Disquieting.  Still, I think we have little choice but to proceed as if we have not yet wandered off Nethys's road.  I hope He returns to us before we leave it fully.

They're so eager to work with Keltham.  So ready for everything Keltham could offer them.  They want so much to be his Civilization, wanted it long before Keltham came here, and all they lack, they believe, are the things that Aktun is forbidden to tell them, that Keltham knows.

What happens when Keltham reaches Osirion is going to break their heart.

Assuming we are still sufficiently on Nethys's pathways that Keltham enters Osirion at all.  The divergences have already begun.

What of it?

I am tempted to meddle.  After so much, much time of having to conserve our strength and choose our opportunities, running around doing things is quite addictive.  I observe the mortals so closely and I find Myself thinking, 'Is there some way I could meddle and make it go less sadly for these few mortals personally?  I like them.'

Not to go all Lawful Good on you, Cayden, but to agonize over the hurt feelings of a handful of souls you've spied upon, in the light of other stakes and other costs, seems too Chaotic Good even for Me.

But go ahead and meddle, if you can find any way to do it that promotes the interests of Pharasma and Asmodeus relative to what would've happened otherwise.  And our own interests, of course.  And keeps to Nethys's road while it lasts.  And doesn't give away exactly what's playing out to opposed gods like Abadar.

I keep thinking to myself that I need another drink, and yet, I cannot imagine how much mead would be enough to deal with this crap.

Before Carissa gets back to Keltham's current suite, she's intercepted by a Security who informs her that Maillol is, if not exactly fully functional, functional enough to receive her handoff.  Sevar keeps going out of contact and that's not fun for Project Lawful.

Understood. (They should really be training a Carissa impersonator to substitute for her but also it's very much to her advantage that she thinks they don't have anyone.)

...that means she should also probably take her punishment before she goes back to Keltham, and she's currently in the wrong mental state for it, namely euphoric and full of giddy terror, but she's not actually the out-of-control child Abrogail seems to think, she can talk herself around. She trots over to the temple and contemplates dath ilani Lawful Evil, which they do tell stories about apparently, Evil Keepers who wield the Law for their own benefit. She wants to be that. Cheliax doesn't understand dath ilan but it does understand how to harden Evil in someone's heart, how to turn human weaknesses in so they feed Evil impulses not Good ones. She needs that. And she deserves punishment, because she erred, and doesn't want to blunder through the world unpunished until she faces the ultimate punishment for an error too big to overlook. Asmodeus said to punish her as his Law requires, because otherwise she'll err too far before reality shows up to correct her. 

Keltham has her childish, stupid heart, because he's rich and powerful and willing to walk away from Cheliax over her and it's very cute, but Cheliax owns her body and soul, and this is, in the evaluation of a system designed for punishing weakness and building Evil in human hearts, what she needs. 

There, that's better. She will just have to not let all that Asmodean conviction be shaken by the sight of Maillol. 

If you weren't Chelish you wouldn't be able to tell that Maillol is shaken, hurting, doesn't have it fully together, and keeps trying to figure out if there's some way he can be not on this project.  Having been the recipient of two visions from Asmodeus makes it effectively impossible; he may know, now, things that he can't put into words.

Maillol wants to be not on Project Lawful when it hits day 4.  Day 3 was, in fact, past his limit.

The sight of Sevar, looking not particularly emotional, not that he'd be able to tell if she has her own act together, does not please him.  Even knowing how much Sevar, who helped make this bed, is probably also going to have to lie in it, with the Queen, for longer, there is still a flash of hatred in him, for her having not saved him from what was almost entirely his own mistake.

(Maillol has not been informed of what actually happened there, and very very few people in Abrogail Thrune's dominion ever will be.  Spreading such gossip about Her Infernal Majestrix, if you are a Security reading Sevar's thoughts, say, is the kind of conduct that gets you turned into a statue, or sent to whatever other fate is your worst realizable fear.)

He accepts the project handoff, questions Sevar about a few of the Keltham budget items she approved, thinking and talking mostly on reflex.

What does he think of the possibility of demonstrating Suggestion to Keltham with his advance consent, probably having Lrilatha do it because he finds it credible that she obeys Asmodeus directly, and then swearing to him it hasn't been done otherwise, in order to get him to agree an adversarial Cheliax would be running rings around him with mind control.

Maillol has to think hard about this, and strain bruised portions of his mind.  What was Asmodeus's will?  He said not to enchant Keltham.  Did He really convey exactly that, when He spoke not at all in words?  It's hard to blank out all of your own guesses about what Asmodeus could be planning, what Asmodeus could have intended, to ask what Asmodeus meant, when what you need is to hear what Asmodeus told you to do, and the concepts and bounds set around it were neither your own nor mortal at all.

