She's telling her two stories, each unbelievable in its own way. It's a work of art, really, and it's meant to taunt Abrogail by saying: we know what you can do, and we can feed you separate bullshit in Hazel's words and in her body language, and probably more in her thoughts if Abrogail had a way to undetectably cast Detect Thoughts. (She didn't do so before Hazel arrived, because anyone worth dealing with has arcane sight or the equivalent, and she did not wish to present herself as a threat.)

The claim that they kept her statued for weeks and the threat that they can do so again doesn't escape her attention, either. 

"I have not memorized the layout of Dis. It keeps changing, so this is a mostly futile exercise. That's why everyone uses maps."

Casting many thousands of Wishes per second is easy: have your army of archmages use time stop inside a time-dilated plane. Casting many thousands of Wishes at all is the hard part (see: army of archmages, lack of). An alliance of the Good gods could probably do it, but it wouldn't let them win a fight with Asmodeus: she knows this because they have not, in fact, used thousands of Wishes to save everyone from Hell. (Not that Hell has anything like mere thousands of damned souls to save, anyway.)

They cast Wishes using their "local technology"? A novel way of using magic, perhaps, like rituals? If a ritual let many lower-circle wizards together cast a Wish, that would be a ground-shaking discovery. So she's implying they had lower-circle mages cast many thousand of Wishes or found another way around the natural scarcity of archmages, with the Good gods presumably providing the diamonds, and that was enough to change the balance of power and get many (obviously not all) souls out of Avernus.

That's at least a coherent story. And it purports to explain her observations: her pit fiend went to fight in Hell; her people were kidnapped, but she was spared because she wears an artifact crown. It doesn't make any of it at all plausible, but at least it's not pure nonsense like the obviously human Hazel being from "outside Creation". 

Of course, that leaves more nonsense, like the release of Rovagug - the letter didn't say what happened to Him, she's sure Hazel has a ready answer that will be just as preposterous as all the rest - and the destruction and recreation of Golarion and the kidnapping of everyone there. 

But she's willing to believe there was some sort of an assault on Avernus, she saw that much herself, and the Good gods are the obvious benefactors and therefore the obvious culprits. In Gorthoklek's (and Aspexia's?) absence, and perhaps with a tip-off from those same Good gods, one of her enemies seized the opportunity to attack her; she was waiting for Morgethai or Lastwall to make a play during the... disruption after she came to power, and it never came but perhaps they were just biding their chance. The attack on her palace clearly wasn't targeting individuals, but a Miracle or two might have killed or captured everyone there. Her artifact crown protected her, but she was captured - by the Good gods or their allies - in Avernus, and never made it to Dis.

Aspexia would not be that much easier to dispose of than Abrogail, but then she never verified Aspexia was gone; perhaps she, too, plane shifted to Avernus and was captured or killed there. The people who captured her are the ones who attacked Avernus, and are not the ones who attacked her palace, and so have leeway to pretend they don't even know who she is. They have unknown motivations, and perhaps novel abilities; but they're not her enemies in the simple way Lastwall or Andoran are, or they would have killed her, or at the very least tried to take her crown. (It cannot be removed save by the wearer's will; but where there's a will, there's a way, as the saying goes, and as Infrexus found out.)

...This still has too many holes. Asmodeus would not send Gorthoklek to fight in Avernus, instead of His other pit fiends, because Gorthoklek's absence creates exactly this sort of vulnerability. An army attacking Avernus would not bother to kidnap her (with a Wish?) if they didn't know who she was, and if they did know it would be simpler to kill her and take her body and her crown. And why the other lies and absurdities in that letter?

She thinks she can scare Abrogail, but hasn't yet? If Abrogail thought everything in that letter was actually true, she'd be scared out of her mind. But she doesn't need to believe any of that, to know that she's been captured by an unfamiliar power, and that people who could orchestrate a credible attack on Avernus are certainly powerful enough to threaten her even if they can't, really, threaten Asmodeus. And if she's been a statue for weeks, her status back home would be shaky even if the rest of her people hadn't just been disappeared.

Telling her "but we haven't gotten to the scary part yet" is an amateur's threat, and normally she would ignore that, but here it only serves to underline the rest.

However, Abrogail has excellent mental fortitude, and is not pathetic enough to succumb to unproductive fear.

Hazel's dress has moving embroidery? What about it? Abrogail owns much better-enchanted dresses herself, although sadly she isn't dressed to impress right now - wait, are they mocking her state of undress hurried-partial-dress? She will patiently bide her time and then she will show them all -

No, not like that -

Ahem. She is grudgingly impressed at how good they are at getting under her skin.

