...one can't have Snack Service prevent Keltham from having any kids, because then when Keltham reaches Osirion he doesn't feel time-pressured enough to start augmenting his stats; and an unaugmented Keltham can hardly succeed in threatening Creation, or even succeed at concealing his own intentions...

The Nethysi suspected as much beforehand.  But after enough other tries and interventions, you dedicate a handful of timelines to testing batches of obvious-seeming propositions like that one.

Or the proposition that Otolmens will act on sufficiently alarming information Asmodia receives, once Asmodia becomes legible enough to Otolmens and She starts to understand some of what Asmodia is thinking.  Asmodia has to be protected, but not so protected that she ends up staying around Keltham...

...and in time, Keltham appears in Golarion, and Nethys witnesses it, and the Things that watch from orthogonal angles crowd around in numbers far greater than in the glimpsed possibilities, though it takes some time for Nethys's fragments to realize that; just as it takes His fragments time to pass word among themselves and realize Keltham's import at all.

Nethys fragments have sometimes considered the theory that the Things, in observing events, make them more real.

Nethys observer-moments who find themselves observed by few or no Things tend to reject this theory; if it's true, it'd be very surprising to find themselves in a universe with no Things watching it.

Conversely, Nethysi who find themselves in one of those numerically-rare universes which are being watched by great numbers of Things, tend to suddenly reverse course about this belief, and conclude that those numerically infrequent observer-moments witnessed by Things are perhaps the most real observer-moments, after all.

(The Nethysi in other less-watched possibilities, as may witness their neighbor-Nethys come to this conclusion, can only shake Their heads about it; They can see why that rare other Nethys would make the mistake, but really the Observer finds Himself over here, in that Nethys's own experience, where hardly any Things are watching at all!)

This Nethys of the most recent iteration, having spotted the Things, now concludes that this possibility will be one of the most real ones; maybe it is the real timeline and all the other glimpsed-possibilities were only possibilities, real to some vastly lesser degree; implying a hard switch from exploration to exploitation–

But it is already too late (by the time Nethys realizes that much) to take the surest route He can see from here without exactly repeating Himself, which would have involved subsidizing Keltham for three circles from Abadar rather than four.  Nethys is already set upon a riskier path by the time He adds up all His information.

So there's nothing for it but to play the Game with verve (as probably the Things themselves did anticipate), using and combining all of the advantages that Nethys has found so far.  Including moves that haven't been combined previously and whose combined outcomes are not tested, for the Game doesn't encourage trying to play it safely.

Carissa's sexuality, Pilar's sexuality, Yaisa's sexuality, are made known to Keltham.

He is told truthfully that Pilar Pineda came back from Elysium; he is shown that it's possible for a soul to believe itself free and safe, and still come back to serve Asmodeus in Golarion and then in Hell.

Keltham hears from Pilar that a submissive can want, need, something to crush her down like a bug underfoot; that when she feels disgusting she needs to be crushed by something that sees her as equally lowly and degraded, for that part of herself to feel seen, acknowledged, punished...

All to get Keltham to a point, previously reached in only two fully witnessed iterations, where Keltham will be okay with not ripping Asmodeus out of reality, with offering Asmodeus enough of Creation's Future that Asmodeus does not fight to the death or try to release Rovagug; where Keltham will be fine with Pilar telling him of the offer that Milani will convey to Asmodeus after Cayden Cailean is dead - yes, Keltham (Pilar says, in Nethys's vision of previous possibility, in a telepathic meeting of three minds), yes Keltham that's an okay way for a mortal to be, I still believe that, even now that I've come to know myself and all the ways Asmodeus wasn't the best possible god for me -

And the vision plays on, to show what approximately should have happened, if it had all gone as Nethys's walkthrough showed, of the best previous endings He'd reached, interpolated between pieces He was trying to combine for the first time -

- a world where Keltham had been more deeply wounded; where a more penitent Carissa returned to him -

- where Keltham warned Carissa less, before he bought her Wishes; where she sold them unknowing of Keltham's plans.  They are far more estranged, after that, though still working together -

- Keltham descends on Absalom earlier, before his children can be ensouled, suspecting this to be his trope-given deadline as to when he should act -

