"If Dou-Bral originally cooperated to seal Rovagug, Zon-Kuthon probably was pretty close to being dissatisfied enough with the state of the world that he'd prefer to destroy it.  Anything that brought hope into this world, anything at all, would have set him off."

Abrogail smiles with real humor.  (At least it's going to look like real humor to Keltham unless he has suddenly acquired rather an extreme number of ranks in Perception or Sense Motive.)

"I admire your ability to describe yourself as that which brings hope into the world.  Most boys your age would probably be a little embarrassed to talk about themselves that way."

Keltham is confused by this.  "I would've put more maybes and qualifiers around it, and called it more of a personal belief state than a public one, before Zon-Kuthon went straight for me and had to be sealed away by the other gods.  You've enough evidence now to know that the advertisement is certified accurate."

A sigh, but still a humorous one.  "I was teasing, or trying to.  I suppose it didn't make it across the - what did you call it - cultural gap."

Keltham associates that kind of apparent-mating-value-lowering 'teasing' with Complicated Flirting where you're maneuvering for relative advantage if you actually end up in a relationship.  Keltham was really hoping that was not going on here.

Time for a quick change of subject.  "Don't suppose you've got your own plans for a meeting agenda?"  He'd usually whiteboard it, but the park has nothing to write on, let alone writing materials.

By Keltham's thoughts, he truly doesn't have the concept of the thing that a royal monarch is, in the true Golarion.  If he had his writing-surfaces about him, he'd blithely write out his agenda.

If one of those agenda items was causing the downfall of another god, he'd treat it no differently than any other.  Gods, to Keltham, are things to be coordinated-with; and if they don't coordinate, they have to be put down, first temporarily by other gods, and then permanently by the eventual Civilization that Zon-Kuthon feared and that Keltham sees an opportunity to build.

He's stranger, and maybe a tiny bit scarier, when he thinks about matters on a larger scale than his woman Carissa.  Finding himself in a world with gods is no different to him from finding himself in a world with fish; they are both just ordinary real things to him once he knows they exist.

Abrogail can see, or maybe not see, but she can imagine, why Otolmens might be concerned.

"I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't at least ask what you intend to bring into Cheliax and Golarion next, though that discussion may need to be cut short if we are to discuss everything on our agenda."

She would, in fact, be remiss; this is something she wants to read Keltham's mind about.

For some reason it hadn't occurred to Keltham that he ought to polish his elevator pitch before talking to this venture capitalist!  Oh, silly him, that's probably what the 10 minutes were for.

Not much worries, though; Keltham has substantially higher verbal facility than you'd expect from a random Golarion bloke with Intelligence 18, just like he has higher Wisdom than you'd expect of a random boy his age with Intelligence 18.

Keltham will spend the next five minutes extemporizing an elevator pitch on Civilization, the nice things that it has, and how while there's lots of specific nice things, the much more important thing is going into an attractor made out of harmonizing bits of Law that lets you start figuring out those things yourself.  Now and then, though, Keltham quite visibly (to either Abrogail) hesitates to mention some unknown thing, and then says something else instead.

From reading Keltham's mind, Abrogail now knows, in admittedly not much detail at all, that greater-fire and other scalable weapons are a thing; and there's some sort of stuff called '~~~~-~~~~~~' that Keltham worries he should just never mention to anyone in case Prestidigitation can flip ordinary materials into it.  Except it is the sort of thing you figure out inevitably given enough knowledge, so if there's any spell below Wish that does it, maybe physics past the ~~~~~~ level is much more infohazardous in Golarion.  Still, Keltham's thoughts are totally confident in the ability of a grownup and Lawful Civilization to handle that sort of thing; his Civilization didn't blink about putting the entire past under a screen when they encountered some unknown thing that really needed to be screened off.

She's obviously not going to talk about this with anyone; not even Rugatonn or Lrilatha or Gorthoklek, except in the most abstract terms.  She doesn't want all the diamonds in Cheliax teleported to Lastwall.

Is Asmodeus... sure that He knows what He's doing?

But then Abrogail would run a pretty high risk of destroying all of Golarion, let alone just Cheliax, before she risked not letting her senior partner have His own fun, and so betraying Him in the depths of her own heart.  So until she gets different orders, she's going to stick with these.  Worst case, the world gets destroyed and needs to be rebuilt by the gods; it's not like you can destroy Hell that way, she doesn't think.

"And what would you of us in return, then?  Non-binding negotiations."