"I'll authorize it," he says.  "Make sure you tell Keltham exactly what you're going to do, get his permission for exactly that, do exactly that, no tricks, no games, no cleverness, no taking advantages, nothing else you're trying to accomplish on the side, as if Keltham could read your own thoughts down to the depth of your soul, and don't assume that Contessa Lrilatha already knows that, tell it to her anyways."  Maillol is writing down those instructions, even as he speaks, they cannot be entrusted to memory.

"I understand. Thank you."

Right. That's that over with, then. 

She notices herself trying to think of something else to say, and makes herself turn and walk away towards the torture chamber.

Children tend superstitious - it's worse if you cry, it's worse if you don't, it's worse if you seem scared. Carissa's not a child. She doesn't know the heart of whoever's on staff, she doesn't know what they enjoy seeing, it probably doesn't matter very much. The benefits don't derive from the punishment being executed exactly correctly; anything that requires that much finesse can only happen in Hell. There is to a first approximation nothing at all she can do that will matter. 

It lasts a lot longer. At least Carissa thinks so, she never actually asked how long the bag lasted. This had a duration written neatly on the scroll she turned in. And she's pretty sure it's longer, because her voice is much, much hoarser, and her face much stickier with snot and tears, and she gets tired, in a way she doesn't think she has before, random uninjured muscles screaming about having been tense for so long.

It'll be worse in Hell. 

She understands her mistakes better. She won't make them again. There isn't another way to get this result; dath ilan tries to do everything with rewards, but that just builds stunted little Good people who'd go to Abaddon rather than not get their fair share of a deal. 

Carissa would never, ever go to Abaddon. If you told her this was all that was left to her forever, more of this, she wouldn't go to Abaddon. She is strong where the people of dath ilan are weak; she can live in worlds they can't. 

She hopes someone is reading her mind because she requests healing adequate to conceal signs of injury from Keltham but can't seem to make her mouth move right now.

Sevar's still in the middle of important work and the palace torture room has a fairly serious priest on staff, even with the war; and also with the war on, fewer people are being tortured in the palace than usual.

Cure Moderate Wounds.  Restoration.  Have a nice day.

Right. Keltham. Her Keltham-feelings have been all burned out, which is good, she didn't even remember to focus on that. Maybe love is just the kind of emotion that automatically dies faced with anything real.

She washes her face and fixes her hair and goes back to Keltham.

Keltham has no idea that Carissa was in a much better mood half an hour earlier.

He asks how her Security screening went.  That took a while.

"It did, they were way more thorough than usual, spent a bunch of time on asking me trick questions under a Truth Spell which I must say is kind of unpleasant, and they made me do everything with the headband off and with it on. - I'm not actually complaining, it feels like all the security Cheliax knows how to throw at a thing like this just barely might be adequate for the actual stakes. 

I did get the chance to ask about whether the absolutely-no-messing-with-Keltham-no-matter-how-justified-it-looks order would permit consensually demonstrating to you mind-control spells, and the person who was the direct recipient of Asmodeus's vision thought yes with enough precautions and advance communication, so if that's something you want to see demonstrated, seems to be allowed."

"Seems a little scary, the mind-control experiment I mean, but you gotta be able to do slightly scary things that seem clearly necessary, and that one does.  Let's move forwards on it... no, first I want your own direct opinion on whether they're going to be able to find someone to run the experiment who is really actually extremely that trustworthy."

"One of the precautions was it'd be Contessa Lrilatha. I think she's that trustworthy anyway but with a direct order from Asmodeus involved there's no question."

"That'd do it."  Keltham is actually slightly impressed - that was better than he'd visualized being possible to get, himself.

Keltham has met with Isidre again!  Many things were discussed of which he can only tell Carissa some right away (so as not to give her impression that the parts he's talking about were all that happened).  Isidre does think it's safe to ask Carissa some direct questions of the 'what happens if I do this?' type.

Carissa'd be happy to answer those.

Okay!  Uh, for a start, Keltham's going to do the thing where some questions matter more than others but he's going to mix them up to not make it too blatant what sort of answers he's looking for.  He doesn't know if they have the sort of relationship where Keltham can do that without explicitly announcing it, which is better, obviously, in terms of not biasing the subject.  Do they have the sort of relationship where Keltham can do that sort of thing, and it's okay so long as Carissa gets told about the shenanigans within a reasonably short time afterwards?

