"Asserting lots of things with higher Splendour doesn't make them true either, even if you point to the other person dramatically and declare 'declaring things doesn't make them true' in every other sentence.  It's a cutting accusation you can level just as easily at true declarations as false declarations, making it no evidence under the Law of Probability, all Splendour and no Validity.  For me to argue in such a way, of course, would be betraying Cheliax by throwing 'entropy' and random noise into our deliberations.  As a bad slave, rather than a muddled one, I have the option of choosing not to do that, you see."

"Well, just keep in mind, neither the Most High nor the Queen will be fooled by the part where you tackled a lot of easy problems using methodology that Keltham already explained to you and afterwards made out like you're a genius.  Though I suppose all that Splendour has to be good for something, like selling whatever easy results you get as being incredibly difficult ones.  Yes yes, my declaring this indeed does not make it so; nor will whatever you declare in response be true only because you say it."

Asmodia has a hidden card here; she does not know any details of the Shadow Project already working to develop reserved Chelish advantages, but Asmodia knows that it exists.  Whatever Avaricia claims to be the results of her own genius and methods will be inevitably surprise-compared to however far the Shadow Project gets in equivalent time.  Avaricia will be compared to a more rigorous metric of controlled experiment than she is expecting, and that little internal twist that leads her to oversell her results will not, in fact, impress her superiors.

As for the Sevar loyalists, Asmodia is indeed not giving much in the way of orders, which she supposes looks to old-school Asmodeans like 'nothing being done'.  But Asmodia has identified better roads as the actual next key step in Chelish economic progress - because roads enable more surviving children to go into more towns, instead of requiring towns to be higher density until more people get sick; and roads allow professional specialists to travel to more places.  Asmodia is trying to figure out cheaper ways of roadbuilding despite Keltham not having described any such, which is, in fact, a more difficult task than anything the Project or Shadow Project has ever tried before.  And Willa Shilira has her own ideas and her own newly recruited minions taking orders from her; and the ilani are, unlike some Asmodeans, actively helping one another and not just obeying orders.

"Asserting lots of things with higher Splendour doesn't make them true either, even if you point to the other person dramatically and declare 'declaring things doesn't make them true' in every other sentence.  It's a cutting accusation you can level just as easily at true declarations as false declarations, making it no evidence under the Law of Probability, all Splendour and no Validity.  For me to argue in such a way, of course, would be betraying Cheliax by throwing 'entropy' and random noise into our deliberations.  As a bad slave, rather than a muddled one, I have the option of choosing not to do that, you see."

"Well, just keep in mind, neither the Most High nor the Queen will be fooled by the part where you tackled a lot of easy problems using methodology that Keltham already explained to you and afterwards made out like you're a genius.  Though I suppose all that Splendour has to be good for something, like selling whatever easy results you get as being incredibly difficult ones.  Yes yes, my declaring this indeed does not make it so; nor will whatever you declare in response be true only because you say it."

Asmodia has a hidden card here; she does not know any details of the Shadow Project already working to develop reserved Chelish advantages, but Asmodia knows that it exists.  Whatever Avaricia claims to be the results of her own genius and methods will be inevitably surprise-compared to however far the Shadow Project gets in equivalent time.  Avaricia will be compared to a more rigorous metric of controlled experiment than she is expecting, and that little internal twist that leads her to oversell her results will not, in fact, impress her superiors.

As for the Sevar loyalists, Asmodia is indeed not giving much in the way of orders, which she supposes looks to old-school Asmodeans like 'nothing being done'.  But Asmodia has identified better roads as the actual next key step in Chelish economic progress - because roads enable more surviving children to go into more towns, instead of requiring towns to be higher density until more people get sick; and roads allow professional specialists to travel to more places.  Asmodia is trying to figure out cheaper ways of roadbuilding despite Keltham not having described any such, which is, in fact, a more difficult task than anything the Project or Shadow Project has ever tried before.  And Willa Shilira has her own ideas and her own newly recruited minions taking orders from her; and the two of them have written down in advance their disagreements about methodology; and the ilani are, unlike some Asmodeans, actively helping one another and not just obeying orders.