Keltham explained the Law of this to his class yesterday, before Zon-Kuthon attacked - sorry, Keltham didn't mean to suggest there was a causal connection to that Law in particular being told.  Keltham considers the starting point for negotiations given that Law to be pretty straightforward.  He does want it clear that this is not his opening offer in a Golarion-style illegible negotiation meant to be bargained down; but if she's read the full class transcript with that incredibly fancy headband, the Queen will know all about that.

Keltham's private thoughts?  Exactly the same as what he says aloud; there is no dishonesty in him, no dishonesty at all, when it comes to trade.  That's not because he's nice, but because he knows what fairness is and will not lightly brook any departure from it, whether by himself or any other.  In that sense, if in very few others, this young man could pass as an ordinary cleric of Abadar.

"I think this may have already been mentioned to you, but Cheliax is - not easily set up to measure great gains in productivity, and tax away half of it to you."

It's admirably Evil and would probably count in Pharasma's sight too; though it's pretty obvious Keltham doesn't realize that the wealth he takes away would starve some number of orphans that would otherwise have lived had those taxes been less.  Maybe even if he knew, he'd shrug and say that it was still fewer total orphans than would've starved if Keltham had never come to Cheliax; it's not Abrogail's read on him, though.

"Thing needs to get done one way or another, but if somebody's got to lose, I see no particular reason it needs to be me, or rather, why I need to lose more than my Lawful and fair share.  If Governance has problems with basic capacities, show those to me and I might agree in the end that it's not possible to do better in Golarion and some deal needs to happen anyways.  But at that point, with truly huge quantities of wealth at stake, yeah, if it's not the straightforward division of gains under Law, I might start throwing around truthspells, the fairness spell, and cap it off with a single oath that nobody messed with those spells."

"I need to cut a deal with somebody, yeah, but somebody also needs to cut a deal with me.  You would ordinarily expect that if there was just the one of me, and several possible countries to deal with, that the person in shorter supply of themselves would have the upper hand in negotiations.  Cheliax looks to be the best of them, at the moment, but it does need to keep looking like that."

"What would you do with such vast wealth, if it were yours?"

Invest it, obviously.  What else would you do with more wealth than you can sanely spend on personal living expenses?  If Mad Investor Chaos didn't suspect that he was going to need to run all over Cheliax and Golarion frantically investing in 200 different projects to build pieces of Civilization, he would be asking a smaller share of the gains.

Keltham's thoughts show sincerity (of course, he's a cleric of Abadar negotiating a trade deal with somebody who hasn't visibly betrayed him yet) and some not especially Golarion-comprehensible thoughts about logarithmic utility-functions if you're spending money on yourself.  Abrogail does know what a logarithm is, but the connection in Keltham's thoughts is not clear.

"If you were willing to take some of your share of the gains in a public investment fund that stayed in Cheliax, it would potentially simplify some political problems for us."  And also probably be the sort of thing that's much easier to contractually yoink, if Keltham tries to leave.

Abrogail does have some thoughts about how Keltham's gains, if he tries to leave, could be made payable to him 'in the standard backing of value for Chelish currency'.  The trouble is, that gets caught by that incredibly audacious clause he innocently dared to offer Lrilatha about avoiding terms expected to have unexpected unpleasant consequences.  If Keltham's departure leaves behind most of his gains in the form of a Cheliax-only investment fund, if they can get away with including that clear and understood term, it might save Cheliax quite a lot of loss.

"I suppose I'm open to so encumbering some of the gains with spending restrictions, if that's really helpful for some reason, but in general, I expect the next stage is making lots of investments outside Cheliax; and also I currently trust my ability to pick investments more than... no, that's not quite right.  Chelish Governance can already be expected to run around making the investments in Cheliax obvious to Chelish Governance.  I am concerned about reserving the power to run around patching the holes and fixing what's left, and I do want that power as unencumbered as possible."

"Mm," Abrogail says softly.  She tosses some more breadcrumbs to the fish.  "I think you will be - sadly surprised in some of the ways you have been sadly surprised before - at what strange things are more or less politically feasible in Golarion.  It is full of encumbrances, both on money and on other things.  What you think is reasonable, what is in fact reasonable under Law, may not be something that even the Queen of Cheliax could give if she tried her hardest.  I say this not to pressure you in negotiations; it is just - a world you do not seem to quite, yet, understand."

"Understood.  The problem being, it would be good to cut a deal soon and get started on some things, and to wait for me to understand more things, comes with that as a delay."

"You could try showing me what you thought was a totally sane and reasonable deal for somebody who actually understood Golarion and see how loudly I screamed.  Maybe I wouldn't scream very loudly at all, and then we'd have a deal."

