lintamande: He sure is!! Obviously eventually he's going to want an intuition for it but it's much easier to develop an intuition for it when you can see it.
Keltham: Is he having so much luck that he can actually hang a Read Magic or Prestidigitation cantrip?
lintamande: After a while more of fiddling with it, yes!
Keltham: Oh flamingpoop yes he's going to be a wizard! Being a cleric was fun and all (most of the time) but having his own magic feels a lot less like he's depending on somebody else's charity.
How many cantrips can Keltham get? He definitely needs Prestidigitation around for laundry but also hungers for Mage Hand and Mending and Message and Arcane Mark and Dancing Lights and -
lintamande: He can prepare four in a day; that's not a hard physical limit, there are clever tricks one can spend months to years learning to prepare six or eight, but four is standard once you have the basics down and going past four requires doing a ton more work on things like finding overlaps in the spells so you can stabilize them against each other which aren't worth Keltham's time right now.
Keltham: He can only prepare four a day, or only have four hung at a time? Do his two cleric cantrips count against the limit?
lintamande: The cleric ones don't count. He can only prepare four in a day even if he's let them go; if he tries, having let one go, to put something else in its place on the scaffold it will bend out of shape - actually, maybe he should try it so he can see -
Keltham: Sure, he'll practice catching Read Magic a few times, and then dismiss it if he hasn't failed accidentally after 6 casts. That spell doesn't obviously seem very useful, except that it was a spell whose look and feel he remembered.
Now prepare Mage Hand and Message. Then if he tries to prepare Read Magic again, he'll be past the 4-limit, right? What happens?
lintamande: The scaffold doesn't look the same as it did when he started; it's changed shape on him, in Security's illusion, curled and folded as he's laid spells into it. The place where he would've started building Read Magic, before, visibly isn't shaped like that right now.
Keltham: Keltham will mentally review whatever he's presumably already been told about how the scaffold knows how many cantrips he's prepared and why people don't just get another spellbook, unless nobody has explained this to Keltham at all, in which case Keltham will ask.
lintamande: The scaffold changes shape as the spells are built on it, because magic affects the stable-shapes for nearby magic. It was changing shape all along, it was just less notable because there was still some available spell-building space. You can get better at scaffolding so you have space for more (and more powerful) spells. You can get another spellbook and build another scaffold, which will come out identical to the one you've currently got because the interactions that are shaping it are part of you not part of the spellbook.
Keltham: Hmmm. Well, Keltham doesn't see anything promising to ask about that at the moment. Obviously he has unboundedly many questions like 'Do the Very Short People get fewer cantrips, by way of checking that it's nothing to do with spatial volume of the caster?' or 'Even if the limit ends up being 4 for almost everyone, can you detect subtle changes in how fast and how much the scaffold collapses which vary by say somebody's cranial volume?' But not actually anything that's, like, important. Well, unless -
"No such thing as a magic reset, where you hit me with a powerful dispel that blows away all my current wizard spells and whatever sort of internal magical changes correspond to my having already prepared spells? Don't actually do that now unless you're sure it doesn't get my cleric spells too."
lintamande: "There are spells that can do that, but that take a couple hours to do so; they don't work on the same person repeatedly in short succession. They wouldn't hit cleric spells. They mostly intensely compress the process that happens naturally in deep sleep that relaxes those internal magical charges."
Keltham: "Worth trying to prepare a first-circle wizard spell, or don't even bother until I've prepared cantrips for a few days?"
lintamande: "You have to learn a bigger scaffold. Probably not worth it today."
Iarwain: A tall woman garbed in casual-dress for low nobility politely knocks on the library door, and then steps inside. "Sevar. If you'll follow me outside the Forbiddance, I'm your teleport for your afternoon appointment."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa gave this a bit of thought and decided she's just going to be truthful with Keltham that she's also spending some of her money on becoming prettier, probably with a playful 'if you like that'.
She's not going to explain herself yet, though. She follows.
Keltham: Keltham is slightly confused about what sort of scheduling gap this implies - he can neither teach anything for which all students should be present, nor snuggle Carissa until she gets back - but gets tangled up in uncertainties about local interrogating-someone-you're-also-fucking relationship norms for long enough that he doesn't want to yell the question loud enough for it to reach Carissa. And then he doesn't remember the Message cantrip for longer than that.
Well, he has his own mounds of reading and learning to do.
Iarwain: "I'm also to retrieve a cursed bag of holding," the low noble says curtly once they're out of library earshot.
Carissa Sevar: She hands it over. "How long will this be?"
Iarwain: The noble shrugs. "Hour or two. Been a while since I had mine." She examines the bag. "Used once, emptied, not recharged. Confirm or deny."
Carissa Sevar: "Confirm." With a slight pang of regret but she is NOT going to flirt with the Queen.
Iarwain: The noble tucks the bag away without comment, and then strides swiftly in the direction of the nearest exit from the villa. Sevar will need to half-jog herself to keep up, the noble's legs are longer and she's apparently stronger.
Once they're outside the bounds of the physical villa and heading towards the edge of the Forbiddance, the noble speaks again. "Not interested in the Queen's affections, I take it? Understandable."
Carissa Sevar: That doesn't seem like a question with a safe answer. "It's no flaw in the bag, which was lovely, or the Queen, who was much lovelier."
Iarwain: "But terrifying to be around to the point where the prudent, wise, safe course of action seems to be ignoring her and hoping she stops paying attention to you. As I said, understandable."