(Four weeks are not, really, long enough to become perfectly accustomed to the extra attention and brilliance and self-reflection that a 6/6/6 crown grants, when you're a young woman fresh out of Hell and riding the high of finally being Queen.)

She's offering her a free Wish? There are wish-granting beings (besides the obvious ones) who gain power over you if you give them your permission. That said, out of everyone who can cast Wish, the vast majority will do whatever they want to you regardless of your permission. And it's not as if Abrogail has the Spellcraft to recognize a Wish for certain when she sees one, anyway, or an easy way to test a Wish-grade diamond for that matter.

But there is one Wish wording she has memorized from childhood, long before she went to Hell to earn her circles, and while she didn't reach ninth then she has every intention of doing it one day and casting this Wish for herself.

"You may cast this Wish wording on me, up to five times in a row" - this conversation isn't keeping itself to the plausible anyway -

And she recites the wording that makes a person more Splendid, more strongly themselves, more real, so real that even the universe is forced to acknowledge it.

"Do you prefer that I do it once or five times?" she asks. She has no hesitation around offering Abrogail something that will make her more powerful and give her an even bigger advantage in this conversation -- her hesitation is totally around ensuring that she does what Abrogail thinks is best for Abrogail. She is wary of using magic for mental enhancements herself, and doesn't want to hurt Abrogail by changing her more than she wants to be changed. She doesn't register five wishes as being any more costly than one wish.

"I prefer that you do it five times."

Hazel's eyes flick to something unseen, and she waves her hand in a totally unnecessary dramatic gesture which does not match the somatic component of Wish. Five diamonds appear in front of her and then crumble away to nothing. She repeats the wish wording aloud, five times, although she does not appear to think this is necessary. She is just saying it so that Abrogail will feel reassured that the wishes have happened in accordance with her request.

And then Abrogail is even more Splendid.

You cannot mistake your own Splendor, not when it powers your magic and speech and your perception of other people and forms the very core of who you are. Abrogail has enough Wisdom, and enough experience putting on headbands, to tell when her Splendor outstrips a succubus.

There are enchantments that, if cast by a powerful enough mage, could make her believe almost anything.

Her crown protects her against such spells. But if she was statued, they could have removed her crown and then enchanted her to believe she was still wearing it. 

She knows that way lies madness. This is a lesson one must learn before entering Asmodean high society: it is natural to doubt everything and distrust everyone. But if you are always in doubt, if you disbelieve even your own senses, then you cannot accomplish anything. If they control her mind and senses outright, then she has already lost.

(If they control her mind, and desire something of her beyond mere entertainment, then she has not lost yet. But if she cannot trust her own innate sense of Splendor - if she is without her crown, say, and had her Wisdom cursed - that possibility is better dismissed, to focus on all the rest.)

She won't get more spells until tomorrow, and she can't check if her spells are harder to resist now, but - she's not really in any doubt.

There is one thing her newfound Splendor is immediately good for, and that is concealing her reaction.

Think think think think think.

They are stronger than her. They are holding her prisoner. She does not know what they want of her, they have not said. They have not asked for anything, they are pretending (?) to help her without even knowing who she is because they are Good, and spending five Wishes as a gesture of good will is apparently what Good ambassadors do for queens when they have cheap Wishes.

Maybe she should ask for twenty-five more Wishes? ...no, they might make her more powerful but surely they wouldn't casually make her smarter. She doesn't want to over-step and ask for something they would refuse.

If she only knew what they wanted, perhaps she could see a way forward. 

Well, she's pretending (?) to be cooperating with Hazel in good faith, and while course Hazel's wishes are not those of the people who control her -

"This is incredible!" she exclaims. "I'm sure no-one would spend five Wishes just to convince me of something, if Wishes were not truly cheap for them," because they would have much cheaper ways to convince her, starting with one Wish and going down from there. 

"Being powerful doesn't prove all your claims, but it proves you could credibly attempt to do what you say you've done." Being powerful proves they are allowed to make whatever claims they want and have her pretend (?) to believe them. "And that's all I can reasonably ask for. My next question, then, must be - what would you have of us, of me and of all Golarion, that you have not already taken yourself?"

Hazel smiles at her. She has noticed how attractive Abrogail is, and is trying to ignore that out of a sense of professionalism. She is rounding Abrogail's response to 'mostly believing the story as presented'. It has not particularly occurred to her that Abrogail would be motivated to pretend to believe her story if she did not actually believe it.