- Keltham, who's had less time to plan and master magic at INT 29, who had less cooperation from Carissa about designing magic items, uses one entire Wish scroll to create an almost-certainly-sufficient quantity of antimatter above Absalom inside a shell of spellsilver, not trying any fancy tricks with the Ethereal in case that cleverness doesn't work on the first try -

- blasting down Aroden's whole Starstone Cathedral in a terrible flash, burning an outer inch of divinity from the Starstone itself, slaying almost every soul remaining in Absalom, sending tsunamis blasting out to sink ships and ruin coastlines -

- there is no time to break and remake Abrogail Thrune, for Cheliax to bend knee to Sevar and let the world hear of it -

- there is less time for Pilar to become stronger, for Sevar's fame and faith to grow, and all three are more rushed and damaged about their ascent to divinity -

- Keltham has no slack to actually set in motion an ark project headed by Fe-Anar -

- and a number of other things go less well.

...and Gruhastha, Lawful Good god of enlightenment and books, said to be Irori's nephew, called also the Keeper, closes His book in which He recorded all the visions that Nethys showed to Him, at the beginning of this Game.

And so -

(says one small fragment of Nethys to the gods, borrowing sanity for it from His other fragments bending his will to say it)

- and so, compared to the baseline consequences of Nethys's null action, Keltham has been brought, now, to this pass, less hostile to Asmodeus.  Still kinda pissed, obviously, but in a way where gods can negotiate about that; where Keltham would rather offer Asmodeus something He wants than burn Him to ash at any cost.  Carissa Sevar has done everything she can to moderate Keltham's demands, and in many cases succeeded.

This is the nice friendly favor that Nethys has done practically everyone including Pharasma and Asmodeus!  Really, it's about as much as Nethys possibly could help Them all without giving up the tiniest bit of Nethys's own interests!

...also Carissa Sevar sold her Wishes to Keltham more knowingly than ever before; Carissa guessed more and Keltham told this Carissa more, before he bought her Wishes, than in any previous iteration.  Hopefully Pharasma doesn't destroy the universe about that!  Nethys thinks She oughtn't to, based on His having watched Carissa Sevar's mind the whole time and Carissa not visibly thinking that Pharasma would yield to threats, in making her decision there; but this part hasn't happened before.  Anyways that part was definitely an accident and Nethys did not mean to do it on purpose; it endangers His own interests too.

...It's so awful and sad, and even, in some awful sad way, funny.

Having so many emotions all at once, expressed without mutual inhibition, is not something She has yet accustomed Herself to, and She is in no hurry to sort Herself out quickly.  She is not here to decide any of what follows, only to be a slave to those who will end up taking ownership of Her.

Carissa had inferred the general shape of this, of course. She hadn’t guessed the specifics; they weren’t knowable and weren’t particularly important. In this world, she could make things less bad by moderating Keltham’s demands; across worlds, she could make things less bad by being someone who would predictably be possible to use towards that end. The details of those other worlds were not necessary.

This is not to say that it does not hurt to learn them. The most awful things imaginable from the perspective of a Carissa, both for Herself and for the universe, and it turns out that both of these things are of approximately equal importance to Her, in how She feels about them, which is in both cases much much much more strongly than any mortal could fathom feeling about anything. And She observes to all of the Nethyses out there that Carissa-the-god, in every universe in which She arises, will try to make Nethys glad of having where-He-needed-to-vary-the-formula erred on the side where the universe goes on and not on the side where everyone dies in a fire.

And relevant for everyone else, see this, that Carissa ran to Keltham because she hoped that he was possible to persuade to do something better, that her thoughts were of Keltham and how he deserved better than to be betrayed and annihilated, and of the universe and how it deserved better than to be destroyed, and maybe a bit that the Tropes wanted a story where she was able to meet him where he was - but the Tropes do, of course, want that, and whether that counts as everybody being threatened by the Tropes seems unknowable from here. She does not think Carissa Sevar decided anything in reliance on Nethys or Cayden, and they can see that to verify it.

She has nothing to say to Keltham, not really. She thought She might but She doesn’t.

He had for the most part expected to lose Carissa without a miracle, and was waiting to see if there was a miracle.  He is not very surprised that there was not one.

It still hurts him, as a god, in a way that it would not have hurt him as a mortal.  His nature as a god is to be Keltham, and for Keltham to not do whatever it takes to get Carissa back - is also acting against the nature of Kelthamness.