Carissa Sevar: "And yet one gets the sense the Queen finds it annoying when people try to do the prudent, wise, safe course of action at her. It's a bit of a dilemma. I am hoping I can just make her powerful beyond all our imaginings and then be forgiven my confusion about how to handle it."
Iarwain: This wins a snort of amused laughter from the low-noble. "A difficult tactic, but I would expect it to work if you can do it."
The noblewoman puts her hand on Sevar's shoulder and casts a two-person Teleport, sorcerously, not as a wizard spell.
They're in Ostenso, outside a discreet but very upscale-looking shop. There's a sign in gold leaf over steel that reads 'Guillem & Arnau', and no other hint of what the shop does; if you don't already know, you're not supposed to be here.
The noblewoman drops her hand. "Different transport will be provided when you're done. I'm too busy to stick around here. Free advice, Sevar, though I may suspect it may come too late. The Queen may choose to request transcripts of your thoughts. If you thought about how the Queen was very pretty but too scary for you to want to be around her, or if you considered using her bag again but decided against that only because you didn't want any more of her attention, she is liable to take that as flirting back."
Carissa Sevar: Of course she is.
"The Queen should of course have whatever information she likes in determining how to do exactly as she wishes," she says.
Iarwain: "It's not as bad as it sounds. She only does the statue thing very rarely, and not to lovers who disappoint her in bed. In your personal case I think you'd have to piss off the Church and Asmodeus first before she'd go ahead with it."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has absolutely no context with which to interpret any of the sounds coming out of this person's mouth at this point. Is she being reassured because she's ....thought to be an unhelpful amount of scared? But telling her the Queen might come for her wouldn't seem to help with that! Is she being mocked? Probably; she's out of place here, in her Worldwound uniform, and well aware that nobles tend to think that kind of thing is funny. Is there a deeper, secret message? Why would it matter what Carissa thinks about what the Queen thinks of her? Is she being told that if she's a shape that the Queen will think of as flirting-back like it or not she should actually just flirt back? But it's too late! The woman acknowledged it was too late! Is it a test of whether she internalized Maillol's lesson about it not mattering what she wants? But even before that lesson she was very clear on the fact that if the Queen wants something you say yes, no matter what it is and no matter how you feel about it. What's this person's angle?
Carissa Sevar: "I have learned recently that apparently a lot of people have trouble looking forward to, with genuine delight, the process by which in Hell they will be perfected. While I have many human deficiencies that make me an inadequate servant of our God I don't have that one, and my problem, here, is not that it sounds bad, it's that I'm sure there are lots of equally interesting girls who are slightly less busy."
Under no reasonable models of this person's goals was that a very good thing to say, the headband helps Carissa observe with perfect clarity.
Carissa Sevar: - she'll just go inside. To her appointment.
Abrogail Thrune II: She didn't catch on, this time. That's disappointing but also kind of adorable.
Abrogail did have other things to do with her time today, it's just, when Sevar's thought transcripts show her thinking every five minutes about how terrified she is of you, it's hard to help yourself.
Carissa Sevar: About twenty minutes into her beauty appointment, which thankfully involves things being spread on her face and doesn't require much of even her unenhanced attention, it does occur to Carissa that nobles who are also fifth-circle sorcerers don't run miscellaneous transportation errands Security could handle.
Doesn't she have a country to run? But that's not even a reasonable complaint, really, because everyone knows full well that this little project is the most important thing in it, and that this little project will succeed or fail on Carissa's judgement.
And if it fails, then if she's lucky she'll go to Hell.
Asmodia could not possibly be less relatable; Carissa finds herself in fact utterly furious with her, for having the thing Carissa wants more than anything else in the world, and trying, like a toddler too caught in the throes of a tantrum to be reasoned with, to rid herself of it, the only inheritance she has, the only good thing about being human.
She does remember to ask if she can also be fitted for clothes appropriate to her hypothetical station.
Iarwain: Guillem & Arnau does not provide that service, but there is a fine clothier two streets up, if madam customer is sure she can afford their services; or if this is part of a government operation, they can append a few words requesting clothing-purchase assistance to the pickup request.
(Carissa has now gained a permanent +1 inherent bonus to Comeliness.)
Carissa Sevar: Yes, please, on appending it to the pickup request; she is sure she can't afford it.
It's not incredibly obvious, looking in the mirror; it's the difference between how one looks on a good day versus on a bad day. She could get away with not explaining it to Keltham, except for the policy of only telling lies they actually need. Also, she wants to keep doing it, so.
She does not yet feel like she has understood the desires in herself that have no place in Axis, but - well, yes, okay, she has, she wants to rewrite the book of Asmodia to have REASONABLE PRIORITIES and be GRATEFUL FOR HER LIFE, that's not a desire that has a place in Axis, but not the pride related ones. Yet.
Iarwain: Pickup arrives in the form of somebody who looks like a slightly tired (that is, not noticeably to anyone who isn't Chelish) courtier who will escort Carissa to upscale clothing stores and buy clothing for her that a countess's heir should have. Actual teleport to follow.
(Theoretically this decision gets made by Paraduke Ratarion, but the person who received the initial message made a snap decision that his decision here was predictable enough to guess and be corrected if necessary. In an Asmodean tyranny, this is a bad thing to guess and be wrong about, but not insignificantly a good thing to guess and be right about.)
