus selectively releases all of that information and only that information which damns that which is good.

And They consider it and think, and in time speak to Milani, in voices that are one and many:  Sarenrae and Slandrais, Gorum and Abadar, Gozreh and Onos, Erastil and Dahak, Asmodeus and Desna:

Your faction repeatedly intervened to protect Keltham, empower Keltham.  None of You would have preferred that Creation be destroyed rather than continue unchanged.  You would have no motive to preserve and empower Keltham if We did not yield, so yield We must not.  And You must certainly have known that We would not permit Ourselves to be threatened by proxy, and that Creation would be forfeit.

Explain the actions of Your coalition, Milani; and We hope that it is not the last explanation We all hear.

Our interests ought not be injured by Our caring for them.  We should do no worse out of these events than if We had been incapable of any action; We should do at least as well, in expectation, than if We had cared for nothing and done nothing.