(He's so - not cute. Contemptible, not cute.)

"Yes, you can do that. I don't even particularly feel wronged if you try to conceal which questions you care about the most and then don't tell me afterwards you were doing that, in Cheliax sometimes people are just doing that and it's considered fair enough."

"I mean, in dath ilan, sometimes they don't tell you for years what the experiment was about, but there's explicit understandings there that I didn't want to assume would automatically carry over to Golarion and you."

"Also, I just realized that I went and asked 'is it okay if...' instead of ordering you to tell me the consequences of something, sorry, brain tired from Isidre discussion, I think for tonight I may ask... I think for tonight I'm ordering you to take the questions I ask in dath ilani speech patterns and reinterpret them to be about me ordering you to tell me things, I don't intend on doing that all the time but that was a tiring conversation and it's been a day."

Hypothetical: what happens if Keltham managed to hurt Carissa enough that she yelled 'Stop!' without realizing what she was doing, and then Keltham reacted to that by immediately removing her from her chains even if Carissa apologized and said to continue.  Obviously that's not going to break Carissa or anything, Keltham wants to know the hypothetical effects on their relationship, is Carissa turned off, confused, is it generally good or bad for them.

" - not confused, that's the thing I predict you'd do. I think mostly I'd feel...embarrassed...and like it broke something, that I did that, and if we don't address it at all then it'll be a hole I need to steer around in the future?"

True answers are, perhaps predictably, harder to produce when you've burned all your feelings out. She feels like she's producing them by imagining some other Carissa.

Hypothetical:  Keltham starts requesting Detect Desires and truthspells from his god and using those to find out what Carissa wants and treating a thus-extracted admission of wanting something as a reason to believe that it's fine for him to do whatever it is to her.

- wow. Uh. The second part is definitely excellent, the first part is a little scary, but not in a way where she'd say no even if this were a saying-no sort of relationship. 

...yeah, that's not really the answer you'd expect from a dath ilani woman, possibly even one single dath ilani woman alive; but it has already dawned on Keltham that he's not in Default anymore.

Hypothetical: effects on relationship if Keltham had gone ahead and done that without asking Carissa about it at all.

"You'd....get a different way of me relating to you, I think? Where I try to do less steering, because you're doing more of it, and try to give you more of myself to work with..."

He needs to dare anything, ever, to ever test the things that are being claimed to him by Carissa's nine-year-old-level self-reporting, if he's going to make this relationship work at all.

Keltham, without any other warning, taps Carissa with one of his Truthspells.  "Tell me the effect of what I just did to you on our relationship."

Carissa does not need that dismissed yet, she thinks loudly. The entire point of not lying to Keltham is to be able to do this.

”I think I’m feeling things a little less intensely now than I usually would because I’m still a bit fried from the last couple hours,” she says. “Uh, obeying Security when they’re being very intense is sort of the same reservoir of something except without the payoff. With that said - yeah, I feel delighted that you did that, that you knew you could do that, and slightly stressed about the truth spell - it’s an enchantment, it feels like one, I know it’s not a very invasive enchantment -“

The illusion on her forehead has not flickered at all.

Keltham essays a Detect Magic, for lack of a Greater Detect Magic; the spell on Carissa looks to him like the one he cast.

...um.

Should he just - keep doing this.  It seems like cheating.  It seems a lot like cheating.  It seems like the sort of cheating that means nobody ever wants to cofound a startup with you.  Carissa just said she was delighted under the truthspell that he did it.  You could establish an awful lot of trust that way, modulo the chance that after they saw his first truthspell they were very thoroughly prepared, or maybe prepared before the first truthspell, etcetera, he didn't request Invisibility Purge today.

The common sense of dath ilan says to, like, think dangerous things through before you do dangerous things, not try to improvise them as you go.  Especially when you have two more Truthspells, to use later if needed - shit he should've cast Augury before he tried that, oh well, he'll get used to having magic eventually.

Is there anything he needs to ask right now...

"I'm not going to be upset if the spell fails here, or if you can't give the answer you wished you could," Keltham says.  "Are your self-reports to me, about what you're pretty sure won't hurt you, likely to be accurate?  Not honest, accurate."

"I really think so! Once we start doing things I haven't done before I will be less sure but then I'll tell you I'm less sure! I know I'm not dath ilani but you can't actually be an arms and armor enchanter while kidding yourself about whether things are going to work out the way you want them to."