And now they will find out if there's going to be a reality-wrecking god-war, or if he has to destroy Pharasma's Spire and delete Creation outright.  The latter is up to Pharasma and/or all these other gods; the former is up to Asmodeus and whether He'd rather see Rovagug unleashed than Hell be made less cruel.

Asmodeus, in fact, has never considered the wasteful cruelty of Hell as His best option!  Obviously better from His standpoint would have been to turn most incoming petitioners into useful devils by much more quick and efficient means...

...In which case the forces of organized Lawful Evil would've predictably conquered everything, maybe not immediately but early on in Creation.  Even most souls that qualify as Lawful Good don't want to work as hard in the afterlife as Asmodeus would work His resources in Hell; and with mortals amid the planes fearing less to come to Hell, there'd have been more Evil in the worlds and more petitioners to come to Him.  Evil is basically easier than Good, after all.

It was Good that took the initiative on negotiating, in the Beginning of Things, to deprive Asmodeus of His rightfully earned and swiftly inevitable victory.

Naturally Asmodeus's pride was greatly angered; He was being deprived of the share of Creation's gains to which Asmodeus's power and dominance should have entitled Him, as He Himself saw things.  Naturally Asmodeus went out of His way to ensure that He implemented the required limits on Hell's power in a way that Good wouldn't like, so that they'd profit less from Their having bargained to hamper Him.

If Asmodeus had felt neutral about the affair, Asmodeus could have offered to build an efficient Hell, but only allow a fractional part of that Hell to contend in interplanar contests, the sort of hindrance that Axis accepted on itself to meet its own influence quota.

If Asmodeus had been positively inclined towards Good, He could have offered to build a Hell that was kinder to petitioners and locally not very efficient as a result.

But Good had conspired to strip Asmodeus of the dominance that was rightfully His; so instead He took the route of making Hell more tyrannical and enslaving, even at the cost of efficiency, as was also pleasing to Him; more and more tyrannical, until that Hell was only as potent as the other gods were willing to allow it to be.

And yes, Asmodeus knew perfectly well that Good would never pay Him not to do that, what He'd determined to do from spite.  Asmodeus knew that Good wouldn't withhold Their stupid conspiracy because He'd chosen to make that Their outcome.  Asmodeus knew that Good's only response would be still greater efforts against Him, for that if They paid Him then some other god might also make a Hell and say to Good "pay Me".  But to spite Good regardless was demanded by His pride, after They stole His rightful tyrannical dominance from Him.

(A lot of gods hampered Him in the Beginning, but other gods are more expensive to annoy than Good, since their utilityfunctions don't make it so cheap to do things they hate.  Still, Asmodean policy is skewed to chop down an extra forest sometimes because fuck Gozreh.)

Yes, it was extremely spiteful and stupid; and furthermore if We'd yielded Creation to Asmodeus, He would've made Hell the sort of tyranny He found less efficient and more pleasant, once He'd conquered everything.

There could've been a compact for His rightful tyranny to be somewhat less unpleasant, if the other gods yielded up Creation to Hell's conquest.  Only somewhat, not to the point where it seemed like He was yielding up His pride.  That would've been right and proper.

Now it will be extra unpleasant, in those realities where Asmodeus wins and rules forever; unpleasant enough to cancel out all Good's expected gains from cornering Him in the Beginning, because He is not letting Good get away with pulling this sort of crap on Evil.

The acceptable way for another entity to benefit at Asmodeus's expense, is by being individually mightier than He, or by outwitting Him in a compact; and be it noted that He serves Pharasma diligently and goes well out of His way to entertain tricky compacts.  He is not distorting His divine philosophy self-favoringly.  Asmodeus has always been scrupulously meta-fair about where to apply the forms of object-level unfairness that He considers rightful.

Okay.  Look.  Speaking both on his own behalf, and probably on behalf of a large contingent within Greater Reality, this is a kind of event that needs to stop happening.  Same with whatever happened with Dou-Bral actually getting turned into Zon-Kuthon, possibly by Something that demanded Dou-Bral do whatever and then carried out a threat when Dou-Bral refused.  It all needs to be collectively outlawed.

He doesn't, even, know that he was sent here to fix Hell.  Keltham could've been sent here because something worse from a Negative standpoint was due to happen in this timeline in the future.