"Mostly, we just want people to have pleasant, fulfilling lives," she responds. This is partially true. She does want everyone to have good lives, but she has convinced herself that she should want this more, and is at least somewhat suppressing her more selfish desires. That said, her basic desires for things like safety, community, the esteem of her peers, etc., are all well fulfilled. 

"I do have some questions I'd like to ask you, about how our alliance should relate to the country that you rule," she continues. She doesn't know what country Abrogail rules. She doesn't know how much power Abrogail has to make decisions about things like treaties and alliances. She wants to convince Abrogail to accept a few specific policies, but is unwilling to lie or compromise her principles to do so, and will not consider it a major personal failure if she doesn't.

"We are looking at hiring people to help with several major projects. We have a lot of work planned around figuring out how magic works, helping people adjust to their new circumstances, and preparing for contact with the next world." Magic is new to her. She does not fully trust or understand it. She thinks that they can probably do a lot better than the magic they have so far. She is expecting contact with new worlds to come relatively quickly, but she doesn't know exactly when.

"For you in particular, I expect you'll probably have your hands full for some time handling the transition for your country," she concludes. She means 'expect' as in predict, not as in giving a veiled order. She expects Abrogail's country to undergo radical changes, but doesn't know exactly what that will entail. She is excited about the future.

They are daring her to seduce Hazel (in both senses)?

Another time she would enjoy doing this. Not so much when she has no idea who she's playing against or what the consequences of winning might be.  Playing an unknown game against unknown opponents with no pieces but herself isn't really feasible. (Is it?) She doesn't even know if they're Lawful!

She wants to just state the truth and get it over with that would be giving up pathetically. But she can't think of anything that would actually do better than that, instead of merely stall for time. She is concluding she can't learn anything from Hazel because she was selected too well, or is being puppeteered too well, to infer anything about her masters.

What does Abrogail actually know?

They have great power. It is very cheap for them to grant her five Wishes on a whim. Alternatively, they have managed to remove her crown and enchanted her into seeing what is not.

They bothered to capture her, claim to have statued her for weeks, sent her an ambassador. This is an expense of resources. You don't burn resources on things you don't care about, even if they're very cheap. And you don't empower people and set them free without caring what they will do with their newfound power, because they will affect the world one way or the other and you might not like what they do.

They know who she is, even if they didn't when they captured her. Her crown is unmistakable.

So either they really are some kind of Good, or they are Evil and this is the buildup to an involved torture setup. (There are other hypotheses; they might want to learn about her from the choice she makes here, or they might want to let her choose her own ironic damnation; but she cannot identify which of them are plausible, let alone likely, so she cannot optimize her actions in those cases.)

If they are Good, they might be the kind who will torture her for being their enemy, but not nearly as much or as ably as Evil would.

She can try to flee. Ask to be moved to Axis, or back to Golarion, and treat what she sees there as real, and proceed from there. This works if they really are Good and uncaring, and not otherwise.

She can try to submit. Admit she doesn't believe in "Hazel", and see if they change their story. But she wouldn't be able to verify the new story any more than the old. Also, the new story is likely to be less pleasant for her than the current one, even if sticking with the script is just dragging things out she's not going to ask to be tortured already to get it over with - no, trying to do anything on the assumption they are Evil is a lost cause. So she can submit, and see if they reveal another layer that she prefers to this one.

She can try to cooperate with the pretense, keep talking to Hazel and try to leverage herself into a position of - what? What would even be the best-case outcome for Abrogail, if Hazel were real? Well, she can ask for twenty-five more Wishes, and a bag of diamonds while she's at it, and anything else Hazel claims to be able to give her, and that would improve her position. But it would equally imply that the power behind Hazel doesn't think improving Abrogail's position matters to them. So this, also, works only if they are Good or uncaring.

If all her strategies only work on the assumption she is not being held by enemies, then she might as well choose the one she will enjoy most if it actually works.

She would not enjoy living out a pretense, wondering every moment when it might end, without at least once acknowledging it. Any less would be an injury to her pride. And if they stick with the script, she'll try to lose herself in it, and treat the world as a play put on for her amusement.

(She can feel rage building up inside her. All her life's work, lost in moments! She endured Hell to win a great prize that those fools did not dream of, and she was rewarded for her excellence - for it to be snatched away with such contemptuous ease in the very moment of her triumph...!! But she can suppress it, for now, with her newfound Splendor.)