Keltham exhales, feeling a bit shaky himself.  She could just be consistently mistaken on all levels of reflection, of course, but it's something; you'd expect somebody to notice if they were routinely wrong about that sort of thing.  He feels like he just - girlfriend gets thoughts access.  "I feel like I just stepped off a very narrow ledge I was standing on, but there happened to be something underneath my foot to support it."

"You can step outside and ask Security to dispel that, if you can't dispel it yourself, or resist it, or whatever.  I have two more truthspells, should probably keep one in reserve, but you can request the other one later if you think of something you want to say and have me trust."  Of course then she gets more time to prepare a deception but he could also just tap her two days later and ask if there was a deception then.  Oh, he should check that now.  "First, though, answer as soon as this question finishes, do you have any knowledge about the results of my last truthspell having been faked?"

She doesn't know she doesn't know that's always the safe thing to lean on with truth spells not knowing what instance he's referring to not knowing what anyone did -  "No?" She's totally uncertain whether that'd have gotten through or not, and if not whether Security managed to cancel it and do an illusion in time, but she'll proceed as if one of those things happened. They should've been ready with the illusion at least from 'answer as soon as this question finishes'. "I don't actually know when the last time you used a truthspell was," she continues. "Did you use one with Isidre, that might have been faked, she's powerful enough to cast that anti-Enchantment spell that your god gave you for the Kuthites and I bet she knows it. Uh, the last truth spell I remember you using was on Tonia the first day and I have no knowledge of that being faked." A definite lie, but if Security couldn't get a replacement in place by then they deserve -

(do they?)

- well regardless they will suffer much worse than what Carissa just did and she won't be sorry.

...okay, that could have been an instance of her quickly telling herself that she didn't know what he really meant by that, and delaying for somebody else to cast dispel, illusion, etc.  If so they're presumably prepared for this, but Keltham casts Detect Magic anyways.

Looks as he'd expect. 

"Are you done?" A good very obedient Carissa without an edge in her voice. "I can dispel it once you're done, but you can keep going, if it's helping. Or if it's not but you want to."

"I'm done.  You can dispel it yourself or get it dispelled, whatever's more convenient."

He did notice a possibility, but there's nothing obvious to do with the paranoia; most possible paranoia is not valuable on the margins.  He'll keep his eyes open to see if there's a pattern.

Also, if that thought he had was true, that implies the honesty of Carissa's earlier statements about her probably-accurate self-reports to him and that she was delighted to see him suddenly use truthspell on her, neither of which match up all that well to it's all a LARP, everything around you is a LARP.

She dispels it. "Are you okay?"

"Think so.  Just a little sad, not about your answers or anything, just that I can't give you full immediate girlfriend access to everything I thought about them."  He's probably not supposed to say the thing that he just thought, in case it was true after all.  "Are you okay?"

"I am okay but my day has featured a lot more tricky Truth Spelling than my days usually do and I am slightly less okay than I normally will be if you do that."

He should've seen that coming... stupid.  Girlfriend, right.  "Feel stupid, not because it wasn't worth it, but because I should've seen that part coming.  But it was worth it, or at least I'd evaluate so."

"Is this a hugging situation or a 'hugs are not a solution to the problem I have' situation?"

"Hugs're good. Seems worth it - seems important for you to feel like you can trust us - that's why I asked about the Contessa Lrilatha thing even though I saw her briefly in the hallways and apparently Cheliax being at war makes her ten times more terrifying."

Hugs!  "It's still so weird to think that your military people and your Governance people are the same people, like, failure-of-professional-specialization much?"

"I... wish I didn't have to say this, but I have more tricky sexuality self-report questions to ask you, even though it sounds like this is not at all a great time for that.  There's a time-sensitive question I'm considering, of the type 'window of opportunity to do a nice thing' rather than disaster-prevention type.  Not so time sensitive we couldn't cuddle for a few minutes before resuming."

"Luckily Security didn't ask me anything at all about my sexuality so I'm not very tired of talking about that. - actually correcting that, they asked if you'd inflicted any injuries requiring healing and they asked if you'd asked me to conceal anything from them under questioning. But mostly they did not ask about my sexuality and I'm not in fact tired of talking about it."

Headpats!  "Positive reinforcement for noticing you said a false thing and then correcting it."

"Uh, dath ilan thing, you'd do that with" a child "someone practicing the first layer of the Truthspeaking virtue, until the things they said started being mostly true the first time."

Literally everything Carissa just said was a lie orchestrated to convince Keltham she was practicing the first layer of the Truthspeaking virtue so why does she feel pleased about the headpats. Probably because it means she succeeded.

Keltham asks more tricky questions about Carissa's sexuality!

