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I have no idea where I'm going with this: Part 2
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Stephanie will happen to be near the entrance when they reach the palace.

She'll recognize Robaldo and pretend that this was her plan all along and not obviously a divinely-orchestrated pseudo-coincidence. Maybe it'll at least look like she was in on it, without Tet having to spend some tiny fragment of His attention causing her to actually be in on it.

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The trick is to use locally famous but low hit-dice people who are often near locally famous artifacts on first callings, and then if they try to visit put them somewhere nearby such that the line they'd predictibly travel along to get there intersects the ordinary movement of the person they met before.

It's like snooker except instead of predicting the physics of spherical balls you predict tiny conscious minds. Easy if you're a god.

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Can she guess why they're here?

They're not eligible to rule Elkia, sight-seeing maybe? If it's a shopping trip, what's something she can sell that people from Golarion would want to buy?

And what's something she could sell it for that the rules say count as a strict enough trade that they won't penalise her as they would for a straightforward donation?

Oh, no, she's being an idiot again. They used her to target a gate, and they'll want to tune some forks so it'll be cheaper next time.

"Welcome Robaldo and friends, to the Kingdom of Elkia. Is there anything I can help you with?"

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They'll get directions to the crown, and ask how long it'll take to tune.

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"This is, by your magic's standards, an Uncommon plane. It'll be around 3 days. There's no problem if you want to stay, the palace is intended for visitors, or you can leave them behind and come back, or you could request me in a future Planar Ally to deliver them although I'd want to know the time and there's a required offering, if that suits you best.

Or, I suppose, while you're here you might play some games and win the favour for free."

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They've seen fae before, just because someone detects Chaotic Good doesn't mean it's a good idea to go anywhere near them, or agree to any kind of deal.

Describe your proposal in specific enough terms it'd bore a contract devil.

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If all the gods tried their individual best to optimise Golarion, the seas would boil and the sky would tear open and no one would survive. Since most of them don't want that, they agree to some rules.

One obvious schelling point is to agree to an intervention limit that keeps the same ratios of individual strength, but sets an upper bound such that they could only destroy the world if they all worked together to do it.

Another is to estimate how far along the intervention-curve gods can go before They're on-average hurting the interests of a majority-coalition with each new intervention more than they are benefiting Their own. If gods optimise too hard into too narrow a direction, their values-differences become more and more important until every god would see every other god as a near-perfect enemy, and since several of them find legibly coordinating with enemies difficult this would produce bad outcomes in everyones opinion.

Some gods, like Gozreh, would prefer the outcome of no gods intervening quite a bit more than they prefer any realistic alternative compromise, and will tend to bid towards less divine action than others would. Others share more values with gods generally, up to comparably higher intervention rates, than they do with mortals acting at mortal competency or with the expected zero-intervention outcome, and would prefer weaker intervention rules.

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One might prefer instead to permit only interventions that most gods like, that optimise the sum of divine values, but doing this would be a first step towards just merging all gods into a perfectly harmonious meta-god that maximises their weighted common interests, and many of the gods prefer less harmony than that, less cooperation than that, that divine actions be made less openly and legibly and fairly and collectively.

The exact language of the Contract of Creation is meant to balance both ordinary values and meta-values, that the result on the material planes is in proportion to what gods want from it, obtained in proportionate accordance with how gods wants to obtain it. This follows from the nature of gods as beings of both means and ends. And if gods want their own weird thing that nobody else would tolerate They can do that on Their own planes.

This implies that, on account of the existence of gods like Asmodeus and Mephistopheles, that the contract will have at least a small amount of loopholes.

Nothing so big it immediately breaks the game, or make loophole-finding the only relevant skillset of a deity, but at least a little wiggle room for those who want it, and if that same wiggle room implies to gods of chaos that power-reversals will always be possible, that the merely lucky might prosper over the strong and that the young might one day defeat the ancient, well such overlaps between the object-interests of one party and the meta-interests of another can still be called gains from trade, and can make seem comparatively worthier such contract-clauses over possible alternative outcomes.

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These facts play out in a few different ways, in defining the rules by which gods can intervene.

Both direct action and direct communication by gods is heavily restriced by a variety of mechanisms, because a god that can either touch the material directly or strongly communicate with someone else who can could boil the seas in a matter of hours and that is more than other gods are willing to risk.

Secondly, action and communication by natives of an outer plane is differently restricted, the natives are not allowed to act directly upon information from a god without the same expenditure, and a strong imposition is made that those in the material must materially compensate for an intervention, to ensure that outsiders can more cheaply interfere where they are most strongly wanted, and not at all in places where none would by paying a high price for it that implies they share the gods goals or value its influence.

