lintamande: "Does that...subsidizing a rating, I mean - work better than just asking a friend for a recommendation?"
dath ilan: Nothing prevents your friend from buying into the tiny prediction market, if your friend thinks they have relevant information about you that rich prediction-trading merchants' tiny golems haven't figured out!
lintamande: ....okay.
Carissa managed this by pretty much literally saying 'you should resolve your contractual hangups so we can have sex' and Meritxell is younger and less daring and not going to do that.
Keltham: When it comes to dating people who aren't sex workers, that's more a case of, not so much asking your friends for recommendations, as your friends betting with each other on how you'll rate somebody after having dated them. A 'recommendation' isn't falsifiable and quantifiable the same way.
Keltham can guess that's not how it works in Cheliax. How do people find the best date recommenders, is it just a matter of asking somebody else who recommended them a very good date?
(Keltham may possibly be trying to flirt back by keeping the topic on dating, potentially permitting slow deniable escalation towards common knowledge of interest? It's hard to read this because he's so alien.)
lintamande: ....mostly people just tell their friends who they find hot, and then their friends egg them on into asking them out/being conveniently vulnerable in their vicinity/whatever. It isn't very Chelish to seek assurance about how well it'll work out, first; it is generally believed that you learn useful things from the failures as much as the successes, at least at their age.
Keltham: "It would be a very rare prediction market that claimed to be certain you'll give a great rating to somebody you've never dated before. If you want assurance of it working it out well, you'll be waiting a long long time for your first date."
lintamande: "That seems like a very silly thing to want, really. Like the kind of laundry wizard who gets a taste of the fundamental forces of reality and decides to make very sure the fundamental forces of reality never do anything interesting where they can see it."
Keltham: Inquiring minds then want to know what constitutes a non-fundamental force of reality
"Well, what's the most interesting thing you've done with a fundamental force of reality, then?"
lintamande: "I'm only a shy new second-circle wizard," she says. "All I can do to the fundamental forces of reality is make them summon a horse or spit glue at people or sneeze fire or make doors look open when they're closed or go invisible or fill rooms with sparkles or turn into someone else. When I'm a great and powerful wizard I will have a few more tricks up my sleeve."
Keltham: "What's the first one you're really looking forwards to, then?"
lintamande: "Fly." Instantly.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa joins them. "You know, at the Worldwound you wouldn't've gotten a personal-use third-circle slot for another seven years."
lintamande: "I guess I'm glad I'm not at the Worldwound. ....not primarily for that reason."
Keltham: (Not letting people play around with their new magic for seven years seems sort of pointlessly non-optimal anti-fun? Is this a Golarion Error or is there actually a good reason?)
"Little surprised and unnerved about invisibility being only a second-circle spell, though. Are there politeness codes about - not doing that? Rules? Or do people in wizard schools just have to run Detect Magic a lot?"
lintamande: "- mostly there's nowhere in school where you'd expect to have privacy," Meritxell says after considering for a second whether this is also true in Taldor. "It'd be illegal to go invisibly into someone else's house or something, that's trespassing, but you can't trespass on a dorm that sleeps twelve."
Keltham: "Any safeguards here, or is it just that you'd expect Security to spot the invisible person and nope them?"
lintamande: "Here I imagine they've got the entire place ringed with Alarm spells that ping whenever anyone crosses them and Security that can see invisibility and - actually now that I've got Arcane Sight I bet I'd be able to see - not the invisible person, but the fact there was a spell, if they didn't have more powerful magic concealing it, which a real intruder probably would."
Keltham: "Okay, so, it's not that you're hiding that you've all suddenly got Arcane Sight, I am apparently allowed to know if the topic comes up, everyone except Ione and Pilar is not pretending to cast Detect Magic while they're watching Carissa construct her incredibly impressive scaffold, it's just that this thing happened and nobody is mentioning it to me even though I am authorized to know it."
lintamande: " - did no one mention it," says Meritxell, innocent and baffled. "After Asmodia and Pilar died those of us who hadn't made our afterlife arrangements did, and that comes with a perk, and most people pick arcane sight. Well. Most wizards."
Carissa Sevar: "I hadn't heard either. Congratulations!"
lintamande: "Thank you!"
Keltham: Message: Ione is actually with Nethys. Pilar got touched by Cayden Cailean. Carissa, why do you not have Arcane Sight.
