A story you could tell about Project Lawful - not the only story you could tell about Project Lawful, certainly, but a story you could tell about Project Lawful, goes like this:

A man arrived from another world, that had a bizarre math-inspired form of social organization and also a really extensive knowledge of chemical processes and how to improve them. He believed, apparently with complete sincerity, that the two went hand in hand, that the chemistry was a byproduct of the math-inspired form of social organization, though it was invented back in his society's screened-off history. As a result, Cheliax set its people not just to learning chemistry but also to trying to master his world's math-inspired form of social organization.

This was a mistake.

It's not that being interested in the math-inspired form of social organization was a mistake. Hell seems interested; they all serve Hell; that is enough reason to try to grasp it. 

But you can also just take the parts that are about how to iterate on chemical processes, and then get really rich and conquer the world. And in terms of order of operations, that one is really the important one. Especially since no one has figured out how the math-inspired form of social organization is compatible with Asmodeanism, while getting really rich and conquering the world is entirely compatible with Asmodianism.

Asmodia, not that the Lady Avaricia would contemplate criticizing her in the slightest, is obviously one of the major drivers of this mistake. She was the subject of some kind of divine intervention, cementing everyone's sense that she's Very Important. She's not particularly talented at improving industrial processes. She was utterly necessary, while they had Keltham around, because the math-inspired form of social organization was important for lying to people who rely on it. But she's from the beginning conceived of the whole project as being about ilanism, instead of as being about getting rich and conquering the world.

(Much the same could be said of Sevar, but Avaricia does not say it, for it is said, don't criticize your superiors without a plan to take their job, and she has noticed that Sevar's job involves a lot of being personally tortured by the Queen of Cheliax.)

A story you could tell about Project Lawful - not the only story you could tell about Project Lawful, certainly, but a story you could tell about Project Lawful, goes like this:

A man arrived from another world, that had a bizarre math-inspired form of social organization and also a really extensive knowledge of chemical processes and how to improve them. He believed, apparently with complete sincerity, that the two went hand in hand, that the chemistry was a byproduct of the math-inspired form of social organization, though it was invented back in his society's screened-off history. As a result, Cheliax set its people not just to learning chemistry but also to trying to master his world's math-inspired form of social organization.

This was a mistake.

It's not that being interested in the math-inspired form of social organization was a mistake. Hell seems interested; they all serve Hell; that is enough reason to try to grasp it. 

But you can also just take the parts that are about how to iterate on chemical processes, and then get really rich and conquer the world. And in terms of order of operations, that one is really the important one. Especially since no one has figured out how the math-inspired form of social organization is compatible with Asmodeanism, while getting really rich and conquering the world is entirely compatible with Asmodeanism.

Asmodia, not that the Lady Avaricia would contemplate criticizing her in the slightest, is obviously one of the major drivers of this mistake. She was the subject of some kind of divine intervention, cementing everyone's sense that she's Very Important. She's not particularly talented at improving industrial processes. She was utterly necessary, while they had Keltham around, because the math-inspired form of social organization was important for lying to people who rely on it. But she's from the beginning conceived of the whole project as being about ilanism, instead of as being about getting rich and conquering the world.

(Much the same could be said of Sevar, but Avaricia does not say it, for it is said, don't criticize your superiors without a plan to take their job, and she has noticed that Sevar's job involves a lot of being personally tortured by the Queen of Cheliax.)