Hypothetical:  Keltham feels like he owes Tonia a debt for her own Suddenly Truthspell and doesn't have any money to repay it yet.  What happens to Carissa and their relationship if with zero warning Tonia is suddenly there inside their cuddleroom and Carissa gets ordered to serve her cuddlewise, with no pleasure for Carissa herself, and then Keltham walks out of the room and leaves her to it?

"That'd be a very reasonable thing for you to do and I'd feel comfortable with it. I don't know if I'd enjoy it, depends on - details and execution - and I'd enjoy it more if you stayed, but I'd still feel comfortable if you didn't."

How does it change the relationship impact if Keltham had warned Carissa, asked her about it well in advance, checked to make sure that she was attracted to Tonia before sending her in, and basically asked her for permission to do that in advance of doing it?

"Uh, it loses the thing where it's hot to be - yours, to have you doing as you like with me, to need to be on my feet? And ....I guess it avoids some risk where I passionately hate Tonia and would be miserable. But at the expense of making it kind of - pretend. But I'd try not to be bothered by that because I know you're new at this."

More sexuality questions follow!  Some of them seem really obviously impossible, like the hypothetical about Keltham telling Carissa that he's figured out exactly how to make the Starstone work and he wants to ascend her as the new god of pleasing Keltham sexually.

" - no. Because you can die for real of that."

"I think this should be very obvious, but don't trust what you can verify:  Among the things that I'll literally never do is ask you to break an oath.  If it sounds like I was asking for that, I wasn't, if I'm still asking for it after you request clarification, knock me unconscious and get me to Security to check for compulsions."

" - noted and also I wouldn't obey you if you did ask that and it was actually you and you weren't under compulsions. That's not - I'm Evil." Shrug. "And I'm a big fan of continuing to exist, so I'm going to do that no matter what."

"That's very relieving to hear and I'm not going to explain why unless you ask."  Keltham hugs Carissa as hard as he can; she is presumably hard to hurt by doing that, and if not, he's got healing.

Their relationship has ANY LEGIBLE RULES now!  And they have COMMON KNOWLEDGE about that!

Hug. " - well now I'm kind of curious."

"It wasn't entirely clear that there was any thing such that you would look at it and go, nope, not that thing, that was not part of the deal.  This could potentially indicate a state of affairs where you were actually okay with everything, or could, alternatively, indicate a general failure of your ability to detect what you were not okay with.  We have now ruled out the second possibility."

Hug. "You don't get my eternal soul and you don't get to destroy it. I'm going to live forever and I feel incredibly strongly about that. I would've specified sooner if you...had any way to do that.... which you do not."

Though the thought now crosses her mind that perhaps she's supposed to sell her soul to Keltham. That's definitely Lawful Evil, sufficient all by itself Lawful Evil, and maybe the sort of thing he could be tempted into, down the line.

"This would be a dangerous thing to say to a dath ilani like, four years younger than me?  I'm successfully preventing my brain from executing your just-submitted search request for clever ways to destroy eternal souls, but I wouldn't have been able to stop it from running four years ago."

"Anyways!  Let's say that I've demonstrated that, no, I actually did figure out the Starstone, you're not the first patient, I already got all the other girls and they're all gods and doing great.  But when it's your turn in the line, I then say, actually, Carissa, instead of becoming god of magical weapon creation, I'd personally be happy about it if you became god of pleasing Keltham sexually.  You don't have to do it, it's not an order, but I've noticed it would make me very happy, says future Keltham."

"I'm not going to make commitments on behalf of god!Carissa, she's going to be much smarter! And also probably not have a sexuality, I don't think that's even how gods work."

"You're evaaaading the queeessstion.  Least Convenient Possible World, it turns that right before you touch the Starstone you have to say what you're going to be god of.  In fact, that is the thing that makes the Starstone work, the previous successful candidates just stumbled into that.  And you get to have a sexuality if you're a god of a sexy thing."

"And this isn't, you can become a god, but only if you become a god of what Keltham, who is sponsoring you for godhood, wants -"

"Nope!  This is like, total victory scenario, we got here after you spent a few years with a mountain of spellsilver, I say that I consider myself to have been incredibly well repaid for everything I've ever done for you, the Starstone is right there and I'm not exerting any control over it, you just say what you want to be god of and then touch it.  It just so happens that I would be really happy if you said 'god of sexually pleasing Keltham' instead of whatever you'd have said if I hadn't made that request.  Actually what are you god of otherwise?  Can't evaluate the question without knowing what you're passing up."