Heh.  What a friendly cleric of Abadar this is.  "Perhaps we shall try that, then."

It can always be said not to have come from Lrilatha, and if Keltham tries to add a no-gotchas clause, he can be told that this does require Lrilatha to rewrite the whole thing.

"I think we should perhaps move on to our other, how did you put it - agenda item."

"I have been getting to know you some, by these interactions; they weren't wasted even from the thirstiest, most money-uncaring standpoint."

He really has no concept that corresponds to what a Queen is.  "I am given to understand that Isidre has - meddled, I think, would be the term I'd use here.  Contrary to what some of my advisors seem to think, I never had any intention of taking Carissa Sevar away from you.  It would have been really quite incredibly stupid."

Keltham is somewhat reassured.  Somewhat.  "I am a little worried that you would have ended up doing it quite by accident.  For the same reason that - Pilar went to Elysium, and Ione foretells Nidal attacks.  Well, the same reason according to one particular try by me at interpreting and predicting events, which could very easily be absolutely and entirely wrong, but has been making a couple of successful predictions lately.  The same prediction would say that we would somehow end up fighting over Carissa no matter how much that made absolutely no sense in the middle of a war.  It is rather a weird and complicated reason to try to explain."

"Yes, 'tropes', Isidre told me little of them and less sense than that.  I think I do not want any 'tropes' anywhere near Cheliax.  That is most of what I desire for myself, in this.  No 'tropes'.  'Tropes' be gone.  Not for the good of Cheliax, even, so much as that I don't want to live my life like that."

"All right, maybe Isidre didn't oversell how totally sensible of a person you were," Keltham says out loud like this is a completely normal and sane thing to say to the Queen of Cheliax.

'Abrogail', of course, is only gently amused; she knows the Outsider is ignorant.  "Let us all pray to Asmodeus that it is so and continues to be so."

"I can't guarantee that anything we can do here can keep the 'tropes' out of Cheliax.  Assuming they exist, like, literally at all.  Taking steps to defuse every hint of future possible conflict, complication, and open questions about Carissa Sevar between us, may heavily act to minimize whether any 'tropes' are going to start hanging around you personally and not just Pilar or Ione or Carissa or myself.  Assuming, again, that 'tropes' are even a thing."

"I hadn't previously thought us especially likely to get into a conflict over Carissa Sevar in the first place; but yes, if there's a threat to myself here, I am interested in minimizing it."  'Abrogail' is not that Good and is allowed to say such things.

"It's possible I shouldn't poke at this, but - you don't think the simplest solution is just to find somebody else?"

"I think you overestimate how often I find someone I am actually interested in, at all," Abrogail says softly.  A butterfly lands on her hand, where it rests on her chair's arm, and she lowers her head and gently blows to shoo it away.  "Maybe Carissa Sevar would be as common as iron in dath ilan; here she is gold.  You picked her up too easily to appreciate what you now hold in your hands, I think."

"I'd still walk entirely away from Carissa Sevar if that was the cost of a 'trope'-free life.  I am just worried that - walking away is not the correct way to prove that a 'trope' can have no existence?  A compact between us ensuring that I cannot possibly end up with Sevar under any circumstances, and my then having my fun with her and putting it behind me, seems possibly wiser.  Possibly.  You would probably know better than I."

"That question has occurred to me as well, several times.  I hope I don't end up regretting it a lot, when I say that I really have absolutely no clue which of those two courses of action is the better one, and we might as well take the one that's more fun, if we are otherwise determined to both be as extremely sensible as we can about it all."

'Abrogail' laughs; somewhat to her surprise, it's her real self's laugh as well.  Yes, that is the reason behind the decision, isn't it?  Abrogail can offer no better logic of her own.

"Then.  Shall we set our terms over Carissa Sevar?"

"I'm not quite sure about any of this, but I think we're supposed to do that in front of Carissa, possibly even if we're not fighting it out.  It may not be a matter of winning if we're not fighting, but it's the process that decides who controls her, and that open question in her mind should be resolved to close out the" reaction-binding-site "target shape that a 'trope' might hook itself into, at least if Carissa can act as a" viewpoint-character "thing that a 'trope' thinks has questions."

"Also that would be more romantic, according to intuitions I now apparently have."

"Also also I need Isidre to write some of the terms and then not look at them myself."

Also also also there is a chance that something goes weirdly wrong during the negotiation, and then while they are all probably doomed, they may still be less doomed if Isidre and Lrilatha are right there.

(Also also also also if Carissa suddenly realizes she's terribly wrong about what she finds hot, she should maybe be, like, someplace she can say that before it's too late; but this cannot and need not be thought, because it exceeds the maximum 'also' stack depth, plus it's too obvious.)

