"Perhaps not. I doubt that Asmodeus would have bothered to instruct you to seek out those elements of your own soul, or for us to assist you, if it was a ten-minute job."
"Competent natural tyrants are the most useful members of the inner circle, and we try to give every intelligent Chelish citizen a chance to enforce some rules with a whip to let them discover that tendency if they have it. If you rise high within this world, you will discover very rapidly that the number of competent Asmodean managers you can find to help run your operations is an extreme check on your ambitions. It is plausibly the limiting factor for the entire Chelish state. Slavemasters and lawyers are not nearly so much in demand. Pride tends to be expensive in multiple ways, and not just financially, so it is largely the domain of nobles or the very wealthy, who by their own nature cannot be too numerous relative to the general population. Outside of tyranny, then, you may lack firsthand experience with other elements of Asmodeus's domain as experienced by the insiders."
"Do you wish to hear my guess about your Asmodean potentials? It seems to me that there is a tension between Asmodeus's instructions to me that we are to assist you if you seek instruction, and Asmodeus's instructions to you that you are to find that part of yourself. My own resolution of the tension would be that I should answer if you ask, because I am to concern myself with Asmodeus's instructions to myself, which say that I am to assist you, and not with weighing Asmodeus's instructions to you."