Carissa Sevar: A countess's heir apparently would have a lot of clothes, more than are really feasible to own or wear or get from place to place; a countess's heir, of course, would have servants which would help on the feasibility front.
Carissa is not sure how much agency she is supposed to exert about the clothes-acquisition process but she figures more countesses' heirs err on the 'spoiled' side than on the 'meek' side so she tries to make demands, which go over fine; she wants fabrics that look like they'd be incredibly hard to do by machine, because they're labor-intensive and sufficiently non-repeating, since dath ilan will probably find those more impressive; a lot of laces are satisfactory on that front. She thinks that Keltham will be unamused by anything that takes an hour to lace up, so those are out.
She wants a dragonhide purse, because dath ilan won't have that, and she's tempted by necklaces that have tiny humanoid fae trapped inside them, pounding frantically at the crystal, but probably Keltham would get worried about them and ask if they want to be let out.
....this is just occurring to her: do countesses' heirs who have a sadistic boyfriend have - she's not even sure what she's imagining - imaginative sex clothes of some kind. The obvious version would be, like, shirtsleeves that can lace together so as to bind your hands behind your back rather than lacing separately, or... maybe there's a particularly spiky kind of lingerie? Fabric is so expensive that Carissa thinks of this as a fairly ridiculous indulgence but now that she's thought of it it seems like someone would've, probably.
Iarwain: The courtier doesn't blink. Yes, Ostenso has several shops for government-approved Asmodean subwear. Most, however, target sufficiently wealthy people buying subwear suitable for their pets and slaves. There's only one such shop that would be socially appropriate to a countess's heir purchasing subwear for herself to wear of her own accord, and that one may already be closed or closing soon.
Carissa Sevar: Inconvenient. Can someone check whether it's in fact 'closed' or 'closing-soon', it'd be nice to bring Keltham back at least one thing from this shopping trip,
Because she is human and bad at the things humans are bad at, Carissa feels - what? distress at the thought they'll assume she's just like this as a person? Their opinion of her does not matter, and if she were just like this as a person then her life would be more convenient, and maybe she is just like this as a person, with the right handling which she just hasn't sought out. The embarrassment survives all these compelling counterarguments.
Iarwain: The courtier isn't much of a wizard and doesn't have extra message scrolls; they'd have to head there to look, but it's not that far.
Carissa Sevar: Sure. Carissa is not pathetic enough to let embarrassment influence her. She will go to the other shop. Knock.
Iarwain: Someone opens the door. "We're closing in thirty," she begins, but then catches sight of Carissa's Worldwound uniform and the tired-looking courtier next to her. "We're always open for the Church or the Crown," she says a moment later.
Carissa Sevar: "Good of you. I need something to wear. The intended audience is an innocent young man from a very Lawful Good country who is reconsidering what they taught him it's all right to do in bed."
Iarwain: The courtier adds that this situation is not any higher priority than would be appropriate to a count's heiress shopping at this store; they're not to bring out anything or offer any services they wouldn't offer to a count's heiress.
Iarwain: Strange and interesting, on both counts, but the door-answerer is certainly not arguing or asking any questions of this Obvious Intelligence Operation. She'll quickly escort them to the relatively tamer sections of refined noble Asmodean subwear. "You probably want things labeled Perversion 15 through Perversion 20," she says.
Carissa Sevar: There are labels????? There's a scale?????????? But presumably what's interesting is both highly personal and incredibly contingent on past....whatever. Carissa will trust the system. What sorts of things have those labels.
Iarwain: Perversion 15: Ballroom clothing suitable for a Baroness, not quite at the Countess level; elaborate, but nothing that would overly impede a dagger-fight if you had to do that instead of dance. Cunning pleats and overlaps in the clothing would enable a lover to reach right through it for pleasure or punishment, in any number of various places and angles, without any need of removing it.
Perversion 17: Loose slave garments and not-cripplingly-expensive-to-lose harem jewelry that would be suitable for a noble surrendering herself to a higher noble for sexual punishment after being defeated in a contest of wills and powers; according to a not-particularly-legible etiquette code that absolutely does distinguish this case from the case of a noble who got physically captured by another noble and forcibly redocorated by them, in which case, obviously, you'd be shopping at one of the other stores instead, because this store is only for noble submissives who are doing their own shopping. It's not considered gauche or mockery to wear this clothing even if you're not really surrendering yourself to a higher noble, and is instead a pleasing roleplay or flattery, which makes it much more popular than the primary use-case would suggest.
Higher perversion levels spoilered
Perversion 18: A simply enchanted cursed belt which prevents you or anything you're wearing or holding from touching your own genitals, used for preventing self-stimulation. It won't stop a Mage Hand, but it's at least a little difficult to get yourself off with a Mage Hand. It won't stand up to a Dispel Magic and it doesn't have any indicators that would show a Dispel Magic had been used on it; that's more the sort of heavy-duty cursed equipment that a dominant would buy to use on a submissive.
Perversion 18 (also): A whole-body outfit of leather straps, concealing nothing of importance, studded with solid metal rings any of which can be locked to any other. You'll need to also buy either these simple open-or-shut connectors, which you could just as easily manipulate to free yourself if your fingers weren't otherwise restrained, or these more time-consuming simple locks sharing a common key. You could be restrained and re-restrained in a very wide variety of positions using this, especially if you also buy these simply-enchanted adjustable-length metal bars with rings on either end. Uncaring use of this on you may require a cleric's attention afterwards, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Perversion 20: An Asmodean fighter's leather armor, but interlaced through with subtle bands that can be tightened to reduce flexibility and resist motions, handicapping the wearer. If you were wearing this you could lose a hand-to-hand combat to a substantially less skilled fighter without it looking too unnatural. The groin protection can be detached without that affecting the restraining power of the rest of the armor.
