(Part of Himself has already glanced in this direction, a tiny fragment and splinter that deemed these souls worthy of empowerment; but that fragment did not look very long, and considered the mortals' high potential probably-explained-away by the presence of His most-empowered mortal among them.  With all of Asmodeus gathered and looking in this direction, He sees more: potentials, what these souls could be in the future and not only what they are now—)

He supposes He can take that into account as some small evidence that this guess at a future trade-good, whose scalability is neither prophesized nor vision of Nethys, will be actually-deliverable to Himself.  But better-shaped souls would have come to Him in any case, once He had conquered all Creation; He is being offered only a fraction of what would otherwise have been rightfully His.

This outcome is not all that You wanted, of Creation's Future, and not all that You planned to obtain for Yourself.  But not every god can obtain mastery; Your dream of future dominance is not Yours to call Your own in a way that commands respect from other gods.  Your fate, had We done nothing, was for Hell to be ruined, and its remains given over to foreign deities, and Yourself to be destroyed, and Your interests given no voice in Creation's Future.

And yet though We hated You, and You had not the right, for Creation's sake We took every measure along this way to show You respect and preserve what of Your pride and interests We could preserve, subject to the constraint that We had to win in the end.

If that voluntary gesture is not enough to assuage Your pride, then let Us all die in a fire together; for We, too, cannot be extorted by threatening Creation any more than You can.

The only reason He's even contemplating going along with this nonsense is the possibility that He'd be yielding to the dominance of actually superior beings in Keltham's purported Greater Reality, who spared some tiny fraction of Their mighty attentions to corner Him into a compact.

Calistria can't hear Asmodeus over the sound of Calistria instructing Her church to elevate "Tarnish" to sainthood.

Otolmens is INCREDIBLY unhappy with ALL of this.  Otolmens is not very socially adept but even SHE has noticed by this point that agents do things that Asmodeus wants, or the anomalygod wants, because Asmodeus and the anomalygod have the capacity and desire to wreck Creation otherwise.  Even She can - if She coalesces Herself fully and focuses Her full attention on this one point - feel that this is, in some way, irritating.  Somebody should also be nice to gods who DIDN'T DESTROY THE UNIVERSE OR THREATEN TO DO THAT IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER and maybe even TRIED TO STOP THAT FROM HAPPENING.

To create good future incentives!  Yes!  Abadar is pleased to see that Otolmens has finally understood -

No, because otherwise Otolmens feels VERY ANNOYED, for reasons that She does not fully comprehend, but She can at least notice the feeling if She is fully coalesced about it.

Otolmens is feeling annoyed with the anomaly that turned itself into a god who was even WORSE than Nethys.

Otolmens is annoyed with Achaekek for getting Itself killed by Gating in next to where an explosion was about to go off, meaning that It then couldn't prevent the mortal from turning into a god as was Achaekek's one job.

Otolmens is annoyed with the chain of protective deities that PREVENTED Otolmens from killing the anomalygod for INCREDIBLY COMPLICATED REASONS that apparently boil down to 'because otherwise that newborn god would've unleashed Rovagug at an earlier point in time' and this is AGAIN a case of other gods running around being NICE to entities with tendencies to destroy the universe.

Various gods keep doing things to make CREATION-WRECKING GODS happy but nobody ever tries to make OTOLMENS any happier even though all Otolmens wants is for NOBODY TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE.  Otolmens COULD in fact destroy the universe but the fact that She DOESN'T WANT TO apparently makes Her be NOT AS IMPORTANT or worth PAYING ATTENTION TO.  This is somehow deeply irritating to Otolmens even though She does not fully understand WHY and it is making Her want to put many other gods into SMALL CONTAINMENT UNITS where they will not be able to do it all AGAIN.

Otolmens should also be annoyed with Milani, who coordinated all of that!  Perhaps They can all coordinate to put Milani into a tiny vault.

Otolmens has NOT noticed Milani trying to destroy the world, or other gods being nice to Milani because otherwise Milani will destroy the world.  While Otolmens did not understand everything from Nethys's vision, Otolmens does gather that Milani was doing COMPLICATED THINGS to REDUCE the damage from the anomaly that Abadar and Asmodeus wouldn't let Her just squish, and therefore Otolmens is LESS ANNOYED WITH MILANI THAN MOST OTHER GODS INVOLVED.

Milani also helped Otolmens negotiate with Asmodeus about paying for an Anomaly Containment Installation.  Which then FAILED to actually contain the anomaly, presumably on account of Asmodeus TRICKING Otolmens in some way, such as by not instructing His followers to TRY HARD ENOUGH.

That is very nearly the opposite of what actually happened -

Milani also arranged for the mortal who "thinks CORRECTLY" to not get wrecked in Hell, the way that Asmodeus would've preferred to wreck her!  And for the new goddess Carissa Sevar to end up with the ownership-tag on her soul that previously was pointing to one of Asmodeus's devils!  Otolmens should be able to buy that soul from Carissa Sevar now - maybe by offering to forgive Her and Pilar for the previous incident - and give that soul back to itself.

Possibly then that soul can be brought back to life, and Otolmens can empower the mortal 'Asmodia' as a cleric, and have her help out with preserving other planes and planets!