Any sane person would, at this point, suggest that the real bargaining happen between themselves, and that they just play it out again for Carissa once the outcome has been predetermined and they know their parts in the play, but that, Abrogail suspects (or 'Abrogail', for that matter) is far too terribly dishonest for a dath ilani.

...good luck, Sevar, thinks Abrogail, but then Sevar's had enough unexpected luck already that Asmodeus's hand there is clear.

"Mm.  That does present a... let us not say complication.  Doing this in front of Carissa, instead of simply presenting her with a sealed agreement between us, presents us with a matter of something that you gain and something that I lose.  What you gain is her affection; what I lose is something that I worry a dath ilani may not understand.  It has to do with Asmodeus's domain of pride, which, being something that belongs to a god, is not intrinsically defined in mortal terms; but in mortal terms... maybe I could say that I have a reputation for winning, and that you want me to do something that could be seen as losing.  Not in private between ourselves, but where others, like Carissa, or for that matter Isidre, can see it."

"I suspect translation difficulties around the word.  Is it like - the pleasure that you get from being a better player of your favorite game than most people around you, visibly and in a way you can prove to them?"

If pity was something that Abrogail Thrune went about feeling, she knows she would be feeling it now.  'Abrogail' feels it, therefore.  "That is something like what I might expect to remain in a society that had gone much much much too far in the direction of Good, after they'd taken something deep and real in human nature and flattened it down into a small sad remnant they deemed acceptable."

"Right, well, is it something like killing all the players of the game who are better than you so that you can be the best one left alive."

Keltham supposes this is a thing you can trade a sufficiently large heap of dead bodies for, exact size of heap depending on initial talent and practice.  Though to Keltham himself, it seems like this is completely missing the point of what dath ilan and yes he thinks is the meaning of pride in playing a game well and visibly better than others.  It proves you're adequate at the murder game, but the other gameplayers weren't even trying to compete with you in that.

"That is what I would expect an overly Good society to tell its children was what happened if they let themselves feel any real pride."  And they wouldn't be wrong, per se, but still, there's more to it than that.

"It is sometimes hard to explain things like this to me, though I want to understand them all eventually, and your time is valuable; I don't know if we want to go down that conversational..." subtree they have no word for subtree how the ass do you convey 'subtree' in Taldane.  "Thing you can go down.  What are the consequences?"

"We do this in a manner that looks less like you winning and my losing, that looks less like things are taken from me and you are taking them by being greater and mightier in your own person than the Queen of Cheliax.  To the extent we cannot do that, or you do not wish to, you offer me something I value in return.  I am more open than many rulers would be to the latter course," because most of the real pride-trampling has already occurred, at this point, and she may as well get paid for it.

Not that Keltham has very much he can trade that could possibly be worth as much as Abrogail Thrune has already lost of her pride to this stripling.  If he ever stops being valuable to Cheliax and Asmodeus withdraws His protection, she has more than a curious interest, now, in seeing what happens to dath ilani as they are slowly broken.

"If Carissa was something that had a normal price I would offer you ten percent discount on her, but I don't know if that still works for sex things that aren't really about the money."

Where does she start.

"It... doesn't work for sex things, no, and your suggestion sounded incredibly strange for Golarion.  You should, at some point, tell Sevar about what you said there, and have her explain things to you."  So Abrogail can read the transcripts of Carissa's thoughts when she hears.

"Among other things, did I not know you for something that is from further beyond our world than ordinary outsiders, it would be - something you should not say, to suggest that any part of the Queen's pride is worth only that much money."

"Carissa herself, being rented, is worth something to you; if this were a real price in money, that amount would be either set to balance supply and demand, or else her real value to you would be somewhere around twice what you were paying me, assuming that renting her cost me nothing significant.  If you lose something in pride that is nonetheless less important to you than what you gain by having Carissa, it decreases your total gains from the trade.  Which doesn't matter if it's a supply and demand balance, I'd just sell to somebody else.  But if it's a non-market fair-division problem, then losing something in the course of gaining Carissa's rental decreases the fair price to you of her rental, hence the discount."

"The Law is straightforward if it's actually about the money, I don't know what we're supposed to do if it's a sex thing.  Do you have a suggestion in mind?"

"In truth I am not clear on what I could ask from you, at this point, which would be appropriate.  Most of the things that are wanted from you are things that Cheliax wants, not that I want, and it is I and not Cheliax who loses here.  You could agree that you owed me a future favor appropriate to the real cost to me of my lost pride in this matter; it requires some trust from me to you, that you will repay, but no more trust than you are already being given in some ways."