Carissa Sevar: Well I haven't made afterlife arrangements in the last two days, I was busy!
Also ... I'd talk to you about it first, actually? It's not strictly in the set of things I've given you, but I'd want to discuss it.
Keltham: Message: Got it.
"Why wouldn't everyone make their afterlife arrangements before starting wizard school, if it comes with that perk?" Keltham says aloud.
Carissa Sevar: "- so the reason it comes with perks at all is because you get the perk from the specific devil who you are selling your soul to, in exchange for joining their organization on your death. And setting aside whether children ought to be allowed to promise that, a random child's soul isn't going to be - valuable enough they can get a powerful permanent magical boon from selling it. Mostly you actually wait until you're older than us and more powerful, at the perfect balance between how much you can get for your soul and how long you'll have to enjoy it, but."
Keltham: "Sorry about that, then, if apologies are appropriate here. It seems like the sort of thing for which you should get compensation, if there's a more powerful version of Arcane Sight you're locked out of, because you were working on a dangerous project. Or do the contracts come with a buyback option?"
"Actually I also don't understand why this project is dangerous enough for that if, like, resurrections, also afterlives in the first place."
lintamande: "Someone else might get to us first," Meritxell says flatly. "If you die normally, you go into the River of Souls, and you go all the way to the Boneyard, where you're judged and sorted, and then you go to Hell, and get magically dumped at a random location in Avernus, the first layer. And Hell has pretty good infrastructure for moving people from Avernus on, but still, you're going to be sort of cut off from comms for a while, potentially weeks. Potentially you get held up in the Boneyard because Pharasma doesn't like to hold trials for people who are obviously going to be resurrected. And while you're in that situation, if you get a raise, you take it, and you have no way of knowing for sure if it's Cheliax sending it. You can tell the alignment of the person offering to raise you, but..Zon-Kuthon's followers are also Lawful Evil. If you're in a known location in Hell, you're safe, your secrets are safe, Cheliax can call ahead and confirm the Raise being offered is ours..."
Keltham: "Understood, thanks for explaining."
Probability that Carissa just cannot manage to make this arrangement for some weird reason or another... let's say... 20%? It's just that, if everybody else in the harem has now verified their allegiance... he should check that assumption, though.
"Is there a Security process that makes sure, when someone does this, or says they've done it, that they've actually made a deal with Asmodeus's people and not Zon-Kuthon's?"
lintamande: "....when we sell our souls?" Meritxell says. "Yes, it was done with Security supervision from a list of devils maintained by the Church of Asmodeus. I'm not even sure you can sell your soul to Zon-Kuthon, though, gods, that'd be awful."
"We didn't get worse Arcane Sight, we got the standard," Gregoria says. "The project didn't force us to sell our souls for less, they made our souls valuable enough for a standard sale a decade early."
Keltham: "Oh, that's good to hear. I'm glad that at least this part of the system is so, what's the word I'm looking for, functional. I guess because of Asmodeus involvement."
So basically if there's a hidden cleric, it has to be Carissa.
Carissa Sevar: "I think Hell is a lot better run than Cheliax," Carissa says dryly. "By the way, can I come when you go ask pointed questions of the site manager, it's not really any of my business but I think it'll be really funny and maybe inspire me to grow up and build Civilization."
Keltham: "If you think that's safe career-wise."
He frankly did not need this as a Thing to Worry About.
...well, the same logic that says that any of this would be true in the first place, also says that Carissa is the First Girl, and therefore, out of all the girls here, the one who's guaranteed to have a pathway leading to a happy outcome for the two of them. So if she's a Zon-Kuthon cleric unknown to even herself, it'll be a solvable problem.</optimistic rationalization>
Carissa Sevar: "I don't think they'd have put someone super unprofessional on the project but I won't, like, make faces or anything, and if he has me disciplined for looking like I was having too much fun then we'd have some valuable information!"
Keltham: "Let's run that experiment then."
"Carissa, what's your favorite spell you've cast, next up spell you're really looking forwards to?"
Carissa Sevar: "I am told this makes me a tedious parody of myself but I really like Fox's Cunning, and I'd be incredibly excited for Dimension Door if I weren't in a Forbiddance. Since I am....Scrying's going to be fun."
