Hell is truth seen too late.
- Thomas Hobbes
...oh, wait, he's got to fire some people today, doesn't he. First thing in the morning, that should probably be, if Maillol has his options-to-offer in.
Keltham prays for his cleric spells, once again requesting a whole lot of Wisdom. There's no personality to the reply he receives, as there hasn't been since coming to the new site, nor any unrequested spells received; but he does receive all his spells and that hopefully indicates that his god is okay at all with whatever barrier has been erected here to keep out non-allied deities.
Tough job and, at least over the next hour or few, Keltham's job won't be a great one either.
What options does Cheliax have for Paxti, Jacme, Pela, and Yaisa?
Over tea and biscuits yesterday afternoon, out in the yard because they're really not getting much sunlight while Keltham is active, Carissa and Maillol worked these out.
The options are:
There is another secret project that can accept second-circle wizards; the girls would have to be screened for suitability, and might not prove suitable, in which case they could pick one of the other options.
They can go to Hell for not longer than five years, shorter if Keltham and Cheliax agree they no longer know any state secrets.
They can go to the afterlife of an allied god, if they'd rather that than Hell and the allied god promises the same secrecy Hell could provide; the cost of this is hard to estimate, but it seems like maybe the kind of thing Cayden Cailean would agree to.
They can remain on site and get a tutor to teach them some useful and valuable magic, and interact socially with the core project girls; this might be healthy anyway, so the girls can have some friends and romantic partners who aren't their collaborators in a high-stakes project.
Keltham undergoes some slight blinks about the 'romantic partners' part - homosexuality is statistically-ambient three-people-you-know-personally in dath ilan, but biromanticism is rarer than that, though still not unheard-of (and of course statistical rarity is meaningless to social acceptability per se).
But yeah, those sound like basically decent options. Keltham will see how the nonretained wizards react. If it seems okay to them, that may be good enough. Otherwise he'll decide where to go from there.
For the onsite option or the other-secret-project option, is there a relevant wage quote he can tell them?
"Either one can be at 20% above the Worldwound wage," Carissa the previous day said to Maillol, "and he'll be happy. And that's low enough we don't have to explain why the girls aren't getting lots of fancy magic items either."
12gp/week minimum in both cases, which is 20% above the Worldwound wage for wizards with their experience. For the secret project that'd be a normal wage, or it might turn out to pay a bit better but not much. For the onsite project it'd be generous. But Cheliax does understand the concept of good incentives to suddenly volunteer on secret projects you might fail out of.
Thank you. Those are better options than Keltham was afraid he'd have for them, and make him feel better about this; he is very glad to know that they won't be financially worse off for having tried to deal with him.
Have them called in, then... should he let them get breakfast first, or... no, because then they'll be around Meritxell and the others having to conceal their knowledge.
Please have them called in here individually once they've prepped spells or are otherwise available to be called, and please have snacks or light breakfast foods available to them when here in case they're hungry.
Time for the worst part of any startup-founding experience, including the part where your project site gets invaded by minions of a torture-god or... actually not as bad as the part where you worry 150,000,000 people are going to die because of you being there, nevermind, that was worse.
Who's in first to get fired?
Pela did her hair somewhat elaborately this morning, on account of waking up early. After extensive discussions with Sevar she concluded that alterPela would ask if this was decided already or if she was allowed to have a counterargument, so she's going to do that.
She didn't sleep much the last couple nights, but Keltham shouldn't be able to notice that.
People's one-week contracts are up. 1/3 of the wizards seem to be doing great at absorbing Law, 1/3 are plausibly on trajectory to form a productive second tier, 1/3 seem to be struggling. Pela's among the final third, and her options include looking for another secret project guaranteed to pay 12gp/week minimum, or 20% higher than Worldwound pay, or taking an onsite option here for 12gp/week and tutelage in some skill and continued interaction with her friends, going to Hell for at most 5 years or until the knowledge she has isn't deemed hazardous, whichever comes first, or her choice of other afterlives if say she likes what Pilar has to say about Elysium and Cayden Cailean is on board. Though Keltham admits to not knowing the details of how that would work exactly.
Sorry.
Keltham should have thought of his response to that question earlier.
"I should have thought of my response to that question before you entered, sorry again that I didn't... you can definitely first-order disagree, how likely you are to shift my first-order opinions by argument is a separate question."
"If you solved six out of seven problems from yesterday on your own before you walked in, and what I thought was the middle third only got five while trying on their own, that would - well, frankly, it would surprise me enough that I'd want further verification with more tests, but it would de-convince me of my current opinion, at least."
- headshake. "I only got two." She could've gotten more if she'd spent more time on it but Sevar said she could only have an hour, because if she could only keep up with Keltham time-stopped that'd have implications for the fabric of truth elsewhere. Sevar's gotten kind of grandiose about the fabric of truth.
"Well, if nobody else from the middle third got any -"
"I probably shouldn't say that, given how unlikely it is, in my estimation. Sorry."
"I am not expecting this question to succeed, but is there some alternate test or challenge that you would propose? Inorganic challenges of that kind are inherently biased, if you're there thinking your job is on the line and the others in the contest think their job is secure. But if you think you can not just match but outperform my median tier-2 researcher in some challenge, to make up for that bias, I'd hear of it."
Pela thought of a dozen clever ideas all of which Sevar told her didn't seem worth it.
"....I don't know. Sorry."
If Pela is feeling disappointed right now, that is at least in part Keltham's fault for having not thought about this possibility, or more accurately, his having not wanted to think about this possibility, and not communicating clearly about that possibility. If Pela holds herself injured by all this, Keltham will hear her out.
" - I mean, this is obviously - like, we were prepared for it to go way worse? I don't think it's unfair. But. I don't talk much in class. It's hard to go back from math to words. And I'd have talked more if -"
"Civilization knows very well that people vary along that dimension. I wasn't going on talkativeness or participation or being the first to speak out, I was going on the problems that everyone was trying in parallel. I don't want to tell you names in advance of telling them, but when you see the complete list of who was over and under the threshold, it should be visible that the threshold wasn't based on how much you talked in class. I hope."