"Is the argument that while, in principle, Absalom's laws are much less restrictive, in practice Absalom is sufficiently underresourced in enforcing its laws, and sufficiently unpredictable in a very weird case, that it's easier to end up exiled unjustly from Absalom than to end up exiled from dath ilani cities? That seems true, though it still seems to me that it's important that Absalom is not the only city that does not have laws about evangelism and bookwriting, and it'd be very hard to end up unjustly exiled from all of them, so the problem somewhat reduces to making travel cheaper."

"You know, now that I think about it, I'm sure on reflection that somewhere in dath ilan there is a city full of people who are just excitedly analyzing all the markets and figuring out all the secret government projects and slapping hands with each other as they figure them out, because the people there want to hear about it, and their access to the markets and so on has some kind of monitored trading condition that prevents info there from leaking out to the rest of Civilization, which doesn't want to hear about it."

"But, like, if they're calling down the gods on the rest of us, then yes, that is a condition under which I'd agree with a secret government project to go in and preemptively cryopreserve them all and hide that fact from the rest of Civilization.  In fact, I think that's a much more important capacity for a society to have, now that I've seen a society where gods are running loose.  Before I would've said that was an unreasonably-improbable-hypothetical."

"Civilization is doing fine without gods."

"As far as you know, not living in one of the places where people know what the government is doing."

"If the government was doing something wrong they'd obviously tell the rest of us and collect the huge bounties we'd pay out retrospectively for their assistance in having done that!  I project with great confidence that this is, like, totally that city's motto, that they're a check on Governance that way."

"You don't even know if they exist! You should not feel sure they're being a successful check on the government!"

"If they don't exist it's because all the people like that decided that any other people advertising themselves as that would be obvious traps and did their own homework instead!  But mostly I'd guess with great confidence there's a city like that because they'll think some people ought to check collectively rather than individually, even given the surety that assuming Dark Governance half of them are Governance plants, and they'll generate a random number and look for a city of fellow - 'conspiracy-theorists', would be the obvious Baseline term to coin - with 80% probability."

"Like, there's some cities you realize will exist as soon as you think about them, and they actually exist, like, 90% of the time, or so."

"To be clear, this is not how the actual checks on Governance work, those are designed by Very Serious People and Cunning Masterminds Having Way Too Much Fun."

"There is a saying out of dath ilan about conversations like these.  It goes, 'Some conversations have no natural endpoint, and so you can only decide to say, "It is complete because it ended here."'"

"Oh, I was assuming at some point my son would send in his guards to drag me off you, but that works too."  His Baseline is more or less fluent, at this point. "A pleasure meeting you, Keltham of dath ilan. I hope dath ilan is not secretly Evil, and also I hope we grow up to surpass them."

"No, we should hope they were secretly Evil.  'Bad news about the past is good news about the future.'  If you learn that some hidden problem obtained about the otherwise observationally fixed past, that's good news because the past's quality level is not thereby changed so you can fix that problem and get a better future than previously expected.  If dath ilan was secretly Evil, surpassing that quality of living standard in Golarion will be much easier, because dath ilan had that standard of living despite being handicapped by being Evil."

"Your Baseline is functionally perfect in syntax and pronunciation, it's just missing vocabulary size, non-rule-controlled intonation, common phrasings and proverbs, and, if you genuinely wanted to be able to pass as indistinguishably native, making the sort of technical arguments that dath ilani would make.  Vocabulary you can get off Tongues or from Share Language (Baseline) that I tap somebody with, common phrasings have to come from me and I don't have them mentally stored in a format that lets me rattle off a complete list, perfect intonation is going to require at least listening to me talking for long periods and possibly continued active correction, and argument form is full-blown being as 'Lawful' as we were.  How do you want to play this?"

"I'll pay for your time at today's prices if you think of more things you want to teach me, or argue about, up to a total of 40,000gp, which is all of my money."

"You seem kind of noticeably intelligent compared to most people I've met in Golarion and for that matter me.  Counterproposal, what if you followed me around while I was teaching things and tapped people with Communal Share Language (Baseline), so I could teach in Baseline, which would converge towards you being able to share the whole language, because every time I said something in Baseline not covered by your version, you or other people would query it and then you'd also know that part?"