Keltham: Golarion sure does have a lot of spells that seem to have been invented by someone fundamentally opposed to and perhaps offended by the notion of privacy. "Scrying? How's that work?"
Carissa Sevar: "It is a fourth circle spell that finds a person and shows you them and their surroundings, which you can also hear. Somewhat restricted - it won't be in your basic book of magic - because you can use it to spy on people, but it's also essential for most military operations, so it's not top secret like effective enchantments are." They considered hiding this one from Keltham but keeping him and them unscryable is a major constraint at this point and because of the one-hour casting time they can manage plenty of deception with it. "I am not gonna use it to creep on my ex, though it did occur to me I could use it to get a remote tour of the world, if we can pay someone to go teleport to and then walk through other countries and be scryable for us while they do it."
Keltham: "Yeah, it hasn't escaped my notice that I made it to an incredible new world and have, you know, been moving around a number of tightly secured indoor rooms since then. I mean, not that this is in any way the wrong decision, but if it drags on a few years I might start to feel slightly annoyed."
Keltham's brain, which has apparently been running a separate subthread this whole time, notes that Carissa sure seems to be a lot into pain, and that he currently has only Carissa's word for how normal of a sexuality that is in Cheliax.
Message to Carissa: I notice you came back with a fancier headband, speaking of Fox's Cunning. Is that a safe public topic?
Carissa Sevar: Private loan from Aspexia Rugatonn. You can mention it but don't go on about it too much, everyone'll be madly jealous.
Keltham: Okay, good, that seems very probably safe.
Mostly I was just checking because you said Fox's Cunning was your favorite spell, and I had suspected you might be beyond it now.
Carissa Sevar: Indeed. (She's so happy about it.)
Keltham: "Meritxell, sorry to interrupt this conversation, I was enjoying it, but my brain is nagging me about something and I need to go talk to High Priestess Jacint Subawhatever, or schedule a time to talk to her, and then hopefully my brain will stop bugging me about it."
lintamande: "Of course," Meritxell says cheerily enough, but glares at Carissa a tiny bit for interrupting like that.
Keltham: Keltham goes to have another awful conversation about tropes, which, at least this time, he is doing the virtuous thing and making advance predictions about.
Jacint Subirachs: The High Priestess was not especially expecting Suddenly Keltham but her poise is of course perfect.
She's in communication with Security and will be relaying all this to Carissa, of course.
Keltham: Keltham shall open by inquiring roughly what fraction of attempted afterlife arrangements fail, like, just don't go through for some weird reason. 1 in 10? 1 in 1000?
Carissa Sevar: This is an unpleasant surprise for Carissa too but she'll be on standby to consult.
Ah. Fuck.
....Keltham's going to conclude there's a Suspicious Reason she can't sell her soul. Probably best handling of that is for her to fake selling her soul as soon as possible, rather than for them to lie about how often it fails. (Or really sell it? The order from Asmodeus said 'not this day', maybe it's supposed to be this day instead for some reason.)
Jacint Subirachs: She'll answer honestly, then.
Perhaps 1 in 20? 1 in 50? She is not especially in charge of those arrangements.
Keltham: Next question. Out of 100 random women in Cheliax, or random 18 Intelligence wizards if that's importantly different, how much would be into pain to roughly the same degree as Carissa or more?
Carissa Sevar: Also doesn't seem worth lying about; Carissa gave Keltham her previous honest guess.
Jacint Subirachs: "Half, perhaps, or a little more than half. Your Carissa is not so much exceptional in how much pain she enjoys, as in how much pain it takes to push her to her limits, which is a distinguishable aspect of her submission."
Keltham: Reassuring, but still. Keltham doesn't know if Jacint has been briefed at all on 'tropes', but Keltham registers to her the prediction, 30% probability (he's updated after more thought) that something will mysteriously go wrong when Carissa tries to make her afterlife arrangement.
And if that happens he would like Cheliax to check her for being a hidden cleric. Yes, again. Right away. This plan is still not going to work, somehow or other, but Keltham doesn't know what else to try at that point.
If her afterlife arrangements get made successfully, then - assuming afterlife arrangements couldn't work with somebody having a split personality one side of which is a Zon-Kuthon plant that the other side doesn't know about - everything he just said can be safely ignored. Which, on Jacint's priors, should happen 19 times out of 20, or 49 times out of 50. So really, on the view that seems normal, there shouldn't be much chance of this contingency arising in the first place, right.