It's not that large a store floor, and even if Carissa keeps her focus relatively narrow, she's liable to notice, for example, a Perversion 24 enchanted metal bra whose breast cups go searingly hot any time you make a sound, a much more expensive Perversion 33 bra that sears you any time you disobey any order you hear, decorated aesthetic versions of many common torture implements that don't require overly expensive (for a noble) clerical attention afterwards, slave rags which sure look like ordinary slave rags except for somehow being four hundred times as expensive - oh, they're enchanted to automatically clean themselves without requiring some random laundry wizard to use Prestidigitation for two minutes, that's why they're four hundred times as expensive - and of course cuffs, whips, branding irons, acid droppers, and blindfolds with extraneous gold detailing and in some cases tiny rubies.
In many cases, one can tell on a close examination that this is definitely subwear that noble Asmodean submissives buy for themselves, rather than subwear for Asmodean dominants to buy for their subs; because the subwear is visibly designed in some way to allow or require the submissive to put herself into it, rather than for her to be restrained while somebody else puts subwear on her. (Obviously this is a matter of fashion signals rather than practice; it's not like you couldn't threaten somebody into putting this stuff on.)
The male-focused section of the store floor is smaller, maybe a quarter of the size, but very much existent (for the benefit of that very very rare Asmodean who wanders into a store like this one and starts pondering anything to do with gender disparities).
Carissa Sevar: Carissa has never really given a lot of thought to how the nobility lives, beyond deciding a decade ago she didn't want to be a court wizard because the mortality rate was appalling. Her plan was to start a magic shop, figure out who was the most important person to bribe, make them something beautiful every year for a present, and assume that sufficient to keep her out of everything else.
Her feeling now, looking at all of this, is - faintly infuriated? It seems very - fake - like they're playing the game of having sex, instead of just having sex like normal people. Carissa is not actually sure she is very interested in the game of having sex. She tends to have sex for advantage, which means that when she's having sex it's with people who have power over her, rather than people she has power over, but that's not a game, that's just how everyone's incentives are shaped. This is a game. The consequences are real but the thing itself doesn't seem any less fake, for that.
She understands, maybe, what Maillol was trying to tell her, that it wasn't all right for Keltham to have her because she said it was. That comes from the same world as this, a world where everything is a game, where someone might decide to put on these clothes and seduce someone just because it's fun, playing with the inevitable natural order of the universe but only that, playing.
Carissa is pretty sure that her actual sexuality, which she unfortunately needs to keep track of because there's no time in her schedule at present to learn to fake it, doesn't resemble this. It is about belonging to someone with the power to do whatever they like with you, yes, but - it's not about belonging to them because you're into that. It's not about the fact power is sexy, it's just about power. It feels like a real distinction, at least inside her head. Insofar as it features clothes like this at all they were definitely picked for her by someone who likes her in them, not picked out herself.
Okay setting aside her actual sexuality, which being the product of a human mind is going to be stupid and incoherent, what does she want? Some of the fancy outfits that look like they definitely couldn't have been manufactured overnight as part of an elaborate effort to convince Keltham that masochism is a real thing, some things that look like they'd obviously only work with the cooperation of the wearer, some things for farther in project corrupt Keltham which don't as obviously only work with the cooperation of the wearer - she tries to model Keltham's reactions about magic chastity belts and Keltham in her head is making a face but not a 'no' face so she'll grab that -
- she has a unhappy feeling that somehow looking at the more-dangerous stuff at all counts as flirting with Her Infernal Magistrix. Because everything counts as flirting with Her Infernal Magistrix, or at least everything done in the slightest awareness it might have effects on Her Infernal Magistrix. Anyway pushing Keltham too far too fast might make him decide to think too hard about the whole situation, so she won't get any of that. Yet.
"I think this is enough for now," she says, once she's picked out an outfit for ballroom dancing, which she does not do, while sexually accessible, which pants work fine for, and the magic chastity belt, "unless you're apprised of the whole situation enough to have opinions and advise otherwise."
Iarwain: It's hard to figure out which possible responses to that potentially get her hand burned off in a way that non-government-employees don't get free healing for. She's obviously not apprised of the whole situation, which suggests that she definitely shouldn't say anything, but that's too obvious to be the meaning.
"I have no experience or training in honeypot operations targeting unsuspecting Lawful Good targets. Government-approved literature has seemed to suggest that presenting yourself to a Lawful Good man in obviously self-applied bondage," gesturing at the outfit of leather straps, "will tempt him to do things to your helpless form, without that seeming to hurry him along the path to inflicting pain; and that tickling is useful as an intermediate step towards getting him to hurt you," gesturing at a shelf of tickling implements and lubricants labeled Perversion 3, "but I don't know if any of that's meant to be useful advice or a fictional conceit."
Realistically shouldn't this be asked of a honeypot operator with experience targeting the boy's home country? But there's presumably some reason they aren't doing that and instead asking her and also aren't giving her any more information?? Citing only government-approved advice is the only tactic she can think of for possibly getting out of this with mostly inexpensive injuries.