"I would be delighted."

"Am I correct that you're the sort of person where, if I asked whether we're friends yet, and the answer was no, you'd just tell me no and not feel particularly uncomfortable about it either?"

"There's only any other sort of person because most people are not very smart."

"Right, so, I'm pretty massively traumatized by the Chelish gaslighting operation and rather a large part of me does not think that anything on this next layer of reality is real.  It seems to me like inside that layer of reality we are forming something like a friendship, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to let myself feel that, because my brain is constantly firing warnings of the form 'Hey if you start liking this guy he's also going to turn out to not be real, and then that will hurt when you inevitably find out that this layer of reality was also a lie and you have to leave it.'"

"Wanna try forming a friendship under those somewhat adverse conditions?"

"That doesn't bother me. The more significant barrier is that I don't have a confident read on whether I respect you intellectually yet. I really enjoy talking to you, and you frequently surprise me in intelligent and interesting ways, but I don't know how much of that is you knowing lots of things I don't know and how much is going to persist once I understand the world you're from. I'm also slightly worried you're going to declare war on Hell or something and it'll be politically complicated for me to participate in the war on Hell in light of how my son is an aspect of Abadar, who I bet is constrained in going to war with Hell though it's actually possible He's just patiently waiting for us to make Him an offer."

"...good point.  I am probably going to be all kinds of theologically and politically complicated, yes.  And thank you for appreciating the point where I am just a punk kid waving around a lot of knowledge developed by a Civilization greater than myself."

"I'm not going to expect you to participate in the destruction of Asmodeus if there's prior political constraints about that, it's not a requirement of friendship with me.  Frankly I mostly expect, at this point in the development of the story, that I end up having to do it alone, in the end, because if not then it's weird about the story development that ripped away all of my previous friends, and I can read the foreshadowing in the Good gods talking about decision theory being complicated."

"See you around, Fe-Anar, I've hopefully tired myself out to the point where I can eat something and then sleep again.  Perhaps we'll end up as friends eventually."

"Oh, I absolutely plan to participate in the destruction of Asmodeus! I wouldn't miss it! I just expect there to be a bunch of annoying intermediate steps. Also, I've decided I do like you, on the strength of your having concluded you're going to have to defeat Asmodeus on your own, even though I think you're wrong about that.

See you around, Keltham."

Day 91 / Egorian

When Abrogail Thrune turned 16, shortly after she became a second-circle sorcerer, she looked at the Chelish Empire, which she intended to rule someday, falling around about herself; the provinces of Andoran and Galt, that should have been hers, already lost by her incompetent uncle.

Abrogail knew that as a second-circle sorcerer she could not take the Crown of Infernal Majesty from Infrexus.  Even executing a compact with Asmodeus would give her two more circles at best.  Infrexus had held five sorcery circles in his late forties, won of the Worldwound and a few years' adventuring, when he executed his own compact and took the throne.

So Abrogail went to Hell, living.

She compacted with Hell to set devils to fight her, and heal her when she fell, and put her to sleep when she had no magic left and needed to regain it; and punish her for failing, for losing, to make sure that when she fought she did so desperately and in that state of stress that is conducive to absorbing magic.

She wanted to make it to seventh-circle, so she could be ninth-circle after executing her infernal contract.

Abrogail tried.  She tried really really hard.

But when even her will broke, Abrogail was only sixth-circle still, and so is only eighth-circle now.

It's a very efficient way of leveling.  If you ask why not everybody does it, it's because that would shatter almost any mortal's mind like glass.  The Thrunes have a touch of Hell in their bloodline, from which their sorcery comes, but even among them, the reason why only Abrogail did that is that only Abrogail could.

Carissa Sevar, probably, is not going to be fully functional until she has a +6 intelligence headband.  There are not any of those going spare even when you are Abrogail Thrune.  They have owners, from whom a headband like that cannot be taken without killing them.

So Carissa Sevar has now been tasked to make herself a +6 intelligence headband.

With a slimy devil wrapped around her, not at all like a lover's caress, a devil summoned and bound by Abrogail Thrune.

The devil is of a kind that Hell sometimes tasks to forge magical items.  It cannot advise mortals on how to craft.  The devil is not forbidden however to monitor them in their crafting, assess their general level of performance, or apply motivation.