What a normal boyfriend-girlfriend conversation!

"i'm not sure gods actually have - like, mortals say they're the god of something but I don't know that that's actually what gods think they are. I guess I'd be the... Lawful Evil god of self-improvement and study?"

Irori briefly glances in a certain direction of aspiration, but it doesn't look like a plea directed to Him, and so just as quickly looks on ahead to the next of the many many things potentially benefiting from His attention.

"And?  Do you pick that, or god of sexually pleasing Keltham?"

WHY IS HE LIKE THIS. 

"That."

"Wrong answer!"

"Just kidding, it's a fine answer."

(Has Carissa Sevar ever possibly heard the term 'sadist'?  It's like the Baseline 'troll', but less so.)

Having thus firmly established that sexuality questions don't need to be at all plausible:  How would Carissa feel if she was invited into a room and found Keltham negotiating with the Queen of Cheliax, who has a minor crush on Carissa, for him to rent Carissa to the Queen for a half-day in exchange for five hundred gold pieces, which Keltham gets to keep?

Okay, you know what, Carissa needs some fun, it's true that all work and no play is bad for Evil people. "Ah, yes, the Queen of Cheliax, who noticed me from, uh, the word 'Sevar' probably having appeared in her briefing document twice."

"I will be genuinely surprised and disappointed with the extent of Governance interest in this project, or, for that matter, their lack of awareness about the project that got them into a war with Nidal, if the Queen of Cheliax does not by this point personally know your Intelligence, your Worldwound record, your learning metrics from wizard academy, and the fact that when we left the Forbiddance together you were wearing an intelligence headband that hadn't gone through military checks."

"Right, okay, that's fair, she probably has an entire page of sexy sexy performance reviews on me. I would be stunned and impressed at your initiative and extremely confused and kneel very obediently for negotiations because if that's the kind of thing the Queen likes she would absolutely be taking notes on whether I was kneeling properly - I'm probably not, the palace has all kinds of rules for things like that."

"The Queen is a much more experienced sadist than I am.  Feeling insecure about whether she could successfully steal you from me, I insist on negotiating a term in our agreement saying that, if your affections shift too far from me towards her, I'm legally entitled to walk out on any current project obligations and take you with me, whether you like that or not, to a country that's okay with my owning you like I own my shirt.  The idea being that in this way Carissa Sevar never thinks in her heart that maybe the Queen has more real power over her than Keltham does."

Keltham deserves to see the face she made privately when he first came up with this plan, even though her feelings are mostly all dead now. 

"Not to fight this incredibly hot hypothetical too much but if the Queen wanted to keep me against my will, she knows how, and you don't. It takes some work, with wizards, and even the places that would agree that you - own me like you own your shirt - wouldn't be able to help you find me, if I summoned a horse made out of mist, in the night, and ran away." Is she making it obvious enough that her desired reaction here is not 'well obviously I'd let you go, then'?

Keltham entirely fails to take conscious note of this minor shift of ethical premises because he is a dath ilani boyfriend who has been handed a Problem to Solve!  "I've still got whatever pay I've accumulated from Governance, and the contract gives me enough time while Security holds you prisoner that I can look up whatever solutions are standard and deploy them on you."

See this is going exactly how Carissa planned except for the thing where Abrogail is furious with her, and if it continues to go exactly as planned Abrogail will work out her frustrations eventually. "I think the standard solution is to make them use all their spells and take their spellbook, which works on the ninety eight percent of wizards who don't have high enough Spellcraft to eventually learn how to scaffold without any special inks for structure. I do not think the standard solution is the one that the Queen of Cheliax would be using, if we are surmising that she read my records."

"I mean, the notion isn't that I'm taking the Queen head-on in a contest of wills and powers, the notion is that I cheated and got her signed agreement to lose to me before the contest started.  I don't have to hold hypothetical Carissa better than the Queen could, I just have to hold her so she can't get back to the Queen."

"But actually our story doesn't get this far!  The Queen of Cheliax mysteriously refuses to sign off on this absolutely and totally reasonable request I am making of her, despite Contessa Lrilatha and all of her other advisors telling her how absolutely and totally reasonable it is.  I break off negotiations and inform you that the Queen of Cheliax is a living manifestation of the same phenomenon that sent Pilar to Elysium, a belief further updated when it turns out that Asmodia started being able to see people's thoughts after she came back from Hell, and now we all have no choice but to flee back to our new project home.  I tell you that you are firmly forbidden from ever again meeting with the Queen of Cheliax, no matter how hot she is or how much your thoughts turn to all the scary things she could do to you, because everybody has a job to do and I don't want any more plot complications we can possibly delay or avoid.  What is your estimate of the effect this entire series of events would have on our relationship?"

