Well, they'll see how this goes.

Carissa isn't trying to invent her own list. It feels much easier, somehow, to answer the question 'how do I keep these girls loyal when they're having heretical thoughts' than to answer the question 'what things do I believe that aren't actually true'. Since then, you know, she'd stop believing them, and if she stops believing them then the project fails and everyone dies, so, perhaps she'll invent dath ilanis without being one herself. Fine. 

"Do you think I should go to Hell?" Jacme asks Asmodia, when the latter appears to not be doing anything.

"...why would you ask me that question.  Everyone should go to Hell and serve Lord Asmodeus."

She needs the crown back.  Is there really not any way for her to become the next Most High?

"Yes, but I mean, now. As opposed to in a hundred years."

She looks up before she can stop herself, though she does keep any surprise off her face, at the mention of the hundred years.  It's a round number you might pick at random, but -

"One hundred years specifically?  Why did you pick that number?"

" - because I might live that long? If I get to fourth circle and get age resistance?"

"Then why would you want to go to Hell now instead, if you could continue to serve Lord Asmodeus in Golarion and still be received by Him later?"

...it's actually easier to say this sort of thing and sound terribly sincere, for some weird reason, now that she absolutely doesn't believe it at all.

"....right. Of course." She looks confused but that's not the kind of statement you're allowed to argue with.

"It might help if you explained why you were asking me that."  She has a suspicion, but not a certainty, and she would have formed the suspicion faster if her mind was not filled with thoughts of how slow and dead her mind feels now.  Losing +4 to Intelligence is 30% like dying; losing +4 to Intelligence, +6 to Wisdom, and +4 to Splendour, by extrapolation, is 105% like dying.

"Well, we were told to choose, and told it was - a real choice, though probably we'd want to stay, and we could ask you if we were considering Hell. So I was wondering if. It's - I mean, we're Project Lawful, right, we're different..."

"Told by who.  Just to be sure."

Asmodia is not actually stupid, she just feels incredibly stupid, and her thoughts are moving now.

"Sevar."

Does Sevar - not believe, any more, that Asmodia was given a secret to keep by Hell itself?  What the Abyss is Sevar thinking?  Asmodia should, perhaps, have just showed Sevar Gorthoklek's message - has she screwed up, has she failed her unknown Patron -

And then Asmodia's thoughts move faster, and calmer.

She is not what she was, but she remembers.

Asmodia did figure out, she is not stupid now, let alone then, she did figure out that Aspexia Rugatonn's question might be about how Asmodeus sees a mortal worshipper.  And then Asmodia didn't mention that part at all, because she'd been clearly instructed not to think about the why and just solve the question itself.

The tropes, if they are real, are not mostly-blind like Asmodeus.  The tropes can see precisely and navigate precise futures.

Then Asmodia can perhaps reason that what is happening now, was intended to happen.  And if the tropes see not perfectly, but still far better than Asmodeus, Asmodia can reason about ideas like keeping to more predictable paths, and the tropes will know what she thought about it, if she thought a sufficiently predictable thing... but Asmodia would have to think more on this new form of the Most High's question, before she dared anything like that, preferably think with more Cunning and Wisdom.

"Give me a quiet minute to think," Asmodia says.  Maybe it's already too much of a giveaway, saying that.  But Sevar clearly considers the away already given, and Asmodia does not get to dispute that, for she has already lost that game.

But suppose nonetheless that Asmodia has not failed her Patrons yet, by events coming to this point.  What then do her Patrons desire of her?  Asmodia cannot guess, and she has been given no instructions at all.

Look inside herself?  Act on impulse?  Would that help her Patrons, would that help the tropes, is she easier to steer if she acts on predictable impulses and lets herself be subject to frequent correction, rather than trying to hold fast to a course where she does as little as possible?  Asmodia needs the crown back, and longer than fifteen minutes to think.

She has not been given instructions.  Perhaps that is because she can deduce the goal and because her own thought can prove adequate to reach it.

The meddling gods - who might be below real tropes, or above fake tropes, or both at once - do seem to want Project Lawful to succeed, or keep going at least for now.  They could have let Nidal smash it, or a sword take Keltham, they did not.

Then -

"All right, look, Sevar should not actually have told you that, given what she believes, but what happened to me in Hell did suggest that Project Lawful girls might get special treatment.  Might.  It might have just been something they did for me because I was the first Project Lawful girl they actually got to see.  They grabbed me away from the standard bad painful situation my contract devil put me in, stuff happened I'm not talking about, but at the end I was put somewhere I'd end up in good shape when I got back, which I don't think is at all usual."

"I don't know if that works for you if you're not staying on the Project, I would not advise dying just to test it, I'm not sure that Hell would be amused," or her Patron, for Erecura did say that the price that had been paid was very high.  "But if what you're looking for is a tiny shred of hope that Sevar is right about anything, fine, yeah, that happened."

"I wouldn't rely on it, so my advice is for you to stay on Golarion for those hundred years, if you can.  If Hell is even better for Project Lawful girls than for everyone else, you can always go there later."

Chelish people don't say 'thank you', Jacme nods, silently, and flees.

Nefreti Clepati does not prostrate herself before the pharaoh of Osirion. Nefreti Clepati casts a very powerful illusion of herself gracefully prostrating herself before the pharaoh, and stands at the illusion's feet, smiling cheerfully at the pharaoh, who is a powerful enough cleric in his own right to see through it. But his guards aren't, and anyone who might carry away rumors is not, and it's not, actually, a fight the pharaoh of Osirion can afford to pick with Nefreti Clepati. He needs her more than she needs him, and they both know it. 

"Rise," says the pharaoh of Osirion, and there are very few people on Golarion who would detect even the slightest trace of irritation in his voice. The illusion of Nefreti Clepati folds itself back into the real Nefreti Clepati. 

"The answer is no, regrettably," she tells him. 

"We, ah, haven't yet made the request."

"Don't do that to an old woman, boy, you know I can't keep that kind of thing straight."

"We need a scry done by someone powerful enough to overcome Aspexia Rugatonn's caster level. There aren't too many people that powerful in the Inner Sea. Do you want.... the contents of the buried pyramid of the Pharaohs of Ascension? We have a lead on where it is. Some spell diagramming notes dated to Nex? Azlanti ioun stones?"

"Is that everything, then, boy? We are both of us very busy."

" - Cheliax has a powerful magic user from another world and they think whatever they're doing with him is incredibly valuable to Hell."

"I know."

"Is this about - worry about being constrained in receiving context from Nethys, that's been a concern or us, but this plan was conceived of and made by my foreign affairs team without input from Abadar either in my person or otherwise, and we're not intervening, we're just looking, in order to adjust our probabilities on war with Cheliax in the next ten years. Priestess, you don't want to see Sothis fall. And the pay is very nearly anything that I have and that you want."