Carissa Sevar: Oh, for fuck’s sake, Carissa would just like people to say things if they think she should actually know them and not otherwise. You know, people say that the Worldwound is bad for Cheliax because of how most of the national wealth is going towards fighting an endless horde of demons but she’s starting to wonder if it’s actually good for Cheliax because it’s a place where if you waste too much time or play too many games you get eaten, which both winnows out idiots and is character-promoting for everyone else. “Great,” she says shortly. “How much for this, then.”
Iarwain: 40gp for everything else and 340gp for the Cursed Belt of No Touch. (It would be more if it was an adventure-grade cursed item and not a bedroom-grade one.)
Carissa Sevar: She glances over at the courtier in case she has opinions about whether Carissa is allowed to spend that much on sex toys.
Iarwain: The courtier continues to feel nervous about correcting Carissa Sevar in any way even when she is seeking guidance, let alone having any opinions on what Carissa Sevar is allowed to do, but has nonetheless been instructed to make sure Sevar doesn't make any accidental purchases she shouldn't, so:
A countess's heir could own a small handful of sex toys costing that much, but wouldn't own dozens of them. This mission hasn't run out of gold yet, though they're getting close to the amount the courtier has on her.
These both seem like very safe opinions to express and not ones that will cause Carissa Sevar or Rathus Ratarion or Aspexia Rugatonn or a suddenly appearing pit fiend to kill her.
(This background anxiety doesn't show at all to Carissa; the courtier is experienced.)
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is not very interested in peoples' internal states as long as it doesn't cause them to waste her time or not tell her things. "Great, then, let's get these and then swing back to the other store for one normal outfit, and they can take my measurements so I don't have to leave for future orders."
Iarwain: If Asmodeus has taken a personal interest in that event happening, the courtier isn't going to argue with it.
The items go into a standard military-issued common-use Bag of Holding. Back to other clothing stores!
Carissa Sevar: Carissa will get one nice dress that isn't a special sex dress and an undergarment for it, and not ask anyone any questions they are too nervous to usefully answer, and get all her measurements so that she can order future dresses that are even better fitted, and then she can be done with this ordeal and hopefully not have missed dinner...judging by the time, she probably missed dinner.
Keltham: Keltham has acquired a timepiece that he will someday remember to check again! He's found out that Cheliax is 85% farmers implying that their food-per-person gain function is 7/6 (~1.17) in which case anything that produced a permanent 1/7 decrease in farming productivity would cause human life in Cheliax to stop existing! There maybe shouldn't be all that many priorities higher than increasing the food-per-person gain on farming to something more like, say, 100, or at least 10. Dinner probably happened at some point, he isn't really focusing on that.
Keltham is currently experimenting with Prestidigitation to see if he can Prestidigitate things to be magnetic, magnetizable, or to have rotating magnetic fields inside them. How's that going for him?
lintamande: Making random objects magnetic: no. Magnetizing a metal in the fashion you could also do with a strong magnet: yes! Rotating magnetic fields: he can't make it a persistent property of the object but he can do it very briefly, scattering a bunch of iron filings in a suggestive fashion before it stops quite working.
(Meritxell points out that if there were a permanent 1/7th decrease in farming productivity all the least productive farmers would starve but there is variance and some farmers are very productive and would be fine.)
Keltham: "What makes some farmers more productive? Any clues?"
Can he make a loop of metal superconducting with Prestidigitation, and then use this bit of iron he already magnetized to start an electric current flowing which will then persist? Keltham has a detailed qualitative-physics mental model of both conductivity and superconductivity if that counts for anything; he wouldn't know exact numbers on how conductive a piece of impure iron would already be.
lintamande: "Some places the soil is much richer so plants grow better," says Tonia. "And near rivers it's possible to irrigate the fields."
Getting an electric current flowing isn't working and it's not totally clear why.
Keltham: Fascinating. If you can make something taste even vaguely like chocolate, you'd think you could make it support a superfluid of phonon-coupled paired electrons; that's much less complicated than the implied fitting-of-taste-receptor-potential-energy-surfaces going on with 'tastes vaguely like chocolate'.
Can he make something just exhibit the magnetic-field-expulsing effect, so that it will float above a magnet even if it's not a superconductor?
(The classic Science Maniac Verrez maneuver would be to see if you can use Prestidigitation to turn a very tiny amount of something into antimatter, but that, obviously, Keltham is not going to talk about, or try until he's got a much better grasp on safety precautions.)
lintamande: Yep! ...very briefly, again, like with the magnetic field, and then he loses it and has to start again.
Keltham: Then Keltham is going to practice this some more, because if he gets magnetic field expulsion and magnetism both working, and if he's right about how things look to Detect Magic, he's going to be able to show off an object floating above another object without any visible magical force holding it up, which should make a nice Difficult-Seeming Impressive Trick for Golarion natives if they don't already have any obvious ways for doing that.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa comes quietly in while he's still getting this down (having swung by Maillol's to ask calmly for confirmation that was, again, Her Infernal Majestrix.)
Keltham: Keltham wasn't at the stage of being ready to attempt a visible Thing Floating Above Thing effect, just bringing Prestidigitated objects closer together to see if he can maintain the repulsive force he's aiming for and especially while he's not actively casting the Prestidigitation spell. This is good because he doesn't need to hide the preliminary stages of a Difficult-Seeming Impressive Trick from Carissa, who might otherwise be impressed by the completed form.
