"Is aging rate a property of the soul?"

"Yes, and given that you were in a fight with thanadaemons it could easily have been accelerated. Furthermore, the adventurers who turned you in to us claim that the thanadaemons were causing aging in others beyond legal limits."

They're acting like they're on a script where the answer would be some kind of bad news. She doesn't know what the state of law is regarding daemons at home, but if their script calls for answering questions she may as well indulge them, get a sense of what they want her to be thinking. "What's the state of law regarding daemons around here?"

"In the Upper Planes and most other jurisdictions, daemonic activity is locally considered illegal. However, the amount of force that may be brought to bear in opposition to daemons, as well as the extent to which one may engage in activities they would consider provocative, is limited by interplanar law reflecting the balance of power between Abaddon and other factions. Thus, daemons may reasonably speak of legal rights to devour souls or such, even in an environment where local law enforcement will make some attempts to impede this."

"In the particular case of senescence, a typical entity's rate of senescence is not to be reduced by a factor exceeding 72, nor increased by a factor exceeding 64. The adventuring party that sent you here claims that thanadaemons performed a self-erasing ritual to induce senescence in previously immortal entities, which would be an increase of more than a factor of 64."

How very specific. "Does that also apply to cases like ascension and undeath?"

"You have not yet been cleared to receive information about ascension. Undeath repurposes the forces behind senescence, but is more disruptive to various forms of continuity than it superficially appears."

Meanwhile, a conversation between archons and axiomites is occurring. Calling the security discussions 'negotiations' would be an overgeneralization, there's some well-used confidentiality protocols that have a long history here.

(This conversation can in this medium be best depicted via a reductive and warped summary, if less reductive and warped than a summary of god-conversations would have to be.)

"So, we have a captive Asmodean and we'd like to convince her of some true facts for deprogramming, and we thought she might trust one of your guys."

"Look, you know our agreement with Hell where they agree to direct mortals to cooperate with us is conditional on us not selling you this exact service. Why are you calling?"

"The Asmodean isn't local."

"You should really be looping Axis in on this properly, but even if you're not going to, you already know perfectly well that cross-Alternative Hells coordinate."

"The Asmodean really isn't local. These are our findings on her material composition."

▶ Attachment: d530-561d-ce79-48cb-bcc4.txt

It is not, actually, the case that Axiomites are emotionless. For instance, this one is concerned and frustrated.

"Do you have the Far Realms entity in containment? What about everything the entity got into contact with? You should really bring Axis in on this. Whatever licit advantage you're planning to get out of this, we can pay you for it."

"Yes, of course we have her in containment. She's been in contact with a lot of stuff, though, we can't quarantine the entire–"

"If you and Hell would just collaborate more and give us more funding…"

"We've had this discussion before. Now is not the time."

The Axiomite can signal sighing. It's a good interface. "Moralists. Someday you're going to send us all back to Aiquzall and you're not even going to think you made a mistake."

"Anyway, we don't think your agreement with Hell actually covers this distant an Asmodeus? According to her–"

Why is Heaven gendering the Far Fealms entity? The application of familiar genders to exotic entities is a step on the path to overestimating the compatibility of such entities with local reality! Did the entity manage to manipulate Heaven into gendering the entity due to some type of pronoun-infecting power?

"You TALKED to the Far Realms entity? Why isn't the entity in stasis?!"

"–the 'Asmodeus' in her … region … had an entire country of mortals, and yet she's been really poorly prepared to engage with us and her understanding of Asmodean theology is this."

▶ Attachment: 9b2a-8da1-f64d-4504-99e6.txt

"I am not reading that and if you were sane you wouldn't either."

"You're not going to remember this."

"I'm not supposed to remember this, yes. Are you really going to try to claim that nothing involved in the Rhoswen incident is usable for forcible circumvention of many methods of memory erasure? Does no particular problematic phenomenon spring to mind? Suppose, for instance, that the Far Realms entity rode into our reality on a Jubjub Bird, whose screech is known for evading memory redaction among other anomalous phenomena?"

"Jubjub Birds are deity-like entities. So far as we can tell–"

"I do not want to hear that entity's name."