Asmodia follows Carissa to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from everyone, sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want and force them to play games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them, they found out how to look at a country of half men and half women and pierce through the shadow to the Law beneath it all.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, weirdly, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's hard work enough for them to consider it of the least importance. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that 18 Intelligence seven-year-olds could understand if they were taught it?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)
Asmodia follows Sevar to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from everyone, sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want and force them to play games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them, they found out how to look at a country of half men and half women and pierce through the shadow to the Law beneath it all.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, weirdly, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's hard work enough for them to consider it of the least importance. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that 18 Intelligence seven-year-olds could understand if they were taught it?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)
Asmodia follows Sevar to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from children and citizens of questionable loyalty: sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want, that you can force people to go on playing games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them. They found out that it's possible to glance at a country of half men and half women, and pierce through the obscuring veil of matter to the Law beneath it all.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, weirdly, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's past hard work as meaning anything. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that dath ilani seven-year-olds learn about from older boys?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)
Asmodia follows Sevar to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from children and citizens of questionable loyalty: sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want, that you can force people to go on playing games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them. They found out that it's possible to glance at a country of half men and half women, and pierce through the obscuring veil of matter to the Law behind.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, weirdly, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's past hard work as meaning anything. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that dath ilani seven-year-olds learn about from older boys?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)
Asmodia follows Sevar to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from children and citizens of questionable loyalty: sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want, that you can force people to go on playing games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them. They found out that it's possible to glance at a country of half men and half women, and pierce through the obscuring veil of matter to the Law behind.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, for some reason, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's past hard work as meaning anything. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that dath ilani seven-year-olds learn about from older boys?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)
Asmodia follows Sevar to her bedroom - not the first person to do that, apparently! But at the point where someone can nab Abrogail Thrune II while not looking any prettier than Carissa does, she is no longer a slut, she is a shapechanged ancient dragon slut with nine slut caster circles, and only a fool would anger someone who's as much of a slut as that.
And along the way, while she's still wearing the intelligence headband, Asmodia asks herself what she understands about dath ilani thinking. There's obvious notions like, they've developed some inner thing like arcane sight that pierces through the Prime Material like a realm of shadows and sees Mathematics underneath it, but Keltham already knows that and isn't being shy about teaching it to them. Figuring out what they lied to Keltham about, filling in the holes of his knowledge - there's some parts that are obvious if you were raised Evil, what a perfected Lawful Good society carefully hides from children and citizens of questionable loyalty: sadism, the possibility that you can hit people to get them to do what you want, that you can force people to go on playing games they aren't being bribed to play. If Asmodia has an advantage in figuring out something like that, it will be the math that they censored from him.
Is there any part of this that she has an elemental affinity for? The first day - wasn't an unhappy one, was as happy as any day in Cheliax ever gets, between the moments of anxiety and being sure that Keltham was fucking with them. They found out that it's possible to glance at a country of half men and half women, and pierce through the obscuring veil of matter to the Law behind.
And the thought occurs to Asmodia, then - if she is, for some reason, allowed to think about dath ilani thinking - that there's something about Keltham's dath ilani attitude in the face of difficult problems that's - indomitable? Wrong word, and maybe Taldane doesn't have a right one. Something that isn't expecting that students only get problems that they've been trained to solve. Keltham does ask if Golarion has already tried and failed to solve problems, but only to know how difficult they'd be for him to solve, not to consider whether they might be impossible. You never get the impression for a fraction of a second that dath ilan itself would respect all of Golarion's past hard work as meaning anything. Why should they, when Golarion could stare at a country of half men and half women for millennia, bargain over shoes for millennia, and never see the towering structure of Law barely a step out of vision, that dath ilani seven-year-olds learn about from older boys?
A lot of people in Golarion have tried to get immortality -
(or get out of soul contracts)
- but they weren't dath ilani.
If nothing else, destroying a soul - if Abaddon, or the Starstone, can do that at all - or just putting a statue somewhere it will never, ever be reachable again even by the Hellknights or Hell - really doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a class of dath ilani children would give up on, if a teacher gave it to them as a puzzle they didn't know how to solve.
(Though it sure would serve them right if there was also some way like that to destroy everything.)