"Oh, hey," Keltham starts to say when Carissa steps in -
Keltham: She's dressed nicer and more normally, though not in anything like a dath ilani style.
"Oh, did you get back your non-Worldwound wardrobe and stuff?" That's a sensible thing for the trip to have been about.
Carissa Sevar: "Yes -- well, acquired a non-Worldwound wardrobe, I haven't had one in mothballs for the last six years. Also acquired some other things I'll tell you about later."
Keltham: Not bad for a low-tech society. He'd visualized non-Governance clothing as being much cruder, given the description of hand-powered spinning and weaving - wait is that actually incredibly expensive stuff that only third-circle wizards on important government projects can afford? He'll quietly ask somebody who isn't Carissa, which he can totally do now, because maaaaaagic.
"I've been practicing economicmagic!" Keltham says. "Observe what I now do completely without a huge supply network to manufacture sound-transmission equipment." He goes through the gestures to cast and catch Message, then mouths to Meritxell, "Do her new clothes look very expensive?"
lintamande: "Yes," Meritxell whispers back, smiling.
Keltham: Good news about Carissa's career trajectory, not such great news about the state of the rest of Cheliax.
"You also seem more - generally cheerful? Brighter? If I'm not just imagining things." (Said to Carissa normally.)
Carissa Sevar: "You're very perceptive, it is generally said that you need to get multiple prettiness treatments if you want a man to actually notice instead of just vaguely feeling fonder. That is one of the other things I was going to tell you about later."
Keltham: Keltham peers at her more closely. "That... could be a change to underlying biology that I interpreted as cheerfulness, I suppose. If you hadn't told me it wouldn't have occurred to me that your hidden-background-state appearance had changed." Oh, huh, Keltham has slightly mixed feelings about that, which he should put a pin into discussing sometime later - should he mention it now so she can help him pin it? - no, that seems like an ominous and unspecified thing to dump on somebody if you're not going to talk about it right away.
Keltham casts Detect Magic, just to see if he can spot any lingering magic on or about Carissa from it all.
Carissa Sevar: Nope!
Keltham: "Have you eaten yet? I'm afraid we already did."
Carissa Sevar: “I’ll grab myself something and come right back, then.”
Keltham: He's about ready to wrap up. After this comes Keltham's casting his mysterious cleric spells for the day - though Keltham isn't going to mention that fact until she's done eating dinner, in case it's otherwise a nice-mood-spoiler. (Though she might not actually be in a nice mood, just prettier; still, same logic applies.)
"See you soon and again," he says, in a Baseline idiom that maybe didn't quite translate to Taldane.
Carissa Sevar: She hurries out, smiling.
Keltham: More magnetic-field-excluding practice! Also more infinite Additional Questions!
"Is the limitation on irrigating more fields the limited supply of water, or the cost of infrastructure to transport water? What, if anything, do you already do to try to make fields have richer soil?"
lintamande: “You leave the fields fallow some years,” says Tonia, “and turn the soil deeper.”
”In some places they harvest bat shit from deep caves and the Underdark.”
Carissa Sevar: Carissa requests a summary over dinner or anything that’s come up, and also wonders aloud at Security whether Asmodia’s been behaving herself better or worse or the same.
Iarwain: Keltham asked questions about farming and other aspects of Chelish economics. Meritxell and Tonia mostly answered them, in a way that fits the hypothetical new Cheliax so far as Security could tell.
Ione passed a note to Security offering to warn Keltham to maybe not trust everything Meritxell says about economics, because she might be overrunning her real knowledge - in a very enthusiastic and well-intentioned way, but still. Security is deferring that decision to Sevar.
Ione oracled in one Ostenso library book about farmers - Security does still have the ability to redirect Keltham's thoughts away from text, and farming seemed innocuous. It didn't contain nearly as much direct detail on farming operations as Keltham had hoped; no illustrations of plows or mentions of how much a plow costs or who makes plows, and soon Keltham gave up and stopped reading. Keltham suggested establishing communications with somebody at the Ostenso library who could check through books first given a request for content, and leave a found book in a designated place for Ione to borrow. One Sending is an improvement over two teleports, or this potentially warrants a paired mirror. Security told him that Requisitions said she'd think about it; Requisitions in this case really means Sevar, they can get the mirrors if Sevar says yes.
Asmodia has been keeping to her bedroom and rereading her math textbooks, which is overtly good behavior. She wasn't tightly monitored but spot-checking of thoughts suggests that she's anxiously locking down a lot of disloyal thoughts, nothing unusual for someone in her position though of course Asmodia isn't being told that, but certainly more anxiety and thought-suppression than would have been characteristic of her three days ago. Overt thoughts indicate willingness to work with Sevar on her mysterious project for dath ilani thinking, confusion about what the real purpose of that is, painful hope that maybe she can avoid Hell after all.
Pilar was almost but not quite killed when a Security wizard got a message announcing one of his wives had successfully birthed a child, and Pilar shouted "Congratulations!" from directly behind him. Nobody including Pilar understands how Pilar got into the temple room where the wizard was receiving the message, and Pilar can't quite remember what she was doing just before that. Pilar thinks she could possibly learn to not do it to on-duty Security, so long as she can still do it sometimes to somebody, but on this occasion the impulse took her by surprise. Pilar is significantly shaken up about this, because if she'd died like that she wouldn't have been Maledicted first. Also, Pilar needs to throw somebody a larger party, preferably a surprise party; single pieces of cake being handed out on special occasions aren't going to cut it for her indefinitely. This is mostly Maillol's problem but is being copied to Sevar in case it somehow interacts with project matters, or for that matter in case she wants to advise Maillol that having a Chaotic Good oracle to exhibit to Keltham isn't worth that much.
