Part of the reason why Cayden Cailean is trusting Nethys is that Nethys has not simply asked Him to take things on faith, but built an agreement that is in part conditioned on watching how things play out.  A foolish waste of time if Cayden Cailean knew Nethys as well as Nethys knew Cayden Cailean, but that, of course, is impossible with Nethys.

It was Cayden Cailean's estimate, at the end of all Nethys showed Him, that there was, indeed, no better way to let this play out than to let Iomedae expend some of Her budget on proving to Herself - and anyone else watching - how certain things play out.

And if Iomedae - or certain other gods - were the sort to immediately believe Nethys about what was shown, or to believe Cayden Cailean if He reported being persuaded of a thing by Nethys, why then, Cayden Cailean really wouldn't be able to believe Nethys, given Nethys's incentives.  If Nethys's claims had the power to immediately persuade any god without further demonstrations of facts, and not just to partially persuade Cayden Cailean, well then, maybe Nethys would just say whatever was to His own advantage, after all.

Nethys already might be doing that, Cayden. Not lying, exactly, but promoting to our attention, of all the worlds He sees, the ones that suit Him best, and telling us they are the best ones He could find.

We'll see.

(Thought not sent to Iomedae.)

Nethys could, but would Nethys do that, is the question.

Nethys once was human, and never really had the chance to pull all of Himself together and properly finish turning into a god.  Nethys, when he was human, probably had friends, and probably ever went out drinking with them of a night.  Maybe one of those friends was like Cayden Cailean, maybe not, only Nethys knows now, and given the incentives it doesn't do much good to ask.  It's still a probabilistic factor that slightly affects how much Cayden Cailean thinks Nethys is likely to present Him with a godly, inhuman, calculated betrayal.

There's an old saying that Lawful Evil has alliances, Chaotic Good has friendships, Lawful Good has both, and the Abyss has neither.

With prophecy shattered, and gods who can't fully see one another, maybe in the end it all comes down to this:

That Iomedae is not someone who could ever have been friends with Nethys, as mortal or god.

...or more likely not.  Even Cayden Cailean knows that, whether He likes it or not.  He is a god now, and unavoidably knows the quantitative degree to which camaraderie matters.  They are all gods here, and if this is how it turns out for them in this world, it would probably have turned out much the same in a world where Nethys and Iomedae had been friends.  All the logic would have been the same.

PL-timestamp:     Day 5 / Start
PL-placestamp:   Coast near Ostenso / as-yet unnamed fortress

Carissa wakes up and immediately checks if there are any notes around or Security around or indications that something awful happened while she was asleep. 

Nope!  If anything's already going horribly wrong today, Carissa doesn't have any information about that at all.

She gets up. Fixes her hair, because she expects that looking like a mess isn't going to help her in front of the High Priestess. Dresses nicely, for the same reason.

And then heads over there to get the bad news. If there's bad news. There's always bad news.

Mostly, Jacint is not meant to be in charge of anything here except Carissa Sevar.  But yes, she's also, temporarily, the commanding officer overnight, if one is required, while Maillol and Sevar wait for their Rings of Sustenance to start working.

How does Carissa Sevar look this morning, to Jacint's very experienced eye?

She hasn't seen Carissa before the date with Abrogail, so it's impossible to judge exactly what's normal for her, but she's not obviously and conspicuously damaged, just a bit slow and hesitant and probably much easier than usual to scare or disconcert, and also coming down from a minor panic attack about the experience of waking up, which hasn't been a good one lately. 

"High Priestess. I'm here seeking instruction, specifically on whether I can resume command and more generally on whatever I ought to know."

"A day matters little to a project and much to a recently broken slave putting herself back together... is what I would usually say.  Now that I've been acquainted with the true records of Project Lawful I am amazed at how much seems to happen in a day.  It is like some god is meddling with you, not so much to any visible purpose, but simply causing everything to happen as fast as possible."

"Under ordinary circumstances I would advise you to leave Maillol as executive through the day, unless you have urgent project directives to issue, but it would not terribly surprise me if you did."

"Do you want a summary update on yesterday's and last night's news, before you decide?  There are no disasters in it."

No disasters is good. ...somehow it feels hard to believe any news is good. " - yes, please."