(Say the key words as if they mean nothing, make sure to add some more distracting words later, hope he is that naive and does not know to be wary of Asmodeans bearing bargains...)

"Lady, I mean, you sort of are the person who gets to rent Carissa in the first place, here?  And the sexy-price that was suggested to me by Isidre did not strike me as being in the range of what that is actually worth to you - the value you gain from it - given that it's worth this much of your time at all, and given what I expect your finances are like."

"I am doing this because it will, supposedly, I hope, be good for Carissa, because I think it will impress my girlfriend, and because I want fewer 'tropes' messing with me.  And since that's an adequate reason for me to do it, and this is all a sex thing in the first place, and we are all hopefully friends here, and also probably really because I am still thinking of this as somebody else having sex with Carissa only it has to be done in a way that makes my brain shut up about it -"

"For all of those reasons, I haven't asked you for anything like what the Queen of Cheliax can afford to pay for anything that's worth her time at all, or asked you to explicitly owe me a favor afterwards."

"...uh, I hope we're not starting to have a real conflict here, where we're contesting negotiating abilities or something.  If we're starting to have a real conflict that calls into question who gets to have Carissa, or whether this agreement takes place at all, then it should happen in front of Carissa for 'trope' reasons."  And Lrilatha and Isidre should be there.

"...one addresses the Queen of Cheliax as 'Your Majesty', not 'Lady', to be clear."  Even 'Abrogail' says this, albeit she does not say it as sharply as Abrogail Thrune would wave someone off to torture-execution.

It would figure that, in Abadar's World, they are not as naive about bargaining as about some things.  But he still, Abrogail hopes, does not realize the game he is really playing, or how deadly it can be to him in an Asmodean country.

"I hadn't hoped that would be an irreconcilable point of conflict, no," says Abrogail.  She shrugs.  "Your point is a very fair one, and I should have seen it myself; my apologies for that.  I suppose it could be something like - I agree to owe you a favor proportional to how much I really gain from sex with Sevar, and you owe me a favor proportional to the real cost to me in lost pride of how you got to look impressive in front of Sevar while negotiating that."

"It's considered ill practice where I come from to take on debts with no legible caps on their objective magnitude, unless you're creating a child in which case you don't have a choice and somebody's got to do that sometimes.  I suppose that since the real cost and real value are being assessed by reference to your own values, you could feel safe with that?  Though for edge-case coverage reasons I'd want the explicit understanding that the favor you owe me is greater than the favor I owe you, say by a factor of at least two, that they are positive in sign, and that the two can potentially be partially cancelled against each other."

...is she not going to win this one?  It seems so.

Did she doom herself to 'trope'hood by that not happening in front of Sevar?  She doesn't think so; that was a duel between herself and Keltham and not one that was really over possession of Carissa at all.

Well.  Perhaps Sevar's thought was correct, perhaps everyone but her underestimates Keltham; he is doing better than she expected, even now.  But at least to Abrogail, it seems like Keltham does flirt very close to the edges of losing his games and damning himself in one sense or another.  He just needs to be encouraged to go on playing them.

The Queen sighs.  "I suppose we could have it be - the kind of favors owed that are understood not to be enforceable even in the eyes of Asmodeus?  I am a little friendlier to you for borrowing Sevar, you are a little friendlier to me for making you look good in front of her."

"Maybe what I really want is the acknowledgement that my pride has any value at all, in this.  Especially since, as an outsider from a world lost completely to Good, you may not see or realize or understand the Evil thing that you are trampling on and perhaps also trample on it excessively."

"That is very much something I would prefer not to do.  I acknowledge explicitly, your pride is valuable; even the shadow dath ilan still has would be valuable, if maybe less so.  Let no value be destroyed that need not be destroyed."

He'd add that Civilization is not that lost to Good, like seriously lady your majesty; but who knows, maybe from her perspective it is that lost, just like Golarion from his perspective lacks almost any trace of Law.

"Is there anything helpful that can be told to the outsider to prevent his unintended rampage of value-destruction?"

It is far far far too late, unfortunately.  'Abrogail' will nonetheless try to explain the concept of how to treat royalty deferentially; and that the meeting she's currently having is in fact one where if she was having it with a Chelish citizen it would be 'incognito', meaning that she is pretending not to be the Queen, still Abrogail Thrune but not the Queen; meaning that Keltham is allowed to sit in her presence instead of stand, and she does not need a much fancier chair to protect the dignity of Cheliax.