But neither will she refuse to take every advantage offered, and lose the game on purpose.

"I'm afraid I will handle this poorly," she confesses. If someone is listening, they'll know she concedes the game of pretense. "You are right that many people back at home will have a hard time adjusting - so will I! - and we haven't planned for anything like this. My existing advisors might not be best suited to manage this transition, either."

"It would help me greatly if you use another ten Wishes to improve my Cunning and Wisdom."

In other words: she's still willing to play if they'll let give her better pieces. How, she has no idea, but that's Smart Abrogail's problem.

"I can supply as many wishes as you would like," Hazel agrees. She believes this. She has herself cast many wishes. "Or I can show you how to use our system to request wish diamonds and prepared spells and you can cast them yourself. Are you sure you want to make so large a change to yourself right away? There's no rush if you want to take more time to get used to your splendor."

Hazel really is just asking out of concern for Abrogail's well-being. If Abrogail confirms she wants them, Hazel is prepared to cast the ten wishes now. Hazel is mildly anxious about the thought of a world where everyone feels as though they need to be more intelligent, but doesn't intend to let that anxiety get in the way of her firm conviction that people should be able to do this if they want to.

"Personally, they make me a little nervous, since I don't actually understand how they improve your mind. Our neuroscientists are working on it, both to be sure they're safe, and to see about improving them even further," she shares. She trusts the 'neuroscientists' completely, and would apply all the improvements to herself immediately if they claimed it was safe. She implicitly believes that they will eventually proclaim it safe and supply her with any enhancements, but she will wait until then.

They are still taunting her, with this painfully Good servant who isn't allowed more power by her superiors, who genuinely believes she will be granted more power later and that not granting her more power is for her own sake. Both that the power is withheld because it might not be safe for her, and that it will be granted eventually because it is safe after all. Who believes she can take power for herself, but trusts her superiors that she shouldn't, for her own sake.

...She made a decision, and she's going to stick to her script.

"I've increased my Cunning and Wisdom before," Abrogail points out reasonably, "when I put on my crown, and with lesser headbands and spells before then, and I never regretted it. In my society it's generally accepted that the upsides to mental improvements far outweigh any downsides."

"And if it's ever really a problem, there are spells that lower your Cunning and Wisdom again!" Look at how open and vulnerable and honest she's being!

Hazel nods. "I suppose that's a good point," she acquiesces, although she doesn't actually believe that being able to lower your intelligence by applying different spells at all helps the situation. She respects Abrogail's right to choose for herself, and wouldn't want to be too much of an obstructionist to someone doing what's right for them.

She summons a decagon of wish diamonds, and has her system cast simultaneously. She tells herself that she doesn't want to just sit there repeating the same words over and over for a minute, but part of her also wants to show off a little, for the beautiful woman she's talking to.

She says the two wish wordings for appearance's sake, but she actually just inputs the words into the spells directly, using her interface, because she can't actually say the verbal components of all the spells simultaneously.

The diamonds crumble to nothing, and Abrogail is wiser, and more cunning.

For some people, greater Wisdom or Cunning can make them a different person by making them notice how wrong they were, how inferior. How they failed over and over, played into the hands of their enemies.

Abrogail isn't someone who'd ever agonize over that. She knows what she wants, always. Being smarter makes her better, and that's good. Obviously one should grow better as one gains power, and obviously one should keep gaining power over time. Obviously she was worse before now, before she had her crown, before she went to Hell, all the way back to when she was a literal child, but her story is about becoming better. She is not confused or shaken by becoming wiser.

Some things come into focus.

Relations between people are inseparable from the power they have over each other. Hierarchy is useful, it is efficient for organizing your subordinates, but it's possible to operate without one if you're clever enough and you're not being Asmodean about it.

Faced with a hierarchy, one slots into the best place one has earned, and climbs from there. Faced with other, less legible structures, one must demonstrate their cunning by finding the best place they can anyway, and eventually by shaping society in their favor.

Hazel's controllers are telling her: Good is no weaker than Evil. We, too, can make our slaves believe five contradictory things before breakfast, and we don't even have to torture them about it. You have to join us because we won; but you should join us because we're not inferior, and we can build a world worth living in for you.

They're telling her: it doesn't matter if she believes Hazel or not. As long as she behaves as if she does, and maybe even if she doesn't, they won't break the pretense. Why should they? They don't want to torture people, and they won, so they get to have what they want.