" - Asmodia can what now? Uh, being tangentially present for palace romantic drama and being ordered to stay away from the Queen at all costs sounds hot but I feel like honestly in this situation my sexual feelings are mostly taking a back seat to my trying to figure out what the fuck phenomenon is messing with our project and how to kill it."

"Correct, Carissa.  Very correct."

Some further sexual hypotheticals follow.  Keltham then says they've done enough of those, on net he's feeling pretty reassured about some things, and excuses himself momentarily to dispatch a message to Isidre.

His oblivious girlfriend will hang innocently out on his bed.

She is very oblivious and innocent!  Carissa not having any idea what's she's about to walk into does make Keltham feel rather supervillainish, to the point where he has to fight back his conscience questioning whether Civilization would really, honestly approve of all this.

Carissa has been very very loud about wanting him to try more things in the cuddleroom, wanting him to take more risks, he checked under suddenly truthspell if she really believed he could trust what she was saying, and she did.  They have known each other for three whole days now, and it's time to move forward on ambitious third-date activities, like negotiating fallback ownership options on her so that he can safely rent her to the Queen of Cheliax as a romantic surprise.  If he can't do even that much, their relationship is hopeless!

Dath ilan spends a great deal of money and energy trying to prevent its overly smart people from getting bored by a life that is far less complicated than the most complicated life their brains could handle.

So far, in Keltham's experience, Golarion is doing legitimately better at this.  Credit where it's due.

Keltham pounces on his oblivious girlfriend and kisses her; and hurts her as best he can, without using any tools, squicking himself out, or being the Queen of Cheliax.

They are not going to advance all the way to sex, though.  Keltham has further work ahead of him this evening; and frankly, he is not sure he can make it through all that, if he is not sufficiently horny to remember why he's trying.  He does moderately expect that, if things go well enough, he can get fairly thoroughly laid afterwards.

His oblivious girlfriend is very satisfying to hurt, and very attracted to him, and gives no indication that she is bored of this and wants a more experienced sadist such as the Queen of Cheliax. 

(She...doesn't.)

There are some sights you see very rarely in Golarion, like a nude beach full of sunbathing drow, or a gnome and a ninja patiently feeding seaweed snacks to a dragon who is presently a hamster but which keeps flash-freezing them when it sneezes, or a mouse the size of a building smashing through to, and then pooping in, the innermost sanctum of the ancient imperial line of Minkai, or a pepper grenade roadside stand doing brisk business in the middle of the great desert, an overwrought and glittery temple of Iomedae, or a paladin on a shoplifting spree.

You do see them a bit more in Golarion than in other places, though.

There are some sights you see very rarely in Golarion, and one of those sights is the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus clutching a sheaf of parchments and laughing so hard there are tears in her eyes and she's having to physically lean against the wall and is probably going to hit herself with Lesser Restoration when this is over to make up for how much she isn't breathing and all of these paroxysms are making her stomach physically hurt but none of this matters because Aspexia Rugatonn has now reached the part where Keltham is completely innocently explaining to the Queen of Cheliax that if she doesn't act like a fucking sane person for once in her entire life she will be either unceremoniously removed from the throne or forced to become his girlfriend.

That... might not be such a bad idea actually?  Though not in that sense, of course.

It's just that Keltham - for all his headstrongness, his errors, his delusions, his total spoilation and lack of discipline bestowed by his Lawful Good society's insanely permissive upbringing - still in other ways radiates a powerful impression that... well.   That he could not only understand Aspexia's notion of 'corrigibility' after three minutes of explanation, but would possibly even invent it all himself the moment he understood what Asmodeus's own problems were like as seen from His perspective.

They have no idea what dath ilani halfbloods will be like, at this point.  But depending on how they turn out, if they can keep half of all that Law and be raised also Evil, it's plausible that the Church of Asmodeus would really, really, and by 'Church of Asmodeus' Aspexia Rugatonn here means 'Aspexia Rugatonn', really, really, really want somebody on the throne of Cheliax who could understand the concept of 'corrigibility'.

Abrogail Thrune II's compact with Asmodeus says that, while she can bear any number of potential heirs to men of her own choosing, the Church may twice ask of her a father of the Church's own choosing.  As for who inherits, that is something that only a compact with Asmodeus can decide.