Carissa Sevar: Cayden Cailean is like the kind of god Carissa would have made up if she were a propagandist trying to convince Chelish people that Good is stunningly worthless and stupid. Probably it's fine if Pilar throws some parties, how expensive can that even be, though the only acceptable targets for surprise parties are the other girls and maybe whoever's on staff doing laundry or whatever. Coordination with the library in Ostenso seems straightforwardly good for the cause of passing Keltham only desired books, worth a mirror. If Tonia and Meritxell are the chattiest girls they should both get some training/screening for how to handle it if Keltham wants to fuck them.
Carissa heads back over once she's had enough to eat.
Iarwain: There is no longer any staff on the premises doing laundry. All the usual slaves have been removed for now, they'd be infosec hazards to Keltham in any case. Cooking, janitorial, and other ops are being performed by a few first-circle priests of Asmodeus with appropriate civilian proficiencies.
Maillol is afraid that anyone here without a claimed soul is going to get oracled.
Keltham: "Hi again, Carissa. I'm about to start winding down my workday, but before I switch to nonwork mode, I should try my cleric spells."
"Could just do it with Security, if you didn't want to be there."
Carissa Sevar: "I'm in." But a touch reluctant, mildly traumatized by what happened yesterday, so hopefully he won't think anything of the rest of the girls being somewhere far away where their anxieties and desires cannot be detected.
Keltham: Carissa may still be a little undercalibrated on how much Keltham can sight-read Chelish expressions; he can't see anything meant to be subtle.
To a secure workroom then.
First up is a first-circle Abjuration.
Carissa Sevar: "Protection." from Evil, but they've already strategically modified the relevant sources. "It creates a defensive magical barrier and makes it impossible for summoned creatures to come into contact with you. It's commonly used at the Worldwound as a cheap shield."
Keltham: "That's... not easy to understand, if it's either a message, or an actual contingency. Things shouldn't be summonable inside the Forbiddance, right? Or is somebody going to come in with an army of summoned creatures from the outside?"
lintamande: "Correct," Security confirms.
Carissa Sevar: "Could mean, uh, your protections still aren't adequate? Or that there's a summoned entity already here...."
Keltham: "Actually. Third-circle unidentified conjuration - that's the thing that does summoning? Maybe it's meant to be used before I use that? How long does Protection last and can somebody tap me with a new one if this one runs out?"
lintamande: "Yes, though also if it's a summoning you're going to have to leave the Forbiddance to do it.'
Carissa Sevar: "Lasts two minutes per caster circle."
Keltham: "Any way to tell by looking at the spell structure, if somebody wants to show me an illusion of something?"
lintamande: Security shows the spell structure for Planar Inquiry and then for Summon Monster III and then for Infernal Challenger.
Keltham: "Summon Monster III. Okay, I don't get it, what is that and why do I have it." Unless the message is simply leave the Forbiddance.
lintamande: "It summons an extraplanar creature. You can get a minor outsider with it, or an animal. If you want to use it we'll have to leave the Forbiddance, but that could probably be done safely if it's done briefly and not telegraphed in advance - so probably now, if you want to do it."
Keltham: "Literally right now? If so, start walking and I'll follow while I ask my additional questions."
"By 'not telegraphed in advance', you mean we have to leave right now before any intelligence leak could tell an adversary to prepare an assault?"
lintamande: "This room is very shielded, but I would want to depart it intending to head straight there. To be clear, we have no reason to believe this facility is being observed by any adversary. But your gods' communications are consistent with there being some threat, and with sufficiently powerful magic it would be possible to surpass our precautions. Or there could be a spy."
Keltham: "...huh. I wish I had a much better idea of exactly how well my god can see my situation and exactly how intricately predictive their plans are likely to be."
"Let's run through the other spells first and then you can tap me with another Protection and we can run outside and cast that one."
Next up is an unfamiliar second-circle divination, the one that doesn't go by touch - he's planning to save the Early Judgment for last, or now second-to-last, in case a vision of his or his god's afterlife ends up being awful news of some kind.
Carissa Sevar: "Augury. Gives advice from your god about whether a course of action - like 'should I step outside the Forbiddance', I guess -- will have immediately good or bad effects. Was an incredibly powerful spell when prophecy wasn't broken and now it can only go off information that's already observable just not to you, so it's fine for, like, warning you of ambushes but lousy for anything more complicated. Even for ambushes it now has a depressingly high false positive and false negative rate - I want to say one in four readings is just nonsensical and not from your god at all?"
Keltham: It doesn't quite make sense that his god would give him two Auguries only to have one of them tell him not to go outside - but Keltham can sense that he needs to supply this question basically like now, so he says, out loud, "Effect of going outside the Forbiddance."
(Probably he's got two so that he can actually think of the correct question on #2.)
Nethys: The god of knowledge would prefer that this Augury fail, thank you very much.
Keltham: "I... think it failed entirely, actually. Or at least I didn't get any information off it. Possibly waiting that long to ask the question didn't help." Keltham had two Auguries, but it's not obvious he should tell them that.
Next: Unfamiliar third-circle divination, there's two of them that look pretty similar.