(They do it in Taldor.)

...is she trolling him.

She isn't!  She shouldn't even try to explain all of this on the Queen's expensive time; after this, Keltham can get an emergency one-hour lesson in how to interact with a non-incognito Queen without that being an Incident if it happens in front of her advisors.  He can think of things he might need to say, and memorize how to say them in the more formal interaction, and hopefully enough of that will let him improvise around the edges if necessary.  Even then, if he suddenly hears Isidre's voice magically whispering in his ear, he needs to immediately pause whatever he's doing and listen and not argue.

(This will give Carissa Sevar slightly more time to recover; since, it has by now been reported to Abrogail, the cute little idiot went and submitted herself to her any-time-in-three-days torture session right away, without making sure it happened sometime when she'd have an hour or two to herself to recover afterward.  Was Sevar that stupid, that overconfident of her recovery ability, or had she just never previously gotten herself in important-project-screwup, mentally-insubordinate-to-the-Queen levels of trouble?  Probably all three.

It is infuriating that the child has gotten herself into a vital position where she needs to be accommodated for incompetence like that, rather than it being turned into a more object lesson.  But they're planning to try out Lrilatha running Suggestion on Keltham; and while that is expected to go well, Sevar needs to be in better form to exploit whatever change Keltham has then in his thoughts.)

Keltham is disturbed by the implication that the Queen has any advisors who don't understand the reason why a sane person would just ignore all this hugely time-costly crap.

...it's a not-as-Lawful-as-dath-ilan thing.  You wouldn't understand.

Does the Queen think this whole shenanigan is generating enough value that it's worth spending an hour of Keltham's valuable time, on trying to load, and shortly-afterwards forget, all this shit?  Or is this knowledge in some other way reusable and persistently valuable?

...to be honest, Abrogail does suspect that learning some completely pointless Golarion shit will be an important life experience for Keltham.

If that sentence needed to be prefaced with 'to be honest', does that mean all the previous sentences not so prefaced were possibly not honest.

It's an expression meaning, to reveal one's thoughts rather than concealing them, or to reveal the whole thought rather than concealing some of it you might otherwise be tempted to conceal.  This was the meaning Abrogail had in mind.

Or yes, in Golarion, to tell the truth where one might otherwise lie.  In many of the common scenarios where of course the other person would expect you to lie but maybe not if you said 'to be honest' in a serious-sounding voice first.

That really doesn't make any -

You need to talk about this with Sevar, Keltham, not me.

Yes.  Sorry.

Is Keltham ready for his etiquette lesson?

(Abrogail Thrune is enjoying how much his thoughts are dreading this.  It's not much at all, but at least she gets to torture him a little.)

Are they done here? - Keltham asks himself.  He didn't - get a chance to talk about, well, what's actually going to happen to Carissa.  Which Keltham apparently needs to treat as an infohazard for probably like at least a month or something.

Unfortunately Keltham came into this conversation with a clear goal, namely, get his brain into a position to decide whether it was comfortable renting Carissa to the Queen, but with no real idea of how to accomplish that goal.

...internal interrogation suggests that, on the one hand, their overt interactions have not been very - sexy, doesn't really create any relationship where Keltham rents Carissa to her... oh.  In retrospect, maybe that's what the Complicated Flirting was about; it was just that Keltham was much more worried when that happened, about the Queen possibly trying to open her eroLARP route at him, so he shut it down.  He was probably not supposed to do that.

Still, that the Queen flirted (hopefully just pseudo-flirted) at him, at all, is an acknowledgement of Keltham as a sexual-romantic-relationship-having-thing, and that is... possibly enough for whatever weird thing is inside him, Keltham does not understand the rules at all.  Well, it's enough provided that the Queen is in fact incredibly hot, which she is.

But maybe add safety margin?  Why do something your brain just barely approves of, when you could do not that.

"I think the dath ilani thing to do in this situation, if it could manage to come up in dath ilan, is that we both tell each other a mildly embarrassing naughty story from our early sexual experiences, in a way meant to acknowledge that the other person's story is sexy and funny, and then we have a relationship that is not just about project management or 'trope' avoidance and my brain is more confident that I can rent Carissa to you."

Yes, fine, Abrogail Thrune just wants to be done with this and send Keltham off to his torture session.  Even 'Abrogail' wants to be done with this, though she's not showing it, of course.

'Abrogail' tells a somewhat funny, mildly sexy story that could plausibly have happened to a teenage royal in Taldor before she took over the country.

Keltham will not ask a number of large-looming questions.