The Church hasn't asked that of Abrogail, so far, because there's been no candidate that would be worth the amount of fuss they'd get.  Abrogail's compact says that she needs to do it, but the incompetent devil who framed that compact unfortunately did not specify that Abrogail needed to act professional about receiving such a request.  Rather a massive oversight, as it turned out, among many others.  So far Abrogail has borne no children at all; but this is not a national problem, there are other Thrunes who could compact with Asmodeus.

Aspexia Rugatonn will have to seriously consider whether she wants to actually do this, or just threaten to do it in order to witness the look on Abrogail's face.  Those are the only two options, to be clear, there is no third.

But first she's going to finish reading.

Keltham receives notice that he has an Important Meeting in 10 minutes!  He thanks the messenger, closes the door, checks his new pocketwatch to establish the time, and goes back to being mean to Carissa for the next 8 minutes.

(This, to be clear, is less notice than you usually give a Chelish citizen for a royal audience, they will probably want to get dressed or write out a testament or some such.  But Abrogail Thrune does have any grasp of what Keltham hasn't the tiniest inkling about, and she does not particularly want to spend any additional time receiving him on an impressive throne.  As in, not one single additional minute.)

Bye, Carissa, sorry for all this going-back-and-forth but this is hopefully Keltham's last meeting-set of the day!  He'll probably be like at least thirty minutes; this would be a good time for Carissa to spend some time decompressing from the whole Security thing and getting in some alone time for herself.  Though, to be clear, that's not a command, it's just an idea.

The idea will be taken into account!

(Carissa could in fact use some time to herself, but does Abrogail want her for this?)

There's no Security showing up to escort her anywhere in particular.

Cool. Then she's going to snuggle under Keltham's covers and 

- if you'd told her two days ago that by the end of the third day she'd have Keltham demanding of Cheliax the legal right to take Carissa with him against her will anywhere he pleases, and reluctant to leave Cheliax because of being hunted by Kuthites, while Cheliax conquered Nidal using diamonds Otolmens gave their project, she'd be delighted.

She isn't, but that's because the torture seems to have burned out more feelings than just the inconvenient one. She wonders if Contessa Lrilatha ever has any feelings at all.

Within the center of Egorian's Imperial Palace is a tiny park, lit by magically artificial sunlight, with a brook of clear water that flows from nowhere to nowhere.  It doesn't see much use; Cheliax doesn't often receive visitors so naive as to be moved even subconsciously by the implication that this is where some Thrune likes to spend their spare time.

Abrogail Thrune II, now in her true outer form, is wearing royal robes much simpler than those she usually wears, and sitting in a simpler chair than the Throne of Cheliax.  She's flicking breadcrumbs to the fish that spend their whole lives confined to this artificial brook.

As much as Abrogail is annoyed by other aspects of the affair, including the manner in which she was the author of her own destruction, she's never going to get a chance to do this again in her entire life and have somebody actually buy it.  So, yes, she's feeding breadcrumbs to the fish.

Keltham, having left his escort behind a few steps ago, steps into the tiny park and gives an approving nod; like much of the Imperial Palace, this place seems acceptably pretty for a civilized society.

The Queen of Cheliax... is superstimulus-level hot the same way as Contessa Lrilatha, but much more dangerously so on account of looking human.  Keltham is glad that he knows that magical beauty treatments exist (is that why the plot point of Carissa getting one?) because otherwise his ero-route trope alarms would be blaring even louder.  It makes perfect sense that the Queen of Cheliax is absurdly hot, of course she is, she'd be able to afford it in a society with the economicmagic for that; it's not at all inevitably the case that she's going to try to steal Carissa, or that one way or another the two of them will end up fucking no matter how contrived the reason, no, not at all.

She also looks tired.  Exhausted, even.

"Sorry about this," Keltham says apologetically, as he comes over to sit in the chair left next to the Queen's own chair, which is exactly as fancy as hers.  "I realize you're probably pretty busy.  Exhausted even."

"Don't be too sorry.  This is less stressful than what I was doing before I came here."  So gently says the tired Queen of Cheliax, Abrogail, who, while not dangerously Good like Isidre, also has overly large problems and a headband too much more powerful than anyone else's.  "So you're the boy who's caused all this trouble, hm?"

"Can't quite tell if that was a joke across the cultural gap.  If not, there's a difference between setting off trouble and intending to create it.  Though the same proverb also says that making people any less responsible, than responsible for all the effects of all their actions, can create dangerous loopholes in things - but, I think for a case like this one, some of that distinction matters."

"It was a joke.  Mostly.  There may have been an edge to it, now that I think about it.  When war begins, there is a certain urge to look around and find somebody near to hand to blame."