The natures and abilities of outsiders can still be optimised by a god within particular limits about the costs of outsider interventions of different capabilities, and their spell-like abilities are almost entirely limitted to cleric abilities. Obviously Tet's not allowed to just make CR 1 outsiders who can cast Prestidigitation, that'd be completely unfair.

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Tet has spent, since coming here, a godly amount of effort optimising how to get stuff He wants out of mortals as cheaply as possible, with the ideal price being free and the even better price being less than free, as interventions are judged by the contract.

But Pharasma's Creation in general, and Golarion more than most, has a problem where mortals assume that every interaction with anything smarter than them, gods especially, is by default a trick in which they're being played for a fool. This rather undermines Tet's preference that people play together, even if sometimes it is in fact a trick. If it's a trick too often, if it's pushed right up against the boundary of never worth it to participate, then all the gains of trade, all the fun of playing together, is forever forfeited to nobodies benefit.

The best strategy that Tet can explain to His outsiders for therapising new petitioners starts with never letting anything have any stakes at all. Games where noone remembers the score, playing that only ends because the sun sets, competition where they never expected to beat anyone to begin with and thus had no emotional stake on the outcome. It works enough of the time that the powers of Elysium often agree that directed souls Disboard's way is a good idea, especially for the souls of Chaotic Good children.

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For the still living though, even acting indirectly through outsiders, Tet has too little time for that. The reputation he'd like is that interacting with His outsiders is a good idea, profitable in expectation strongly enough to overcome the reputation other powers have made for outsiders in general. He would also like to get this reputation for as little actual cost as possible, giving as few boons or material goods or acts of service as is necessary for as much positive emotional valence, as well as demanding as much as He can of the mortals while He does it.

What Tet wants to implement, what would work best given His constraints, is essentially a gacha game, with prizes that only a god can grant and therefore no market price by which to assess its fairness.

Unfortunately, the restrictions on how little trade is possible, and the high levels required to Plane Shift, make visits to Disboard predictibly rare, and so He's better off treating it like a limited holiday-promotion where high-level spellcasters can hope to win prizes that make Calling Disboardian natives seem more valuable the rest of the time, while still gaining them the necessary payments.

On other, richer, higher-magic worlds where more wizards can Call and Bind more outsiders more often, Tet will make the gacha game He wants to make. The part of Disboard exposed to Golarion should be optimised for less contact, more like a vacation resort where you can also win prizes and make friends you can conjure later. He'll have to warm them up to the idea more slowly, not all in one go.

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Tet will shape His outsiders like so:

They will be good enough at understanding complicated agreements that wizards used to devils wont feel unprepared.
They will reliably keep those complicated agreements if you beat them in a game.
They will charge a fee for the opportunity to even attempt to compel a service from them by winning a game.
The game will look a mix of luck and skill, and the price will match the required "fair" price in expectation.
Conjurers who think themselves unusually skilled will imagine they have an advantage over the less clever, and choose Disboardians to save money. The ones who lose will feel embarrassed, and keep quiet. The ones who win will brag about how much cheaper it is.

If the conjurer is intending something the outsider is morally opposed to, they'll just play the game better in a way that makes it look like luck when they win. Such conjurers won't tend to contribute to Disboard's reputation much anyway. The obvious way to do this, in what is otherwise a verifiably sensible game of both chance and skill, is for the Disboardians to cheat.
They'll use the savings from that to go easy on first-timers, to try to build a relationship.

Some of the smarter mortals will realise that for a mortal to beat a native of the domain of the god of Play at any game ever is as ridiculous a notion as for a mortal to outwit a Mephistophelean devil on a technical detail of contract law: Obviously they're just pretending you've outwitted them so that you'll keep coming back.
But it'll still seem like a good deal, like the trick is being played on somebody else, not them, not if they're the kind of person who'll add to their reputation more than trickery here would be worth in savings.

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"Wow, that's a pretty scared face all of you are wearing. I assume you're all assuming I'm up to something?

I just mean that I'd agree to, for example, you pay me only 80 gp and I'll play a game against you and if you Win I'll agree to deliver your forks by Planar Ally in 3 days time, should any of you cast such a spell and request me by name.
Worst case scenario you just lose some gold, not your souls or anything.
And if Pharasma takes your having made such a wager into account at your judgement, I swear I expect it to net count towards Chaotic Good and I'd expect Tet to send someone to argue that point if no one else will.