All of this should be reported to Keltham as priority interrupt, given either possible outcome. Carissa being unable to sell her soul is 10 times as likely if that 'trope' is in play, and makes that 'trope' 10 times likelier once observed.
Carissa Sevar: Why is he LIKE this.
They'll just have to pretend to sell her soul, no way around it.
Jacint Subirachs: ...Jacint is in fact feeling somewhat unnerved here, but, as with gods, anything having to do with 'tropes' gets copied to Aspexia Rugatonn, so it's not truly her concern past this point.
Jacint will see to it that Keltham's wishes are thoroughly obeyed.
Keltham: How does she manage to reply to an ordinary request like that.
(Keltham says this out loud.)
Jacint Subirachs: Practice.
Keltham: Yes, well, thank you very much, then. Sorry for the interrupt, hope it wasn't too bothersome.
Keltham shows himself out.
Carissa Sevar: The girls have mostly finished lunch and are preparing spells or in Carissa's case copying new ones out of a Security's spellbook.
Keltham: He shall obtain a bit more lunch for himself, and remind all of them that he's asking for Fox's Cunnings to spread around, and going forwards, let him know if there's something he can do with his own spell slots to make up for that.
lintamande: They're preparing Fox's Cunning and will ...count on him for incidental healing? They mostly only get a couple second-circle spells but are used to those being non-personal-discretion, they're not displacing anything.
Keltham: Keltham is under the impression that one should not engage wizards in conversation while they are preparing spells! Thus, he should not resume conversation with for example Meritxell. This will probably take a while?
He'll gawk for a bit with Detect Magic, and then maybe see what policy is about engaging Securities in conversation while they're on-duty.
lintamande: "We can answer questions but should call backup if you seem to want more than a simple question answered."
Keltham: "I'm actually wondering a bit about - some books mentioned scrolls, which sound like single-use casts, I've been keeping some of my own slots full with various emergency or contingency spells. Like an Early Judgment for an emergency emotional stability restoration, or Sending in case I get successfully lost somehow, or kidnapped without being spellblocked."
"If I'm loading as many Owl's Wisdoms as possible tomorrow, it'd be useful to have, for example, an Early Judgment single-use and Sending single-use, so that my emergency contingencies aren't occupying my actual spellslots. Probably also requires something to carry them in, if they aren't quite small."
lintamande: "Scrolls take skill to use, and can backfire if you're not experienced using them. They're harder to use the higher-circle the spell they imitate. I can put in a requisition if you want to plan on spending some time learning how to read them."
Keltham: This does seem like a good emergency capability for Keltham to have, and will free up his spellslots and so occupy fewer Security spellslots with his requests.
Keltham: Keltham should maybe practice his own magic, trying to hang his first 1st-circle wizard spell. Can someone with an illusion and arcane sight help him bulldoze the early stages again?
lintamande: Then Security will put in a requisition for some training scrolls for him and then scrolls of emergency backup spells one he's mastered those, and help with an illusion while he attempts to hang a first-circle spell.
Keltham: Keltham attempts to BE A WIZARD. Well. More of one. Apparently if it's just the cantrips you are not a proper wizard.
lintamande: It takes fresh wizard students at least a year to learn first-circle spells, but they are typically significantly younger, and don't often have an Arcane-Sight aided illusion so they can see exactly what they're doing, and ones as smart as him are awfully rare. He doesn't have it quite down by the time the girls are done preparing their spells but he's getting tantalizingly close.
Keltham: Being a wizard is pretty tantalizing, yes. What if he tries for an additional eight minutes?
lintamande: Okay at this point it feels like it should be working but somehow even when he's holding the magic in what looks like the exact right place it doesn't.
Keltham: Does the Very Experienced Expert helping him have any advice to say about that?
lintamande: "- might be a limitation of barreling at it from the illusion-visual angle as hard as one possibly can? Close your eyes, feel the magic, or plausibly take a break and go do something completely different for six hours and then try closing your eyes and feeling the magic."
Keltham: He'll close his eyes and try feeling the magic.
If that doesn't work, yeah, he'll come back in six hours.
lintamande: It maybe makes it feel perceptually clearer what's not quite in the right place for the spell to hang yet? It doesn't make the spell magically behave itself.