"Yesterday and last night, Pilar Pineda rooted out from Egorian a number of Lastwall's spies, including indirect ones whose countries were themselves being spied on by Lastwall.  Apparently Pilar is able to convince herself that spying on us is dangerous unpleasant work, and that somebody can justly be congratulated on it being over and going home unharmed, and that this warrants a surprise party for them."

"Plausibly Pilar may have gotten all of the spies providing Lastwall with direct or indirect access to our operations.  For so long as it appears so, the Queen has signed a compact requiring her not to engage in any unusually nefarious plots, for certain terms and definitions thereof. Pilar's curse insisted."

"This has raised the profile of Project Lawful even further, but in a way that, it is hoped, will almost entirely misdirect attention away from this fortress and Keltham.  The highest-profile such event, a grand party in the main palace ballroom, had Pilar disguised as Meritxell.  On current plans, impersonators for Pilar, Meritxell, yourself, and occasional others, will continue to appear at the Imperial palace, in order to make it appear that the dreaded Project Lawful girls continue to operate from there, and Pilar will conduct weekly sweeps."

...wow, okay, actual good news. "...I really hope Cailean's just an idiot and we're not being outmaneuvered. But - excellent."

"We mortals are almost certainly being maneuvered like the little toy dolls we are, to the gods.  The question is whether Asmodeus is being outmaneuvered and I would normally bet on our Lord to take Cayden Cailean in a battle of wits.  Even so - we should remain alert for signs that such is not the case."

It is an accurate correction, of course. Carissa bows her head.

"Do you have new project directives already in your thoughts, Chosen of Asmodeus?"

"Keltham might want Meritxell and I want to figure out how best to give her to him. On a larger scale, no. I have - some thoughts about the overall aim and structure of the project - but if your advice is that those should wait, they can."

"Only you can guess whether it can wait, Chosen, with those thoughts unspoken.  I would say that it only should wait, if it also can, and also if to think or speak of these thoughts places strains upon parts of yourself.  You look less fragile this morning than last night."

"...I'll explain it until that starts to seem unpleasant, then. The project cannot endure in its current form forever. Eventually Keltham will find us out. He is too powerful for us to immerse him in a lie forever. It seems damaging to the project, for it either to be doomed to failure or to define success so narrowly as to be satisfied if he leaves in four months furious with us all. One backup plan is for me to go with him; I do want to position myself for that insofar as I can. 

The other is to corrupt him. 

That feels important. Instead of one project, with a time limit we don't know, we have two projects moving in parallel - the project in which Keltham comes to understand Golarion, and the project in which he comes to be corrupted by it. We've just got to make sure the corruption stays out in front - that he never learns anything too Evil for where he's at at that moment. Already he can learn things he couldn't have the first day, I think."

"I've looked over some transcripts of your interactions with Keltham, and join my opinion to that of an experienced honeypot specializing in Lawful Good targets, and also that of our Queen, that we all have absolutely no idea why anything you are doing is working as well as it does.  If you think there's a chance we can stay ahead of Keltham, there is literally nobody on Golarion positioned to contradict you."

"I want to fix that at some point, it doesn't seem like it ought to be incomprehensible to others and if we're going to try giving him Meritxell she at least is going to need to learn. But not today, I think, unless you have nice narrow concrete questions."

"If the Meritxell matter is something that might happen today, then it is today's task to figure out how to - I would not say, give her to him, Meritxell was already given when Keltham first laid eyes on her, the question is convincing him to take."

It's funny, because four days ago Carissa absolutely knew that she had quite possibly become Keltham's property by catching his attention, but somewhere in the ensuing days of trying to convince Keltham that she could be if he wants, she let that slip out of salience, and now it sends a shiver down her spine. She doesn't hide that; the whole point of being here is correction. "I'm going to try to convince him that you can actually acquire the overwhelming majority of girls as your possession and have this be good for them, if you play it right and have the power to have it be real. Meritxell, ideally, shouldn't have to do anything more than prove me right."

"If your plan benefits from her training or retraining, that is among the ways in which I am resource to you, Chosen.  I cannot match our Queen for deftness and most slaves do not have your potential to be brought out, but there are still some things I can do."