"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful company contract breaking down revenues by country region or requiring us to make accurate reports about land values, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that and examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have also confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me; I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's announcement of a sudden, massive, countrywide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You had already showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You had already showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"I don't think I'd have done it even if I'd thought of it.  It would have presented different complications, not fewer.  I'm not sure there was any way to satisfy Keltham once he started looking, and the path we chose seems well-chosen for extending that time."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You had already showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"I don't think I'd have done the fake Taldor transfer even if I'd thought of it.  It would have presented different complications, not fewer.  I'm not sure there was any way to satisfy Keltham once he started looking, and the path we chose seems well-chosen for extending that time."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You had already showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a scroll of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"I don't think I'd have done the fake Taldor transfer even if I'd thought of it.  It would have presented different complications, not fewer.  I'm not sure there was any way to satisfy Keltham once he started looking, and the path we chose seems well-chosen for extending the time before he did."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."

"I, most obviously, failed in not giving the Project a minimum budget instead of a maximum budget, even in the midst of a war with Nidal.  I should at the very latest have done that when Keltham perfected his method of acid synthesis and it became clear that his world's ideas had been made to work here.  That perhaps might have encouraged you to think of ways to spend more money, before it was too late to spend it."

"A disadvantage of the plan to have Cheliax be literal Taldor is that he might have expected our country to possess a massive central capital with great walls, which would have required us to reject provisions of the Project Lawful contract breaking down revenues by geographic region, which Keltham might have found suspicious much earlier on.  Similar difficulties apply to claiming ourselves to be the Lawful Neutral country of Taldor, though I suppose we could have also simply denied that any such things as contracts and oaths existed and declined to offer him anything of the sort.  Again, that might have engendered suspicion."

"I think I would not, faced with a sudden Keltham myself, have told him that we were Evil, at all, or that our god was Asmodeus, or our afterlife Hell; that, I think, is the basic act of foolish honesty from which everything else spiraled.  You had already showed him Tongues, he could have demanded a casting of that spell and then examined words' meanings in other languages, as he eventually did."

"If I'd already told him that our country was named Cheliax, I would have later confessed to him that a better place for him would be Taldor, a richer country on which we were with good terms, and arranged a Teleport to someplace claiming to be that.  That could have been done after you had a little more context.  It would then have been possible to send Keltham on tours or scry-tours of other countries with escorts claiming to be of Taldor, and he could have asked after Taldor's reputation and heard nothing of remark.  Any questions about Cheliax would have been the exception rather than the rule."

"I could have thought of that, once the matter was reported to me.  I could have thought of that again after the Zon-Kuthon godwar began and Keltham's real importance became clear.  Told him that Cheliax lacked the power to properly defend him or support him, while the war with Nidal continued, and that we were arranging for Taldor to host him.  I did not in fact think of it.  In retrospect I should have done what Keltham called a 'pre-mortem', visualizing out in detail how the whole thing might fall down in time, asking myself at the end of that imagination what I could go back in time in do.  Certainly, once Keltham explained the principle in so many words, I should have done that."

"I don't think I'd have done the fake Taldor transfer even if I'd thought of it.  It would have presented different complications, not fewer.  I'm not sure there was any way to satisfy Keltham once he started looking, and the path we chose seems well-chosen for extending the time before he did."

"Going on my rereading of all of Keltham's thought-transcripts, I think you are attributing too much power to tropes and too little power to ordinary causality.  What set Keltham off seems to have been Cheliax's presentation about a massive nationwide push on spellsilver manufacturing, which made him realize that we were taking him seriously and that a set of sudden demands for verification would be something we'd have to meet.  That should have been presented to him after he was statued, not before.  Without foreseeing the particular disaster - as may not be done in a world of shattered prophecy - it signaled to Keltham that things had changed.  It was a disruption of his status quo.  And that is the general act that we should have avoided until after he'd been petrified and unpetrified.  It wasn't your announcement of the plan to the Project that invoked tropes, it was our presentation of the fake plan to Keltham that changed the way he was looking at things."

"I failed to see that, too, and so did Asmodia, but you are the one person in Cheliax whose job it was to think of that."