Keltham: Eh. If he's not still in the same place as yesterday, he's making progress, and that's good enough given the standard speed of such things. It seems Keltham isn't above comparing himself to Golarion about wizardry.
Keltham: So since experience has suggested that people will not just tell Keltham things he might want to know, without him asking:
Is there such a thing as a one-use item of Sending which doesn't need scroll-reading to work?
Is there a way to take an Owl's Wisdom that would hit one person, and pay a reasonable amount of resources, and make it hit twelve people? Or two people?
Is there a way Keltham can store a cleric spell and make it go off later without it still occupying a slot?
Is there anything people do to get more spell slots?
lintamande: 1) No one has heard of such a magic item and they wouldn't expect it to exist, Sending's the kind of spell that's hard to make into a magic item.
2) Mass Owl's Wisdom is sixth circle but it does exist and would get all the girls at once. The High Priestess can have it tomorrow.
3) No, short of building a magic item that casts that cleric spell, which does among other steps involve casting the spell into the item.
4) Over time wizards notice efficiencies and can eke out more spells. Clerics tend to get more spells from their god as they rise in their god's service. That's about it.
Carissa Sevar: (Keltham is not authorized to know about Pearls of Power because more spell slots for Keltham makes their lives harder.)
Keltham: Does it happen to be the case that - possibly only after his relationship with Carissa deepens enough - he can collaborate with her in a way where she makes most of the Sending or Early Judgment item and Keltham casts the spell into it?
(It's been repeatedly mentioned how good Carissa is at enchanting items, this should play a role in the eroLARP somehow. </trope-thinking>)
Carissa Sevar: "Casters can collaborate on a magic item that requires multiple spells, if they don't individually have all the spells to make it. It usually comes up if an item requires something only clerics get and something only wizards get - Sending isn't that, wizards get it too, though Early Judgment is. The problem with an item of Sending is that it has a ten minute casting time and then takes input from the caster, both of those things make a spell harder to lay in an item. I can try, if you want. I'd need a crash course in wondrous items."
Keltham: "...weapons enchanter, right. But, arguendo, Early Judgment is touch-targeted and cast quickly, so you should be able to make a Small Poking Needle of Early Judgment, right? If it's a" mentalisticmagic "conceptual thingy, you could also imagine that as a weapon that distracts somebody during combat. Also it doesn't have to do it unboundedly many times, doing it once or maybe three times would be enough."
Carissa Sevar: "I can probably make a tiny sword of Early Judgment if you cast the Early Judgement at the stages where it needs that, sure."
Keltham: "Material cost, time cost both yours and mine?"
Carissa Sevar: "Yours is practically trivial, you'd just have to cast it once a day when I say when. I think it's the kind of thing where if I was working from an existing prototype it'd be 3000gp in spellsilver, maybe less, but the general rule of thumb is that it's at least double that to invent something you haven't seen before. Probably a couple weeks of work."
Keltham: "Almost definitely not worth that much of your time, alas."
Also, in retrospect he did not think of this quickly enough, 'poky thing that gives you a deeply emotional and possibly addicting experience each time you stab yourself with it' is potentially a bad thing to invent into Golarion or have around even for himself. That's not trope reasoning, it's pattern recognition in general.
"Cost of one scroll, and how long does it probably take me to learn to cast from scrolls?"
Carissa Sevar: "People who aren't spellcasters at all often find it hard to learn, but spellcasters usually pick it up pretty quick, I think? A couple days of practicing with minor scrolls, maybe?"
Keltham: "Scrolls sound like obviously the way to go then, unless they cost a huge amount."
Message: Carissa, I have an increasingly bad feeling about your lack of afterlife arrangement, if there's any 'trope' in play at all that's leaving an opening for something interesting to happen to you before you make it into the safer parts of Hell. Can we go have that talk right now?
Carissa Sevar: - yes, of course.
Keltham: Keltham apologizes to everyone for not resuming faster, but there's something nagging at his brain and he's going to go try clearing it before continuing.
Asmodia: (Good. She has something to do anyways.)
Carissa Sevar: She goes with Keltham to his bedroom. "What's worrying you?"
