“—that ancient Mephistophelean tradition: a scam. Hell did not want to pay the intervention cost of having Cheliax as their acknowledged protectorate, so they instead claimed to have bought its soul, an obviously farcical notion which the rest of the world sensibly regarded as nothing more than a lie intended to make the people of Cheliax believe themselves already damned. Now, and only now that the Infernal regime in Cheliax faces a real threat, do they claim that their purchase—for which they paid a fraction of the intervention cost of creating a true protectorate on the Material—amounts to the same thing.”

“Your Honor, this case should never have come to trial. The so-called Contract of the Third Damnation should have been thrown out as soon as any authority with respect for the true spirit of Law got a look at it, because—and this is a fact which has been too little mentioned in arguments today—countries don't have souls. Hell's ability to invent a definition suiting their purposes, and twist precedent into accepting it, does not mean that ‘the soul of Cheliax’ is an actually meaningful phrase, and a meaningless contract is as void as a self-contradictory one. Hell asks what, indeed, they bought. Heaven answers that, if they bought anything at all—if their contract is not totally null and void—they bought a token which they and their puppets might imagine to have meaning, in dealings between themselves; but this court need not imagine so. Certainly they did not buy any sort of right to intervene on the Material Plane; that, at the very least, was never Abrogail Thrune’s to sell.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Shit. Fuck. Damn them to Hell.*

Heaven isn't angling just to get the suit thrown out. They're not even just trying to retroactively overspend Hell's intervention budget. They're trying to get the entire contract thrown out, as the result of a suit brought by Hell.

Which would move them one step closer to destroying the Crown of Infernal Majesty.

(*Unlike the citizens of Infernal Cheliax, devils are perfectly well allowed to think of this as a thing that people might not want to have happen to them.)

“Does the counsel for Hell wish to make any further statement?”

“No, Your Honor.” It’s fairly obvious at this point that he’s going to die a painful death when he gets home; indeed, that that was probably his superior’s entire intent in assigning him this case.

The judgement of the court is as follows:

1. The nation of Cheliax on the Material Plane is a formal protectorate of Hell as that term is defined in the Third Convention on Intervention, -15921 A.R., the establishment of such being the clear intent of both parties to the so-called Contract of the Third Damnation.
2. A state of war exists between Hell and the Order for the Reclamation of Cheliax.
3. The Order was the aggressor in that war.
4. Accordingly, Hell is entitled to make purely defensive interventions, within territory formally and actually controlled by Cheliax as of the beginning of the war, at the reduced rates specified by the Third Convention, according to the rules for the defense of a formal protectorate specified therein.

Wait, did he just…win?

He’s not that familiar with the formal protectorate rules. They aren’t often invoked in Golarion’s star system, because the intervention budget cost scales with the technology differential, and—

Ah.

5. The expanded definition of ‘soul’ given in Hell v. Constantine applies only to sapient beings. The sale of the ‘soul of Cheliax’ was not a valid soul sale and was not properly governed by the rules governing such.
6. Hell acted unlawfully in creating a formal protectorate without paying the lawful intervention cost thereof.
7. Hell is hereby ordered to pay the full accrued cost, plus interest and penalties, at once. It will have the opportunity to appeal the exact amount once that has been calculated.

(That might take a while.)

Well, things are going to suck for Cansellarion, but this might actually be better for their interests overall than the thing they were originally aiming for.

Indeed.