Since it's all your first time here, I'll even let you pick the game, so long as it's fair in the sense of either being symmetrical or assymetrical but I get to pick which side I'm playing, like if you say Chess I'm going to pick white unless you also say we'll flip a coin to choose."

Compared to the 200 gp she's supposed to ask for, or the 3 days they'll all have to spend here otherwise, they'd have to expect less than a 40% win rate for it to make sense to refuse. They're adventurers, if they had win rates that low they'd be dead by now.

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They're still concerned but it's a small enough amount of money that they can just eat the risk, call it the cost of learning what a new kind of outsider is all about.

They're not going to pick chess. That's obviously the fools move.
There's nine of them. They pick volleyball.

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Then she'll clarify the rules of volleyball, enough to avoid disputes, and how the scoring will work, and she'll ask if anyone wants to join her team, and eight of the nearest thirty locals will sign up.
And they'll play.
And they'll barely eek out a draw.

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What happens on a draw?

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I said "if you win" I'll do a favour. You didn't win.

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They're totally fae, they're getting conned.
But it was close, maybe with better teamwork.

If this is some weird magic that makes them keep agreeing to challenges until they're all broke, can anyone be trusted to pass their will save?

Maybe one more try, they'll suggest a rematch, and Stephanie will accept, and this time they'll win.

It's still a bit cheaper than they would have paid otherwise, these Disboardians are suckers.

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And now they'll tell everyone it was fun and still possible to get an advantage.
These mortals are suckers.

She does need to go back to practicing poker though, with a tournament coming up and everything. Would anyone like to join her for that? If they're willing to bet 200 gp on it, she'll offer them a 5 gp discount on any future Calling fees compared to what she'd charge otherwise.

They're welcome to sight-see all the pretty things, or play any other games that they might be interested in.

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They can stay a few hours, but not 3 days. They've got a country that might get invaded by half the inner sea and Morgethai's got a university to run and people would notice her not being on the plane that long.

Once they've gawked at all the giant chess pieces bigger than whole mountain ranges they'll buy a few local souvenirs and head home to write to everyone they know about it, who they think might want to buy a fork off them so that the whole venture can turn a massive profit.

 


 

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Her agents will get back to her.

The speedboats weren't going back to port ever, they're small enough to lift onto a galley so the privateers have been keeping them at sea going in circles hunting nonstop. They've been using Track Ship to keep tabs on themselves and eachother to maintain a fleet at sea that only ever meets up in anonymous bits of the middle of the ocean.

A spy managed to sneak along with a galley captain helping service them, who thought he was being secretive enough, and they've stolen the whole device and killed its engine-wizard.

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It's not a complicated device to understand if you look at it.
There's two springs with permanent Shrink Item, and the engine-wizard turns them on and off, and it spins a rod like the axle of a cart which turns a wheel shaped like the tailfin of a fish to drive it forward.

They can copy it as many times as they've got diamond dust and 5th circle wizards to spare.

You can't put a huge amount of weight on a speedboat, without needing a larger engine to power it or losing out on the whole speed advantage, so they'll always be small elite naval units.

The admirality are already trying to invent bigger ones, it'll cost more in diamonds but if a whole warship can pull this trick it'll let them conquer the whole world.

Andoran can only pull this trick once.
The Navy of Cheliax won't stay behind for long.

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Can we offer it as a benefit of empire to our vassals?
Can we sell it to Abadarans?
Can I convince every merchant group in the Inner Sea that paying Cheliax to make speedboats to save them all is the only path forward?

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Nope to all of those. We figured about how long it'd take for you to steal one and sold the technology to abadarans yesterday.

On our math, engines will let far more trade go over the seas in total, which is good for us because it's more to steal from.

Cargo ships will be too heavy to move as fast as smaller pirate vessels, and there'll be more pirates than navy to stop them if they can only use small vessels with elite crews, and heavy navy ships will be too slow to be relevant.

If you make bigger engines for bigger boats we'll use surgical strikes to steal them, and then put them on smaller boats and move even faster than that.

We're gonna get rich and there's nothing you can do to stop us.

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Jostlin Ferqyr is making her morning prayers and thinking over the trades she has made in the past few days.
She has purchased, at great personal discomfort, a design for an improvement in maritime engineering from pirates who openly admit that they stole it from other, different pirates, all of whom are already using it to prey on cargo vessels.

It makes boats move substantially faster, and the lighter the boat is the faster it can make it move for the same price. It's very expensive, but if you do the arithmetic it pays for itself within a year at most, assuming it's not stolen or shipwrecked.

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