"It seems to me that it was incredibly stupid to make your project of rebuilding Civilization also your project of having lots of kinky sex with admiring employees."

Yup.  Keltham has by now worked this out, that if he - wasn't thinking of this world as his afterlife, if he was trying to get shit done, he would've been bringing in a lot more existing experts than one alchemist.  Keltham was working on reflexes for - how to run a startup in Civilization, and not revising those to Major Governance Project - and to be fair to Cheliax, the moment Keltham updated to Major Governance Project everything fell apart for them, so it's not like they were wrong.  But Keltham was being, not just wrong, stupid, because you can test hypotheses, and Keltham should have tested the cached thought that you can't teach forty-year-old experts new tricks.  Maybe it was different in Golarion where, among other things, there's a superheated radioactive spell called Age Resistance.

Now he is just teaching people industry, as quickly as possible, not trying to create - a long-term cultural base of Civilization - he is being a little too hard on his past self, his past self was genuinely trying to do a different thing, in part, build something in Cheliax that was right from the beginning and would serve as a foundation, and bringing in dozens of experts from other countries to oppose Cheliax is not that same thing.

Doesn't change Gregoria being right, in some fundamental sense, Keltham was thinking - not even in tropes, it is not a prediction out of tropes that things would go well for a protagonist like that - he was being, comfortable.  Having fun.

It was supposed to be his thing, that he was selfish, and it's clear why Cheliax didn't call him on it, but.  But.

"I never really tried to explain myself to you, you know, as a person. You never really asked. I'm kind of assuming you don't really want to know, it's not really the point, and it's not really the point on my end either, so I'm not, like, mad about that?"

He was supposed to be selfish.  It was supposed to be his thing. 

"Peranza wasn't in love with you.  She could've fallen in love with you, given the chance, but she was in circumstances she found pretty stressful and didn't have the energy, really."

Their lives weren't supposed to be his problem.  Carissa told him so.  He trusted her.

"It seems to me that it was incredibly stupid to make your project of rebuilding Civilization also your project of having lots of kinky sex with admiring employees."

Yup.  Keltham has by now worked this out, that if he - wasn't thinking of this world as his afterlife, if he was trying to get shit done, he would've been bringing in a lot more existing experts than one alchemist.  Keltham was working on reflexes for - how to run a startup in Civilization, and not revising those to Major Governance Project - and to be fair to Cheliax, the moment Keltham updated to Major Governance Project everything fell apart for them, so it's not like they were wrong.  But Keltham was being, not just wrong, stupid, because you can test hypotheses, and Keltham should have tested the cached thought that you can't teach forty-year-old experts new tricks.  Maybe it was different in Golarion where, among other things, there's a superheated radioactive spell called Age Resistance.

Now he is planning to just teach people industry, as quickly as possible, not try to create - a long-term cultural base of Civilization - he is being a little too hard on his past self, his past self was genuinely trying to do a different thing, in part, build something in Cheliax that was right from the beginning and would serve as a foundation, and bringing in dozens of experts from other countries to oppose Cheliax is not that same thing.

Doesn't change Gregoria being right, in some fundamental sense, Keltham was thinking - not even in tropes, it is not a prediction out of tropes that things would go well for a protagonist like that - he was being, comfortable.  Having fun.

It was supposed to be his thing, that he was selfish, and it's clear why Cheliax didn't call him on it, but.  But.

"I never really tried to explain myself to you, you know, as a person. You never really asked. I'm kind of assuming you don't really want to know, it's not really the point, and it's not really the point on my end either, so I'm not, like, mad about that?"

He was supposed to be selfish.  It was supposed to be his thing. 

"Peranza wasn't in love with you.  She could've fallen in love with you, given the chance, but she was in circumstances she found pretty stressful and didn't have the energy, really."

Their lives weren't supposed to be his problem.  Carissa told him so.  He trusted her.