Carissa Sevar is being hurt, quite badly, at the end of any thirty-minute period in which she has not exceeded her previous best performance in crafting.  Any time she escapes punishment, of course, that sets the bar higher for next time.

When Carissa's magic fails her, she is put to sleep; when woken, set back immediately to work.  Her Ring of Sustenance means she needs no food, no water, no other surcease.

It would shatter most mortals like glass, but then, Carissa Sevar is not most mortals.

It will hopefully prevent Carissa from thinking and feeling for a time.

It will hopefully be punishment enough that Carissa stops feeling unpunished.

Failing that, Abrogail is curious about whether Carissa can be brought to her fifth or sixth circle this way before even her will breaks.

It would have been entirely reasonable, when the project Carissa has been heretically running for the last three months exploded due to Carissa's inadequacies, for Abrogail to have her sent to Hell, to have her mortal frailties scraped away for as many thousands of years as it required. Abrogail is not more merciful than that; wanting more mercy than that would be unAsmodean, and offering it would be very unAsmodean. 

Carissa is grateful, for whatever not-merciful impulse has her here, instead. Her mortal mind, which is very stupid and pathetic, does not fully comprehend how much worse it could be, but that is an error, the kind of error she can actually feel herself growing out of when she has time to work on being more ilani. 

She is also grateful that there is no opportunity for her to think, or feel, or grieve. In the absence of space to process it, the part of her brain that believes that Keltham loves her and won't let anyone hurt her has taken up residence in the back of her head, where it occasionally whimpers sadly, like a kicked puppy. She has mostly successfully pushed his blank, lost, bewildered face out of her memory. It is over; it never was; it was always pretend. Maybe someday it will be real, but if it is, it will be real the way Hell is real, the way pain is real, the way nothing else is really real.

She's making fast progress on the headband. She would not say that this is because she is in peak form. She keeps having auditory hallucinations, usually of Abrogail, sometimes of her mother, sometimes just of people screaming. Abrogail says that she is not good enough to become half the things she wants to be. Her mother says that she should've worked harder on baby Carissa, that maybe she could've turned out better. The screaming people don't really have anything to say. She thinks she's not constantly screaming, her voice would give out, so probably that's a hallucination. She's developed a habit of hurting herself to focus; it's barely even pain, next to the punishments after each section, but it helps. it makes the world a little more stable, a little clearer. She wishes, sometimes, that Keltham had never come to Golarion, that she'd never left the Worldwound, though this is a stupid thing to wish because these weaknesses were still a part of her and would still have to be burned out of her, and it could, in fact, hurt more than this.

She does not wish to be turned into a statue, not even briefly. She is pretty sure she won't even if, when she finishes the headband, they give her another one. She is pretty sure she won't even if there is nothing else for the rest of time. 

She's only pretty sure, though. 

No. 

She's entirely sure.

This is the road to everything she wants, everything she's ever wanted; she is not so weak that, with that road laid out in front of her, she will fall apart rather than walk it, just because it hurts. If she wants to change things, she will have to be stronger than anyone has ever been; this is the way to get there. Abrogail will have set her a task that makes stronger those Carissae who could ever, possibly, be strong enough to get anything they want. Abrogail has never made her weaker; Abrogail is not, at what must be unimaginable expense, setting her to this path so that she'll discover her weakness and collapse of it. Abrogail is doing this so that she will grow strong.

...it's not actually an unimaginable expense?  Binding a devil to do this is straightforward, it's just that, for most people you'd want to temper, they'd be too weak to benefit from a devil's help.  But if imagining that she's worth a great expense helps Carissa, Abrogail hardly finds it in her own interest to correct the misapprehension.

...Though, actually, having the Queen of Cheliax take ten minutes of her own time to bind a devil for you is probably 'unimaginable expense' by most people's standards.

Anyways Carissa seems to be doing fine.  Abrogail will turn visible so she can whisper in Carissa's ear that she's being a good girl and Abrogail is proud of her, and then head back on out.

Shouldn't be more than a week or two on the +6 headband, it looks like.  Though, at the rate Carissa is burning through this task, she might need to be given another crafting job afterwards to see if she can be brought to fifth circle.

Day 92 / Osirion