Keltham: "Carissa, I think you have not fully updated on your environment becoming as improbable as yours has become. You met somebody at the Worldwound who's not supposed to exist in Golarion or be alive at all, his shiny new project has god-wars starting around it, Cayden Cailean taps Pilar with candy powers and sends her to Elysium, and then the Queen decides to go on a date with you."
"You may think it's safe to leave your afterlife arrangements hanging for an additional hour, because probably nothing is going to happen in an hour."
"I think we should expedite that process to its maximum reasonable speed."
"Not rush it and risk making errors, to be clear. Just because a lot of improbable things have happened, doesn't mean particular improbable things will happen. I was wrong about Asmodia coming back with superpowers. Part of the doom of being unsure if you recognize a pattern, is when the pattern seems so much easier to call after the fact than in advance, and that's a sign of the phenomenon maybe not being real."
"But even leaving aside everything about 'tropes', there's a sense in which it feels stupid to leave open a vulnerability like that. We have adversaries. Other gods may be our adversaries. We don't get to assume statistically normal probabilities of adverse events, because smart enemy actors may be trying to force them as outcomes upon reality, using pathways we cannot visualize in toto."
"If your afterlife arrangements are pending a conversation you'd like us to have, we should have that conversation. If there's any slowness in the process for doing this under the Church of Asmodeus's supervision, where you can't just walk into Jacint's office and say it's time, we should schedule that as soon as possible, do the scheduling step before the conversation."
Carissa Sevar: She takes a deep breath. "You're right."
....here's an idea. "An agreement like ours would not, typically, encompass my soul or my afterlife. ...would you want it to?"
Keltham: "I would need to know a lot more about the details."
Carissa Sevar: She prepared so many lies about this! "So, the normal arrangement that, say, Asmodia made when she graduated from school, or that Meritxell would've made yesterday, is that your soul, on death, becomes the property of a devil in Hell, one you picked out in advance based on good reviews and an organization you're interested in joining. When you die, you go to that devil, and they're responsible for orienting you, housing you, clothing you, training you, all of that, at which point you work in their organization until you've paid off the services provided. They can't make you work, obviously, but if you go work somewhere else while you have an outstanding contract, they get your pay from wherever you do end up working.
Obviously devils compete on - how cheaply they can help you, so the size of the debt ends up being small, and how valuable the work you'll be doing is, so you'll be able to pay back your debt very quickly, and how nice the living and working conditions are, and how interesting the work is. My plan was always to be a weapons enchanter in Dis. It'll take me a long time to get oriented - magic works differently there, I won't be able to pick up where I left off when alive. But I'll be very valuable once I'm sorted, so I should be able to get a good deal, I'm not worried about that.
It just - occurs to me as the sort of thing where you might prefer I not be owned by someone else."
Keltham: "Yeah, that makes sense as something to check with me."
"Uh, for my answer to be understandable, some quick background on Civilization's standard relationship escalation lattice..."
dath ilan: The gist of what Keltham is currently trying to convey:
Dath ilan has a notion of two people promising-not-swearing to each other to be together even in the Future, when they come back.
This is literally as far as a relationship can possibly escalate.
It is well past having multiple children together and raising them to maturity.
It is well past staying together for a few decades after that.
It is moderately past synchronizing your cryosuspension arrangements so that it happens when one person feels sort of overdue and the other person feels a bit of regret about leaving earlier; because more than any of that, they want to finish out all of their first lives together, and not be alone, nor leave the other alone, even for just a year.
People who say this to each other sometimes break up only twenty years later; and that is statistically more common than the breakup of couples who just semipromised they'd be together for the rest of their first lives, with intent to think things over together when they actually got to the Future. For this to happen to you is one of the more social-epistemic-reputation-affecting errors you can make in the realm of relationships, predicting a relationship will last twenty thousand years when it doesn't last twenty.
No far prediction market has ever put more than a 70% chance on a promise like this, a promise upon the Future, holding up; and that's as of when the two go into cryosuspension together still unbroken. Usually before you had a kid, you'd want more like 85% out of a prediction market saying you wouldn't rate that as the wrong decision retrospectively; likewise before you started talking socially about your two-decade monogamy compact like it was going to be a real thing and not just a fond aspiration.
People who say this is what they mean to do, and whose dignity calls on them to accept questions and objections, are typically asked if they've considered that maybe the Future could run vastly superior matching algorithms on available mates, and have qualitatively different and better potential mates who'd still be interested in an Ancient.