Keltham will tell her about that time when he and his carefully spoiler-protected fellows were just figuring things out, and Keltham got to be the one who figured out that, if a certain girl 'wasn't sure' she'd ever had an orgasm, that almost certainly meant she'd never had one.  She then grimly resolved to keep up with her age cohort and get it done within the next hour, not even as a trading-pleasures thing, just get it done; and Keltham got very determined about helping her with this clearly established Goal; and those mental postures, as they would realize at a future point in their lives, were not the most helpful possible mental postures they could have taken.

Dath ilan definitely is a place.

The Queen's chuckles and smiles will read to almost anyone in Golarion as genuine, if they're stupid enough to trust whatever reading skills they're opposing to the Queen of Cheliax.

Did that help?  Keltham isn't sure.  The Queen seems too old, too Very Serious; if he shuts his eyes, his brain doesn't really understand what she would do with Carissa.  If he opens his eyes again and thinks about how the Queen is incredibly hot... frankly that seems to be doing practically all the work here, combined with the earlier flirting.

But he tried the obvious thing and their time is not infinite; his brain is hesitant about the rental but not saying no; and it's time to proceed... with... the plan.

Okay, you know what, he's just going to do this, it can't be that bad, it's just an hour of hearing about absolutely insane nonsense whose very existence is somehow opposed to his own fundamental nature in every way but without that being legible enough to explicitly fight back against, and if he can do that for a minute he can do it for an hour.

Keltham departs for etiquette lessons.

...that was strangely satisfying, in the way of finally having somebody fall into your power whom it had previously been unreasonably difficult to torture.  Is it trivial?  Absolutely.  But he doesn't know that, he has absolutely no clue, and somehow that makes it work.

Maybe she can find future excuses why Keltham definitely needs even more etiquette lessons.  He'd need them in Taldor.

Maybe she can figure out what Keltham most hates about etiquette and design 'improved' etiquette she does in fact have a country to run, and needs to get back to running it literally now.

Carissa does, before she closes her eyes while lying in Keltham's bed, contemplate whether it'd be a disaster if she falls asleep. A normal person would, in fact, either be annoyed or feel inclined to pretend to be, if they came back to their fancy fancy room to find their girlfriend/slave asleep in their bed, but Keltham is an alien and won't even realize he's supposed to mind.

Her next thought is about an hour later, and it's that she would have expected Keltham to be back by now. She sits up.

There's a piece of chocolate cake on a plate next to her.  It looks a lot like the piece of cake that Pilar tried to give her yesterday morning.  No sign of Pilar herself.

Has Chaotic Good considered doing things that aren't stupid. 

"There are starving children in other countries," she tells the empty room.

She eats the cake. It's pretty good.

Message from Security:  Keltham got put in a delay loop while you recovered from your stupid fucking incompetence in taking an optional-time torture session at a point where you still had work to do later.  Can the Queen of Cheliax and a number of other important people now be notified that you'll be ready to be surprised to see them shortly?

Unlike taking it at some other time when she wouldn't still have work to do later; 'not at work' sure does describe, uh, about ten minutes of her last three days. They engineered a lie they don't have an infinite reserve of to excuse her absence and would've needed to engineer another.

It's the wrong thought, and she tucks it away quickly; the primary point of the punishment was that her superiors are better than her, have more experience operating under these conditions and are absolutely competent to handle them, and that she is wrong, when she thinks she's right and they're mistaken. If they think she should've manufactured another excuse some other time then they're right, even if she doesn't see why. 

Anyway, yes, they can so be notified, and could've been notified an hour ago, Carissa is fine.

Security is personally of the opinion that sometime in the next three days, Sevar would have managed to find a time when the Queen of Cheliax wasn't waiting on her; or, you know, maybe just Abrogail Thrune II and not also the second, third, and fourth most powerful people in Cheliax too.

He doesn't send this to Sevar, but he does voice it aloud as commentary to the Security next to him.

The Security next to him says he's not actually sure that's true. He's heard rumors about what life on Project Lawful is like.  Supposedly Maillol, the project manager, committed suicide and had to be tortured severely in Hell in order to get him to consent to being Raised and put back to work on it again.

What did Keltham tell Carissa to do, what should the naive Carissa understand to be going on right now.

Sevar has been told to meet with Paracountess Isidre, according to the story Keltham has received; Keltham wanted to know why this wasn't lying; he did seem fine going along with a technical truth after it was explained that Sevar would, in fact, meet Isidre, and then the Queen shortly after.  Sevar, having been told to dress for properly meeting with a Paracountess, should show up wearing one of her nicer outfits, but that should suffice.

