...feels like some of thoughts, while productive, aren't maximally productive. He should maybe be trying to take more low-hanging fruit.
So Keltham tries to remember, think back, notice things that surprised him very early on when the Conspiracy might have been worse at hiding things. If you suppose that they got better at hiding things over time, even today, and then project that back in time, they'd have been very bad at it during the early days.
- It surprised Keltham, on the evening of Day 0, that Asmodeus was supposedly the only Lawful Evil god worth mentioning, except for one incredibly awful exception, and that all the other Evil gods were also totally unworthy trade partners. Are they possibly hiding Evil gods who would be decent competition with Asmodeus as trade partners?
-- In the same way that he's not hearing about other Evil gods worth dealing with, besides Asmodeus, why is Keltham not hearing anything about other Evil countries, besides Cheliax?
- Back when Keltham's unknown god could select spells for him, it selected (Day 1) Sanctuary, Aura Sight, Invisibility Purge, Spell Immunity, Glimpse of Beyond, and a spell that gave him a vision of horror that was supposedly Xovaikain; and (Day 2) 2 Auguries, Detect Desires, Detect Anxieties, Protection, Summon Monster III, Enchantment Foil. Invisibility Purge and maybe Aura Sight is supposedly explained by Broom... or the Aura Sight was to tell Keltham his god was Lawful Neutral since his hosts didn't tell him that right away. Sanctuary, Protection, Enchantment Foil, Summon Monster III, and Vision are explained if the Zon-Kuthon war was real. Why were those spells there, in the world where the Zon-Kuthon war was fake? The entire spell list should go into the set of things to be potentially explained in different ways.
- Galt has the only army that doesn't rape and pillage, because they're zombies... no, that was Ged, or Geb, or something. If that's true there should be much harsher criticisms of Cheliax in the books, right? Unless other countries are refraining from that critique because they know their own armies are no better? That seems fairer than he'd expect Ranting Golarion Authors to be.
- It's supposedly surprising that he got 4 cleric circles overnight. Carissa said this was incredibly rare, and explained it as Keltham's god worrying that he might need to fight. This continues to seem well-explained by the Zon-Kuthon affair or just by Keltham being incredibly important, in Ordinary, but may have a different story in Conspiracy. In particular, Keltham now knows that his saves against various spells depend on his caster circles.
- The wacky wizard teacher boasting about himself, in his book about teaching wizardry, said something about punishing students after class... because they couldn't concentrate if you did that during the day, which doesn't sound like the point was just teaching-to-intuitive-mechanisms, and... is Keltham remembering correctly that the wizard teacher said something about keeping them after school so they couldn't just get healed? Okay now that Keltham is actually thinking back on that, WHAT. At the time it was just blurring into everything else being weird and wrong and incomprehensible, but now Keltham has some context and that doesn't sound like... Pilar... maybe it does sound like Pilar but it doesn't sound like Carissa and supposedly not everybody is like that.
-- Maybe this is Keltham misremembering something, and he should ask for another copy of that book. Or test Conspiracy/Ordinary on whether that book happens to be one of the ones destroyed in the attack on the archduke's villa.
-- okay, but meanwhile it still goes on the list, in case this is somehow the one piece that causes everything to make sense somehow
- He was surprised by the whole Chelish 'dignity' thing, where everybody seems relentlessly cheerful even if they're actually confused and bewildered. If that's a dead giveaway of anything, the Conspiracy might not have realized at the time they needed to hide it. Keltham doesn't see where it goes, but it's a surprise so it goes on the list.
-- People in the streets in Absalom did not have the Chelish 'dignity' thing going on. People had all sorts of facial expressions.