It's an obvious thought, isn't it? And yet even so, some dath ilani look at each other and smile and say they've got it good enough, and would rather hold none of themselves back from the promise that they make to each other. They don't need to worry about what future opportunities they might be passing up, or whether their lives would be objectively better if they made a different decision, or if it's really honest to make somebody else a promise like that when the statistics and prediction markets say what they do. Because they just don't need to let that sway them, that's why not.
A majority of Civilization mostly thinks those people seem crazy from a standpoint of expected utility maximization, but, at the same time, has a lot of respect for that. The kind of respect you give to somebody when you wonder, deep down, if maybe they're doing it right, and you're the ones doing it wrong.
Keltham: This is legitimately actually faster than Keltham is comfortable escalating their relationship.
Keltham: There's also the pragmatic point that Keltham does not currently have an organizational branch in Hell to protect Carissa, and that her current state is a vulnerability, maybe an awful vulnerability.
Keltham: That said, Carissa is also right that the notion of somebody else 'owning her soul', even if they don't own her, does not sit well with this new gendertrope that has always been inside Keltham.
And they're living in a world of low probability, and Keltham does not want to close off the prospect of their relationship escalating that far in time.
Keltham: He can think of one class of obvious solutions; does Carissa have her own suggestions?
Carissa Sevar: "One thing that comes to mind - and it might take some searching to find a devil who'll agree to this - is an arrangement where you own an option on my soul? And right now if I die I go to the devil I'm contracted with, but you can, at any future point, call in your option, if you decide that you want to, at some later point when we know each other better and you have a bunch of operations in Hell."
Keltham: "Yep. That's exactly the same thing I was thinking."
Carissa Sevar: "I don't know very much about how that would be done but we can definitely ask."
Keltham: Any reason they shouldn't go set that in motion literally right now?
Carissa Sevar: To the High Priestess's office it is!
Jacint Subirachs: Of course. It will be her pleasure.
(What exactly is to be her pleasure, Sevar? There's no guarantee that the next devil summoned will accept Sevar's contract now, and faking a compact with Keltham is probably sufficient for Sevar to lose her Law.)
Carissa Sevar: Luckily, they have to do the part with the devil outside the Forbiddance since you can't summon an outsider into one; that means there's an ironclad excuse for Keltham not to be present for it. Carissa is hoping that the reason for the instruction that she is not to sell her soul this day is in fact that she's meant to do this, as part of seducing Keltham to Evil. If not, though, and they still won't buy her soul, she wants to draw up a very real contract giving Keltham a very real option on her soul, which avoids specifying that it is presently owned by Hell, which she and he will sign. And then claim that it worked but the option makes it much less valuable so she doesn't get the perks, to explain the lack of Permanent Arcane Sight.
Unless to the High Priestess's awareness this is a stupid plan, in which case she can just tell them that options like that don't exist to her knowledge.
Jacint Subirachs: ...no, that's impressively clever, Chosen of Asmodeus. They shall need to consult a devil whether or not her soul is saleable this day, to make sure the language of this new contract is enforceable and valid, but the High Priestess expects it is doable.
Is it your will that this be done at once?
Carissa Sevar: The only cause to delay Carissa can see is selfish, that she can't easily be made to do this and it's not clearly in her interests - sort of the dilemma of whether it was pathetic or noble of her to sign Contessa Lrilatha's contract without enough time to read it, given that it was what Asmodeus wanted but also that it's not Asmodeus's job to make doing what He wants non-catastrophic for her. But on this Asmodeus has specific instructions, that she is to serve Him well and come to Him in Hell without thought of other choices and be treasured, and okay maybe she's not living up to that instruction just yet since she clearly had that thought process but she thinks she's being told that it is Asmodean, in this case, to serve without thought for her own interests. (Does that sound right?)
Anyway, yes, it should be done at once.
Jacint Subirachs: Jacint informs Keltham that this process must needs be carried out beyond the Forbiddance, since devils may not be summoned here; and it seems obviously unwise that Keltham step outside the Forbiddance without great need.
Aside from that, it can be done right now. Though Carissa will probably come back bearing a compact regarding the option on her, for Keltham to sign, which must needs be signed before the devil signs with her, for obvious reasons.