All right. She'll dress up nicely enough to meet a Paracountess of House Thrune, which isn't even that differently from how she'd dress to meet the Queen since she doesn't actually have a further reservoir of even nicer clothes, and do her hair accordingly, and then be escorted wherever this is happening. 

She feels a lot better, even though she can't really understand why important people would have delayed their schedules to let her have a nap she did not need. Well, they're smarter than her.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- it's over?  Is it over?  That was way longer than an hour.  Keltham stopped checking his pocketwatch after it became clear that it was obviously broken or tampered with, but it wouldn't have been helpful anyways because it doesn't have a date function.

He should not have set himself up to do anything this awful and then need to do anything else immediately after that!  Except that he needs to do this as quickly as possible before he forgets anything and needs an etiquette lesson again.  Carissa's price is now 20% higher.

When he gets out, a palace Security is holding a piece of chocolate cake they've been instructed to give him!

(Pilar is not having a great day here - well, actually, it's been literally the best day ever, but not this particular hour - and needs to keep grinding down the tiny bit of herself that wants to be in any way cheerful about having been assigned the servant labor of going around giving useless fucking pieces of cake to people.)

It is delicious cake and Keltham will eat it.  He has, by his ass, earned it.

He does feel better afterwards.  Though, really, he could also use a nap; but even if he is important enough to keep the Queen and her advisors waiting he would prefer not to do that and spend the informal political capital he's earning.

Onward to his important meeting!  In which he will demand to Chelish Governance that they be prepared to deliver Sevar to him restrained and to be his owned object if she ever falls in love with the Queen of Cheliax!

...was Isidre lying about the entire Carissa sex thing in order to make him look like a lunatic and sabotage him in front of the Queen and her advisors no that would make no sense because he asked Carissa and Carissa said it was hot so this should be something they recognize as a totally normal way of thinking; and if not he will truthspell himself and then recount exactly what Isidre told him.

To the Queen's big fancy meeting room audience chamber!  It is time to unreasonably impress his girlfriend!

Great balls of flaming poop, that is one gaudy-ass doompunk supervillain giant fancy meeting room.

He doesn't say it out loud!  It wouldn't be 'etiquette'!

Also in the room is Isidre, the giant alien from the Nidal attack, Contessa Lrilatha in the armor that she apparently just wears, a kindly-looking old lady in a doompunk dress, and the Queen of Cheliax on a truly massive chair that still looks completely ergonomically wrong despite obviously being the most expensive possible model of whatever brand of chair it is.

Keltham properly kneels and bends his head to the Queen.  Everyone in this room except the actress playing Isidre can hear him thinking the dath ilani equivalent of 'Are we there yet?'

This isn't literally the best day of Aspexia Rugatonn's life but it sure is up there.

"To Her Infernal Majestrix, Abrogail Thrune the Second, the Queen of Cheliax and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, I present Keltham, Lawful Evil outsider of the Lawful Good realm of dath ilan, fourth-circle cleric of a Lawful Neutral deity, also enemy of Zon-Kuthon, now fallen, and enlightener of Cheliax," says the actress playing Isidre.

"Rise, Keltham of dath ilan, and approach the throne."

Yeah, he can do that part, anyways.

"Hi Keltham blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah," says the Queen of Cheliax.

...is she deliberately dragging this out.  WHY.

Oh, probably Carissa is a minute late or something.

Actually, Carissa's already here and waiting just outside, but since Keltham has done her the helpful service of thinking of such an incredibly plausible excuse, Abrogail will look apologetic and then keep talking.

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah..."

IT'S ANOTHER TIME LOOP OH NO HE JUST GOT OUT OF THE LAST ONE -

Oh good, Isidre is leaving now, presumably to 'meet' Carissa and get her back, hopefully that doesn't take too long.

Actually is Carissa going to recognize the giant-ass gaudy doompunk supervillain doors to the giant-ass gaudy doompunk supervillain meeting room?  Hopefully not, they don't exactly have cameras here so not everybody should know what the Queen's meeting room looks like.  He does want to see the look on Carissa's face.

'Isidre' returns a moment later with Carissa at her side. Announces her, which absolutely no one in the room is paying any attention to.

- even naive Carissa, who would be experiencing the shock of her life right now, wouldn't be so childish as to let it show on her face. But Keltham is taking these baby steps into deeper Evil for her, for the delight of seeing how she reacts, and she wants to reward him for that, she wants having power over people to be something that he finds endlessly thrilling. And it's not like it embeds everything else in a lie; she can tell him afterwards that she would usually have tried to conceal her shock, but didn't, for him. 

So.