Abadar: Abadar is incredibly fucking done with everyone messing with his cleric. Does Abadar go tax the temple of Nethys in Sothis into ruin, because he likes money, no!!!The thing about Augury is that it's such a noisy broken channel, now, with prophecy broken, no message can get through with Nethys opposing it.
But He can be MAD ABOUT IT.
lintamande: This spell gives him a - sense of Carissa and Security and a sense that there aren't other minds, in the room, and a sense he can see a new angle of them -
Carissa Sevar: "Detect Desires. - considered kind of invasive, for what it's worth, and spellcasters will automatically try to fight it off, though I'm trying to not because we're trying to build trust here -"
Keltham: "My god gave me a nonconsensual mindreading spell?! Carissa -" He almost tells her to fight it off, for Civilization's sake -
- but this could be about building trust, if his god knows that he knows that they weren't expecting it -
"- you can let me read your desires if you're okay with it, Carissa, I don't see your job as requiring this. Security neither."
Carissa Sevar: "It's not exactly mind-reading, and I don't mind." The spell says that Carissa wants to be like Contessa Lrilatha and wants to be a powerful wizard and wants to invent the Lawful Evil version of dath ilani teachings and bring them to every child in Cheliax and get rich and famous for it.
lintamande: (Security wants to get out of this whole mess alive or at least with all his possessions restored post-Resurrection, and to meet his new daughter.)
(They picked which Security very strategically.)
Keltham: That's... not absolute evidence, but it's evidence, if they don't have easy ways to fake that too. He wishes it hadn't been obtained at that kind of cost. "I have another third-circle divination which looked a lot like that one, though not identical. You -"
"- I can't say it's not important but Civilization would correctly kick me out if I pressured you into this."
Carissa Sevar: Carissa appreciates having had all day to think about what to say to him. "Keltham - in a way, it's a gift, right? I want you to feel safer trusting me, I want you to have a real reason to."
Keltham: He casts the spell, now and without further quibbling, because it means less the more time they have to prepare, and if he's going to do it, he may as well get as much trust from it as he can.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa is scared of being turned into a statue and buried deep beneath the ground so she never gets an afterlife until the stone wears away after millions of years and maybe the universe is destroyed before then!!! That's it, that's the only thing.
Security is scared of fucking this up and dying/getting Keltham killed/getting fired and then having the kids think he's a loser.
Keltham: "I saw," Keltham says, and dismisses the spell's continuation with an almost violent act of will, more than a simple absence of concentration. "It's off."
"Thank you."
He can think of things to say to Carissa, about what she's afraid of, but - but later - and only if she doesn't tell him to forget he ever saw it.
"Fourth-circle abjuration," he says instead. "Ready?" Keltham sort of wants this over.
Carissa Sevar: "Go."
Keltham: Cast.
Carissa Sevar: "- don't recognize it, but lasts two hours per caster circle, protective against enchantments, might also do something else?"
Keltham: "...is somebody going to try to enchant me when I go outside the Forbiddance? Then why would my god - suggest that I go outside in the first place..."
Well, obviously his god could be trying to protect him against internal-adversary enchantments too, from somebody who wasn't Carissa and probably not this security guard either??
...Or his god could be telling him to go outside and spring a trap on purpose instead of waiting for it to go off???
Keltham really wishes he had a much better sense of what was normal for Golarion.
"Next up, unfamiliar second-circle divination with touch target, I am going to tap myself with it, be prepared to hit me with a dispel if I yell or fall over."
lintamande: "Ready," says Security.
Keltham: Spellboop.
lintamande: A city, by the standards of Keltham's world not even a particularly tall one, but a beautiful one, with rising golden spires and rooftop parks and flying gondolae and people on their busy way through shining streets, about half of them human and many of those who aren't things much stranger.
Keltham: "It's - I'm seeing into a different high-tech planet, one that isn't dath ilan - definite magitech, not just tech - wide variety of aliens, I wish I had some way of showing them to you -"
And then Keltham runs out of ability to speak. There's an almost painful wrenching at his heart, a sudden manifestation of the reverence and faith that a dath ilani feels when watching a personnel launch to the Moon base, but stronger than Keltham has ever felt it, this is the dream, what Civilization wants to be when it grows up, only something beyond that, something that only appears in science fiction movies, because dath ilan knows with high probability that they won't run into any aliens for another half to two billion years. But if that wasn't true, if somehow it wasn't true and the explanation for why the aliens hadn't already appeared, wasn't anything bad, if somehow the aliens weren't already as unimaginably advanced as dath ilan will be in another hundred million years, but only equals, then this would be that place, the dream, a symbol that can't exist, of dozens of species existing together in peace.
And - commerce.
He doesn't know how he knows, that the flying gondolae were bought and not just given away, but he knows it. It's not because they couldn't make enough to give away, but because people doing things to benefit one another and be benefited in return is something holy in itself, to them.
It lasts a very long, very short time, and then it ends.
Keltham: He's crying. Not really much of a surprise there. Not what his gendertrope says to do in front of Carissa except in private, but drop table gendertropes.
"What spell was that?" Keltham says, when it stops feeling improper to speak. He thinks he knows, obviously, but he wants to hear them say it.
Carissa Sevar: "Early Judgment. Shows - the afterlife you'd go to, if you died now."
Keltham: "Do afterlives here - are they known to draw from many planets, many planes with different sapient lifeforms -" He's trying not to jump too fast to the obvious conclusion, that his god isn't from around here any more than Keltham himself is.