Keltham: Somebody's going to have to explain the language of the contract to Keltham, pretty darned carefully, especially if this is being done in a way where he's not getting Contessa Lrilatha's assurance about the compact being designed without intent to cause unforeseen consequences. Please factor that delay into account.
Message to Jacint: And furthermore Keltham needs Jacint's personal assurance on a level falling barely short of Abaddon-oath, that Keltham not being there is absolutely not going to allow any pathway through time however improbable where, somehow, it looks like Carissa sold her soul, but actually she didn't, and also after that nobody ran the additional check on whether she was a hidden cleric, or the check happened to a disguised double of Carissa or something.
Jacint Subirachs: Split-second deputy's decision: This seems like a safe assurance to give Keltham, it should not hurt Cheliax to run that additional check on Carissa.
Actually if Carissa tried to forbid that, Jacint herself would start to feel nervous at that point.
Return Message: I do so promise.
Carissa Sevar: Carissa will also want to give the contract a really close read! Obviously a devil who pulled tricky shit would not have excellent reviews and be on a recommended list, but still, the stakes are higher here and they should be incredibly careful.
Jacint Subirachs: Jacint will head over to collect rather a lot of Security and scrying protections, and then she and Carissa will step outside the Forbiddance to do the necessary.
Keltham: Keltham will find something else to do with himself, he supposes.
(The first Pending Thing not requiring the full harem, that came to mind, was resuming flirting with Meritxell. Would that be inappropriate? That's possibly inappropriate, right? Maybe he should just continue trying to read things.)
Asmodia: Asmodia heads over to the real main temple, the one Keltham can't visit and can't know exists because it contains the actual torture chambers.
lintamande: The door opens to a Security's private bedroom; the Security on duty here is apparently asleep in bed, startling awake at someone opening the door. When he identifies Asmodia he presses a panel that opens a nonmagically concealed door behind his bed.
Asmodia: Asmodia heads through, drawing what confidence she can about her. It's her first time visiting this part of the installation, so she's looking around to see what's here.
Also, do people here seem at all impressed with meeting a Project Lawful whatever-she-is?
lintamande: They haven't had a lot of time and haven't spent much of it on the decor in here, where Keltham won't see it; the temple itself is done well enough to honor Asmodeus, in black stone that must have been laid by magic because stoneworkers can't work that fast, but the rest just looks like a repurposed fortress, thick undecorated stone walls and floors with periodic magic torches, slightly overcrowded with support staff not cleared to meet Keltham.
The staff here stares less than at the palace, either because they're more professional or have heard less ridiculous things about Project Lawful girls. They do get out of her way.
Asmodia: Okay. People getting out of her way is... well it's kind of a lot actually. She needs to not blow this.
Message to whoever looks like the best prospect for directing her onward: I need to speak to whoever is maintaining comms with Egorian. Privately.
lintamande: Office next to the temple.
The office contains a fourth-circle priest of Asmodeus and a Mage's Private Sanctum enchantment so walking into his office is like walking into a wall of fog, after which she can't hear out at all.
Asmodia: Message anyways, just to be sure:
I need to send a message to Gorthoklek and receive a return message and verifiable authorization from him, with the literal absolute minimum of people who are not myself and Gorthoklek knowing that a message was exchanged between us, and literally nobody except the two of us knowing the contents of that exchange. Advise me on protocols.
lintamande: This priest has been warned that Project Lawful is ridiculous, no, more ridiculous than that, no, you're not prepared for how ridiculous, but this is somewhat more ridiculous than he expected. This girl's file doesn't even suggest that she's at all one of the interesting ones!
"....ah," he says. "Hmmm. On what timescale do you need to send your message."
Asmodia: She guesses that if he's answering out loud, given that question, this room is actually believed secured.
"Give me timescales and their privacy costs - how much privacy would I lose if I wanted this done as quickly as possible?"
lintamande: "If you wanted this done as quickly as possible I would have you impersonate me and request a Teleport to, uh, the front in Nidal, where you could get in Telepathy range of him with your request; the primary costs there are not in privacy but in your safety. If we have more time, I'd make a secret request for his whereabouts and notify you once he's neither at the front, where you'd be in danger, nor in the palace, where an attempt at impersonation would be noticed instantly, and have someone convey you-as-me there."