Milani can't promise it; Nethys's visions always have that soul refusing resurrection by anyone and staying in the Gardens of Erecura, for the short future ahead that Nethys's visions have spanned.  But this version of the mortal got less damaged by Asmodeus's mortals just before she died, compared to other versions of her that Nethys saw.  Maybe that soul would consider working for Otolmens, if Otolmens made her an attractive offer and promised good working conditions?  Milani can explain about 'good working conditions' later.

Milani is mostly doing this out of a belief that it might help prevent the universe from being destroyed, of course.  But also at least a little because Milani agrees that it would be nice if some gods did nice things for Otolmens occasionally, and maybe even that Otolmens could use a friend.

Otolmens is feeling very STRANGE and She is not sure WHAT sort of feeling this is, so She will IGNORE this feeling and go on doing whatever minimizes the chance of Creation's destruction.

Which in this case seems to be following Milani's recipe for possibly obtaining a USEFUL TOOL that would require MINIMAL ONGOING MAINTENANCE.

Milani sends Otolmens the feeling of a headpat.  Maybe, possibly, and especially if She grows closer to Asmodia, perhaps someday Otolmens will understand it.

He also sends gratitude to Milani, for protecting Asmodia and Peranza within Hell on his behalf.

(Yes, it was also in Milani's own interest, that Keltham not be furious beyond reconciliation at Asmodeus; but that much could have been accomplished by paying a lesser price for Dis to render those souls to temporary statues.  Asmodia would not have been broken that way, during her first time in Hell, but she also would not have been healed.  To send them both to the Gardens of Erecura is more what Keltham himself would have wanted, and paid for, than what was in the cold calculated interests of Good alone.)

Asmodia understood, in this timeline.  Asmodia knew that her someone-somewhere had always been you.  She realized it as soon as she asked the question while knowing as much decision theory as you'd taught her: that the entity with the caring and power to protect her in Hell must have been Keltham-of-the-future, negotiating across times through the medium of a god who could predict him and act as his agent to be repaid later.

And Your repayment?  I acknowledge that Your alliance is thereby owed.

I shall ask for bits of payment here and there, from You, during the negotiations to come.

...so in time a treaty is struck, and followed shortly after by war.

And then it begins, the last doomed battle between Good and Evil.

For all Creation will end if Evil actually wins, which puts something of a damper on Evil's usual alliance prospects with the likes of Gorum.  Zon-Kuthon has been consumed by Iomedae, and Evil's greatest god Asmodeus has reluctantly stepped aside.

It is indeed a very doomed battle, from Evil's perspective.

The Evil gods that fight rather than negotiate are those whose domains and pleasures will be so damaged, in any Future acceptable to Keltham, that They'd sooner choose death-in-a-fire; not accepting so tiny a share of Creation's gains whatever the rationale.  Carissa has persuaded Keltham to accept bargains on the order of "Creation will always contain at least one forsaken child dwelling in filth and misery", for the sake of neutralizing a few Evil entities that are satisficer enough to prefer that much Evil to Their own destruction; but most Evil gods will not accept one miserable child as Their share of all the future's gains.  They are not feeling very motivated to pursue the tiniest most marginal benefit They can be offered.

Lamashtu fights to the death, for though there'll still be gnolls and medusae in Creation's envisioned future, entities that consider themselves as monsters or misshappen will predictably and in time be offered alternative prospects for their form.

Urgathoa fights, for Her faction will consume a tiny fraction of the souls they once feasted upon, after the alternatives to Abaddon improve.

The archdaemons fight, and perhaps a third of the Demon Lords.

A former empyreal lord Doloras, granted for a time refuge in Hell, is told that Her agreement with Asmodeus is now abrogated, and there will be no more torture-victims for Her; She and many others like Herself do turn then and fight, as the terms of Their ancient compacts also permit in such a case.

The velstrac demagogues come forth from where they hid in the Shadow Plane, informed by uneasy allies that doom is coming for their kind; and the sahkil tormenters, where they hid in the Ethereal.

The greater qlippoth, from where they lurk in the deepest depths of the Abyss, would emerge and make war - if there were sufficient prospect of wholly destroying Creation during the distraction, and letting the Abyss's depths slip back into greater Chaos.

That prospect does not obtain today, so the qlippoth bide their time yet.

Some among the Neutral gods abstain from the war, though even most of those do lend Their efforts to monitoring the qlippoth, or standing by if Otolmens at Rovagug's vault should call out for aid.

Gozreh abstains wholly, as do some other gods, but not many.

In truth, for Creation to embark upon a wealthier Future benefits many gods, if their concerns are manifest in mortals at all.  If you like mortals existing in the first place, you probably like Creation being ten times as full of souls.

You would think it would benefit even Pharasma, to have more souls to sort; or that it'd benefit Pharasma to receive fewer souls dying before they show an alignment, to have less of a torrent of dead babies come to the Boneyard; you would think She'd have done something earlier to promote technological progress, even if just to back Abadar or unleash Axis's investors.  But Pharasma is as inscrutable in Her own way as Rovagug: mostly She judges souls, and the exceptions She makes to that behavior pattern are not for mortals or even most gods to predict.

But this great Change to that equilibrium which She previously set in motion, Pharasma does not act to oppose; for Keltham has a death-grip about Her Spire, and it seems that can inspire Her at least to inaction.

The resulting godwar is greater in total quantitative fury than the godwar of Aroden's death, but the battle is more distributed across planes; there are many planets to suffer the torrential rain and lightning instead of it being focused all into Golarion (though Golarion does bear the worst of what is there).