Working with Hazel is better than not, so she should try. She understands, now, that she's not staking her existence over it; if they wanted to hurt her they would. 

If she's going to work with her, Hazel will quickly learn she is (was?) queen of Cheliax; so she should tell her now, where she can control it.

(Is she still queen of Cheliax? It might be unwise to keep wearing her crown if she were not. She does have obligations to Asmodeus, to rule Infernal Cheliax in His name and to enable the sending of its people to damnation, although most of that is really on Aspexia. She'll decide later, once she's ascertained the state of Cheliax and can't claim to be hedging her bets anymore.)

"Thank you. That helped." It really did! She is already adjusting her body language slightly, because she has better instincts now for what Hazel finds familiar and pleasant and attractive.

"If we're going to work together, I should start by properly introducing myself. I'm Queen Abrogail Thrune II, of Cheliax. You may have heard of us." She smiles, self-deprecatingly.

"I've done some things I'm sure you'd disapprove of," although luckily almost all of the big ones are on her predecessors' heads, "because I believed they were the best options available to me at the time, with the information and resources I had. Asmodeus was going to win, had already won in Cheliax, and I wanted to improve the system under Him because I could hardly oppose Him and win." Or, at least, she could hardly oppose Him where she could be caught thinking about it, and living her life plotting without even admitting it to her own thoughts did not appeal.

"Having so many Wishes available obviates all my previous plans. For example, Chelish public education is the best in the world, but even people who grew up illiterate peasants can probably do well if you Wish them more cunning. We have equal rights for women, but even Osirion grants rights to women who are mages, and yesterday I would have said no-one not even Hell or Axis is rich enough to give spells to all women, but clearly I was wrong. And of course other matters, like state defense, roads and logistics, food production - everything will be different now. For the better, of course!" 

...now that she mentions it, the issue of state defense is indeed concerning. Abrogail doesn't really want to live in a world where everyone has many Wishes and uses them for war, because she doesn't think defense wins out over offense, and while there may be a last woman standing it probably wouldn't be her, or any human for that matter. Instead she's going to live in a world whose existence and peace is guaranteed by - Hazel.

"You said everyone would be able to leave freely, now. I expect many people will leave Cheliax. But I hope some will stay, and build something stronger, something better. Cheliax has over three thousand years of proud history, and only a little of that is about Hell."

"I'm sure there's a lot you want to tell me, and to ask me, but first I want to tell you that I greatly appreciate you, you and your self-tree and everything you're doing for us. You're powerful, and you use your power to make the world better, and you share it with others. It's the best way to be, and not everyone is like that, and you should be proud of it." With a fierce, warm smile, she lets Hazel have the full blast of her Splendor for a few seconds.

Hazel breaks into a smile. As one of her other selves told Gord, she didn't do this for the praise. But the praise is nice, and it feels good to be complemented on the world she has worked so hard to build. She's genuinely proud of what she and her self-tree have accomplished, and it feels good to see that work appreciated.

"Thank you. That means a lot," she replies sincerely. She has heard about Cheliax, but she hasn't particularly internalized what it was like to live there, being focused more on Hell. She also vaguely thinks of everywhere that doesn't have infinite ambient food and shelter and immortality as being a terrible place to live.

Her eyes flick to something beside Abrogail's head, and she suddenly knows more about Cheliax's circumstances. She also goes from taking Abrogail's assertion of her identity on faith, to having that assertion affirmed by whoever she is communicating with.

"And yes, those are only some of the things I expect are going to change in Cheliax," she agrees. "I would normally explain our system of property and how we decide who has control over which territories, only apparently our previous system was broken and now Abadar is metaphorically yelling at our economists about a better system. So I don't know how that will shake out in the long term, but in the short term I can help you set up border enforcement and set up magical defenses across the country in whatever way you think is best."

She is aware that everyone having as many wishes as they would like is probably going to be disruptive, but she still thinks making people richer was worth it. She doesn't see the continued existence of Cheliax as a problem -- she has complete faith that Cheliax will end up being a good place for its citizens where they genuinely enjoy living, with a little bit of work from Abrogail and herself.

They talk for a long time, about the future of Cheliax and of the world and of Abrogail herself.

Abrogail isn't going to lose. They won, but they were fighting Asmodeus, not her. She's going to keep betting more powerful, richer, better, she's going to keep rising.

She won't get to rule Cheliax, not in the way that she wanted, but that Cheliax doesn't exist anymore. It's not as much of a loss as someone taking it from her would have been. They remade Cheliax in their own image; she would have remade it in hers, if she'd had the power. She can have more now, just as free Wishes are more than her crown alone could ever be. It is not a loss, to become greater under someone else than she was under Asmodeus.

She won't have everything she used to enjoy. Punishing people to reduce the amount of sheer idiocy around her. Breaking beautiful people and healing them into new shapes until they were hers. But she can still be rid of idiots by Wishing them better, and capture beautiful people by being herself at them and by being better than they are, and so she will still have people who are hers. She'll have Hazel for her own, if she works hard at it.

She'll play their game and she'll win it, because it's a game that's very much worth playing.

The Ruby Prince, Khemet II, the Forthbringer, has been having - not a hard day, it would be unfair to call it that, but certainly a complex one.

His Commune was much more confusing than illuminating, but did make it clear that:

- He was in no danger if he returned to his palace.
- Osirion was not worse off, and had not been meant to be worse off, due to the incident of the Mysteriously Disappearing Advisors.
- He could not learn anything about the incident from the Commune that his advisors in Sothis would not find out on their own within the day. He could not improve prospects for recovering the missing people, or for anything else, by asking more Commune questions about it.
- The questions he had prepared that morning were all UNCLEAR, not because Abadar didn't know the answers, but because the questions were for no obvious reason ill-posed, even when referring to very simple matters like 'are the tax projections for next year reasonable?' or 'will the Katapeshi gain over 20% of the value of the proposed Osirion - Nex trade route?'

Shortly afterwards, he received a Sending from Axis - it must have been started soon after he sent his own - which confirmed that he could return. And so, braced for bad news, he plane shifted back to the Dome, where he was greeted with complete and utter chaos and also three-quarters of his government requesting his urgent instructions.

He has since read the letter everyone else saw, heard their accounts, confirmed some of the new spells for himself, confirmed everything with Abadar again (in another Commune under Time Stop), and emerged enlightened and even more confused. And so, he has called a meeting of the Government Council.

Khemet's Chief of Staff has finally wrangled all the Council members into a single room, including the Minister for Cultural Heritage who has (reluctantly) come back from Axis.

Out of consideration to the Chief of Staff, who is having a very stressful day running the government bureaucracy of Sothis, the meeting will be held under the new (?) super-long (??) Time Stop, so that people don't have to wait for hours to get official answers and they don't have to hurry to prepare them. (People who are forced to wait because they are also using the new Time Stop and, in some cases, started using it almost fifteen minutes ago brought it on themselves and the most he can promise them is that they will not escape the consequences of their choices by dying of old age before the present meeting concludes.)

Out of consideration to the Pharaoh, who has to sit in on many of the Chief's meetings and who would not appreciate spending most of his mortal lifespan in them, the meeting will not last longer than two subjective hours.

Khemet calls the meeting to order. (This is traditionally done by walking into the room and permitting everyone to rise.) 

Present are: Khemet; his Chief of Staff; Olive, the new envoy from the Good Cherries Alliance (Name Pending); the Ministers for State Security, Economy and Trade, Public Works, Diplomacy, Law, Justice, Agriculture, and Cultural Heritage; and the Advisor on behalf of the Council of Freed Slaves.

(Olive might notice that she is the only woman in the room. Khemet is very progressive and has some freed slaves on his council, but he's not going to have an Advisor for Women's Affairs, or whatever it is they have in Cheliax.)

The Minister for Diplomacy would like to formally introduce Innocent Olive, temporary envoy of the Ash-tree to Osirion and an authoritative source for questions regarding the Fixipelago!

As a personally powerful provisional-ally of the Osirian state, she is trusted with the state secrets that are likely to come up in this meeting, just as they do with Nefreti, although of course the Pharaoh and the relevant ministers can withhold some topics of discussion. (Everyone takes the hint: this is not a person you should expect to be able to keep secrets from.)

Olive did notice that she is the only woman here, but she's not holding it against them too much since it seems pretty likely that this is going to change pretty promptly, one way or another.

"Thank you, Minister for those kind words of introduction. I am glad to be able to assist the government of Osirian in navigating this difficult transition, and happy to answer whatever questions I can," she says. And she really is. She wants to see Osirian grow into a wonderful place for everyone who chooses to call it home; she is reserving judgement on who is likely to make that choice until she sees more of how the council operates.

"On the agenda," says the Chief, "are any decisions or proclamations that are time-sensitive. Please report on your departments briefly."